Brihattar Bharat conference marks Greater India Society centenary in Delhi

The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), which works under the Ministry of Culture, held an international conference on India's cultural connections with the rest of the world at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi from October 14 to 16, 2026. Titled 'Brihattar Bharat: International Conference on Bharat's Cultural Connections Across the Globe', it marked 100 years since the Greater India Society was founded in Calcutta on October 14, 1926. Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat opened the conference, and a written message from Prime Minister Narendra Modi was read out by Culture Secretary Vivek Aggarwal.

For a hundred years, scholars have studied how Indian ideas, scripts, art forms and religious traditions travelled across Asia and beyond: through monks and traders, along sea routes to South-East Asia, and over land to Central and East Asia. The Greater India Society, set up in Calcutta in 1926, was one of the first organised efforts in India to study these links as a field of research. The centenary conference brings that field back into public view, with a government programme now attached to it.

The word "Brihattar" means "greater" or "wider". Because the old phrase "Greater India" has at times been read as a claim of influence or control over other countries, the minister's remark matters. By describing the idea as a set of historical and cultural connections rather than a territorial claim, the ministry signalled that the programme is meant to work with partner countries and their own scholars, not to speak for them.

For readers of Indian knowledge systems, the conference is also about method. According to the ministry, Shekhawat called for the study of India's global cultural connections to grow into an evidence-based field built on international collaboration and joint preservation work. That means using manuscripts, inscriptions, archaeology, linguistics and trade records, and checking them against the work of scholars in the countries concerned. It separates research from belief and from national pride, which is how the subject earns credibility abroad.

The link to the Gyan Bharatam mission is practical. Many texts that record India's exchanges with other regions survive only as manuscripts, some of them held outside India. Cataloguing and digitising them is the first step before any comparison or study can begin.

Short-term: The conference sets out the research themes and partners for the first year of the Brihattar Bharat Scheme. Papers, contacts and proposals from the three days are likely to shape which projects IGNCA takes up first.

Long-term: A five-year scheme gives the study of India's cultural exchanges a steady home inside a national institution. If it leads to joint projects, shared archives and co-published research with partner countries, it could strengthen cultural diplomacy and widen access to sources that are now scattered across several continents.

Who is affected: Historians, Indologists, archaeologists, linguists and students of Indian knowledge systems; museums and manuscript libraries in India and abroad; partner institutions in the participating countries; and the Indian diaspora, whose own history is part of these connections.

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