NEW DELHI: India’s civilisational connect with countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) was in focus at a first-of-its-kind international conference on “Shared Buddhist Heritage” that began in New Delhi on Tuesday and saw participation from Pakistan and China among others.
Being held under India’s leadership of the SCO, the two-day-long event brought together Central Asian, East Asian, South Asian and Arab countries on a common platform and aims to re-establish trans-cultural links, seek out commonalities between Buddhist art of Central Asia, art styles, archaeological sites and antiquity in various museums’ collections of the SCO countries.
Meanwhile, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan in his virtual message to a workshop on humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, risk mitigation and disaster resilience organised by the Ministry of Defence on Tuesday that India had emerged first responder in the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) at the global level. The workshop was organised as part of India’s chairmanship of SCO.