Imran Shauket
The writer is a former Senior Advisor to the Government and a sector development specialist. He is the Ambassador, Buddhist Heritage Promotion for Green Tourism, a company under SIFC, and a member of the APP Think Tank.
Pakistan can only progress if it expands its current export oriented business sectors. Additionally, and more importantly, it needs to create new foreign exchange earning business sectors which rely on the country’s comparative advantage.
Some years ago, I returned to Pakistan from Bangladesh where over a 13 year period I led a University of Maryland implemented initiative to expand 15 business sectors. This effort eventually contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bangladeshi economy. With this background, shortly after arriving in Pakistan I realized that there are sectors that have amazing potential for growth in Pakistan.
One of the lowest hanging fruits among these was the promotion of Gandhara and Pakistan’s Buddhist heritage to the 550 million Buddhists of the world. This was an area of minimum competition for Pakistan given Gandhara’s historic links to Buddhism (see article Gandhara: The Epicenter of Buddhism). By my estimate, this sector is worth USD 30 billion.
Over the years, many in Pakistan have been working on Gandhara, but mostly as an academic exercise. Numerous symposiums have been held where local and international archeologist, historians, anthropologists and other actors gather for academic discussion about Gandhara.
Yet, very little effort has been expended to promote Gandhara to the Buddhists rank and file under a deliberate and well-conceived strategy. Understandably though, not being a Buddhist culture, the learning curve to devise a strategy to promote Buddhist Heritage to Buddhists is steep. Yet it is doable.
In 2015 I was asked to host a Buddhist monk and his entourage to Pakistan by our ambassador to Thailand. My subsequent efforts evolved into not only hosting various monks to Pakistan, but also working towards the creation of closer people to people ties between Pakistan and Thailand, a country which is 93-95% Buddhist.
Fortunately for me, amazingly competent Ambassador, HE Asim Iftikhar, DCM Faraz Zaidi, and Counsellor Tanvir, were then posted in Bangkok and we embarked on a journey to build P2P and to promote the Buddhist heritage of Pakistan in Thailand.
Subsequent Ambassadors Sahebzada Khan and Rukhsana Afzal and their teams continued in this amazing effort. In the past 10 years since we started the work, in excess of 60 activities have been undertaken in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Taiwan and China to promote Gandhara and Pakistan’s soft image.
As the activities continued and partnerships evolved, my understanding on the specific needs of the Buddhist visitors to Pakistan increased. However, much as I knew what had to be done, I was missing a national partner in the creation of a long term vision – until Green Tourism Pvt. Ltd. (GTPL) came into the picture.
MD Hassan Azhar Hayat and Director Asif Khalid encouraged me to join Green Tourism as the “Ambassador for Buddhist Heritage Promotion” and to work with them towards launching a long term strategy. After months of discussion and toil, we arrived at a detailed decade long strategy, and GTPL has been charged by GOP to be the lead implementing entity. GTPL is currently engaged in presenting the strategy to relevant federal and provincial stakeholders, build consensus and determine responsibilities of the myriad players.
The strategy is a comprehensive document which proposes a phased approach: Preparatory phase, Execution phase, and Celebration and Refinement phase. For the sake of brevity, I will not get into the details of the strategy but will only speak to some of the notable features.
First, the strategy is all-encompassing covering liberalization of the visa regime, streamlining of the travel regime, creation of a “Patrons of Gandhara” sangha consisting of senior monks from many countries to provide the understanding of the requirements of Buddhist pilgrims, aggressive marketing of Pakistan in the world in recognition of the fact that Pakistan has serious image problem, organizing the facilitators (tour operators, etc) to ensure quality of service, ensuring that Pakistani people are sensitized to Buddhism.
Thai Airways and Gov of Pakistan : Impacting Tourism and Investments – by Imran Shaukat
Buddhist heritage and also ensuring that maximum economic advantage filters down to the local population around the sites, supporting and advising provincial departments (tourism, archeology, etc) to create Buddhist relevant infrastructure and cuisine, and coordinating with domestic and international private sector, multi-lateral actors (WB, UNESCO, ADB, etc), and aid agencies are synced for investment. Suffice to say, the strategy is all-encompassing, deliberate and bold.
Asides from recognizing that monks and Buddhist religious leaders need to be the lead in realization of our strategic objectives, we also aspire to create a large (100 acre+) Loving Kindness Zone in Taxila. This Zone will broadly follow the model of Lumpini Monastic Zone in Nepal located at the birthplace of Lord Buddha.
In Lumpini, many countries and Buddhist orders have invested to set up centers of meditation and learning, and it attracts 1.5 million pilgrims each year thus generating billions in income for Nepal.
All the pieces are in place to create the elaborate mosaic of Gandhara promotion to the Buddhists of the world. Our goal is to eventually bring 1% of the 550 million Buddhists of the world to Pakistan in a decade. These 5.5 million pilgrims will provide Pakistan with USD30 billion in additional foreign exchange, making it the largest income generating sector for Pakistan.
