The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts opened a three-day international conference on India's cultural connections at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on 14 October. Culture and Tourism Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat inaugurated the gathering, which runs through 16 October.
The programme marks 100 years since the Greater India Society was established in Calcutta in 1926. Its new Brihattar Bharat initiative is intended to examine how knowledge, languages, sciences, art and cultural practices travelled between India and other societies through scholarship, trade, migration and religious exchange.
Organisers have proposed a five-year programme of joint research, seminars, workshops and international academic collaboration. The initiative will also explore multinational nominations of shared intangible heritage for UNESCO's Representative List, a process that would require participating countries to document traditions they hold in common.
A message from Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to Nalanda, travelling scholars and maritime routes as parts of this longer exchange. It also identified music, dance, literature, cinema, food traditions and yoga as contemporary links. The conference is an academic and cultural project; the official release does not announce any completed UNESCO nomination.
