Following an informal bilateral meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi on Monday honored the premier Tibetan institute in India during the celebration of Buddha Jayanti on New Delhi. PM Modi honored the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies with the Vaisakh Samman Prasasti Patra during the event.
“We are fortunate to have the teachings of Lord Buddha among us even after 2,500 years. Government has allocated ₹360 crore for the development of the Buddhist circuit. This will help in developing Buddhist spots in U.P., Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and A.P.,” Mr. Modi said after honoring the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies (CIHTS) with the Vaisakh Samman Prasasti Patra according to the report in the Hindu on Tuesday.
The report also added that honoring of the Tibet-related institute is perceived as an important significant step as it came a day after Prime Minister Modi returned from his bilateral informal summit with President Xi Jinping of China. PM Modi inaugurated the event celebrating the occasion Buddha’s birth.
The Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies formerly called Central University for Tibetan Studies (CUTS), is a Deemed University founded in Sarnath, Varanasi, India, in 1967, as an autonomous organisation under Union Ministry of Culture. The CIHTS was founded by Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru in consultation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with the aim of educating Tibetan youths in exile and Himalayan border students as well as with the aim of re-translating into Sanskrit and translating into Hindi and other modern Indian languages lost Indo-Buddhist Sanskrit texts that now exist only in Tibetan.