Youtube livestream link: https://youtu.be/WzmcXNOubQw

Dialogue between Chinese intellectual Zhang Weiwei and Indian intellectual M.K. Bhadrakumar on the concept of democracy in a time when the Western world order faces a deep crisis. In this inter-civilizational dialogue for democracy, we will discuss and include the progressive contributions of European enlightenment and western civilization, but reject any attempt to place them above other civilizations and downplay their contributions. We see this dialogue as a step in the renewal of the discussion of new forms of political, social and economic organization more suited to the realities of our time. We hope to contribute to an international situation defined by peaceful coexistence, in which the right of all peoples and nations to decide their paths to and forms of democracy is respected. We believe that such a dialogue, unmediated by the West and unmediated by intellectuals that assert the superiority of western civilization, could make a significant contribution to determining the path for humanity towards a new democracy, and a just multipolar world.

Event June 2022

Intercivilizational Dialogue for Democracy

In December, 2021 several international leaders convened under a ‘Democracy Summit’ initiated by the American government. At the summit, Joe Biden declared that defending democracy against authoritarianism was the ‘defining challenge of our time’. The summit came off as a desperate attempt to form a fragile alliance to isolate nations that refuse to operate within, and offer an alternative to the western world order in this time. Democracy, in its most superficial definition, was used as a rallying point for this project to bring together developing nations from the third world with the developed West. This is an unnatural alliance that includes nations whose labor and natural wealth fuels the economies of the West, as well as those same neo-colonial powers. The two sides share little in the way of economic interests, culture, positive historical ties, and indeed even political systems. In the name of democracy the West acts to undermine humanity’s genuine and organic paths to democracy, sovereignty and self determination. Democracy is weaponized as a way to force western values upon non-western nations...

Declaration

 Building Peace Between Two Great Civilizations on the Foundation of

Millennia of Exchange and Respect

Ancient Relations

A look at the ancient relations between India and China, including the profound link of Buddhism.

Colonialism and Freedom Struggle

The centuries of humiliation and subjugation, out of which arose two great struggles for liberation that were parallel but distinct.