IGNCA marks Greater India Society centenary with 50-nation conference from October 14

Scholars, diplomats and delegates from 50 countries are due in New Delhi for a three-day international conference on how Indian ideas, languages and traditions travelled beyond the subcontinent. Titled "Brihattar Bharat: International Conference on Bharat's Cultural Connections Across the Globe", it runs from Wednesday, October 14, to Friday, October 16, 2026. It is organised by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), the research body under the Union Ministry of Culture. Union Culture Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat is to open it at Vigyan Bhawan, and a video message from Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to be played at the opening session. The date marks the centenary of the Greater India Society, a scholars' body founded in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1926.

Much of what is called Indian knowledge did not stay inside India's borders. Buddhism and Sanskrit learning reached Central, East and Southeast Asia, where texts were translated and adapted; Mongolian translations of Panini's grammar, raised at IGNCA's India-Mongolia conference earlier this year, are one example. IGNCA describes "Brihattar Bharat" as the wider sphere shaped by the transmission, adaptation and interaction of Indian cultural, philosophical, artistic, linguistic and religious traditions across regions. For anyone studying Indian knowledge systems, those overseas records matter, because they show how Indian texts and ideas were read, translated and changed by other societies.

The Greater India Society was among the first organised attempts by Indian scholars to study those links. It was set up in Calcutta in the 1920s, and its circle included historians and linguists who toured Southeast Asia looking for traces of Indian cultural influence. The society's ideas have since been studied and debated by historians, and the term "Greater India" is not a neutral one. That makes the framing of a centenary conference worth watching: whether it presents exchange as a two-way process between equals, which is how IGNCA has described its aim, or as a one-way spread of influence.

According to IGNCA, the conference aims to revive the society's line of scholarship through new research, interdisciplinary work and international collaboration. The Brihattar Bharat scheme behind it covers research, documentation, publication, preservation, promotion and digitisation of shared heritage. IGNCA's area studies unit has already held a smaller conference along these lines: an India-Mongolia meeting in February 2026 that traced shared history, including the transmission of Buddhism.

Short-term: Three days of papers and panels in Delhi will put research on India's historic links with Asia and beyond in front of diplomats as well as academics, and are likely to produce new collaborations between Indian and foreign institutions.

Long-term: With the scheme funded until 2031, IGNCA has a five-year window to build a body of documented, digitised and published work on these connections. Its value will depend on how much of it is rigorous, peer-reviewed and openly available.

Who is affected: Researchers in Indology, Buddhist studies, linguistics, art history and archaeology; students of Indian knowledge systems; cultural institutions in partner countries; and India's cultural diplomacy, which this scheme is designed to support.

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