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Tsering Dhundup
DHARAMSHALA, May 3: Afghanistan’s Taliban government has announced initiatives to protect the country’s Buddhist heritage sites and artefacts, departing from their previous stance during their first period of rule.
The announcement comes more than two decades after the Taliban’s internationally condemned 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, two monumental 6th-century statues which represented Vairocana and Sakyamuni (Gautama Buddha) standing 115 and 174 feet tall that had been carved into sandstone cliffs in central Afghanistan. The destruction of these ancient monuments, which exemplified Gandharan Buddhist art and survived numerous historical invasions, including those by Genghis Khan and Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, was widely regarded as a cultural catastrophe.
Taliban officials now state that Buddhist relics...
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