ZUBAIR QURESHI
Imran Sheukat, a development worker and a social entrepreneur, has been working hard to promote Pakistan’s rich Gandhara civilization and unleash the ‘Buddhist tourism’ attached to it for the last nine years. This he has been doing silently but consistently and almost all the Buddhist countries’ missions in Pakistan (ASEAN countries, Nepal and Sri Lanka) have acknowledged his efforts in this regard.
Imran Sheukat was one of the prominent participants in the recently held International Gandhara Symposium and expressed his views giving suggestions how Pakistan can harness Gandhara potential as in his opinion this sector (Buddhist tourism) alone can earn US$20 billion for the country.
Imran says there are around 30 Buddhist countries with an estimated 500 million population. He has urged the Pakistan government and authorities to target and bring at least 1pc of them to Pakistan in 10 years. That would alone make 5 million visitors and create massive revenue of $20 billion for Pakistan.
Pakistan Observer in an exclusive interview learnt about Imran Sheukat’s views regarding how we can attract Buddhist tourists from around the world.
While giving a background on how he came towards promotion of Buddhist tourism in Pakistan, Imran Sheukat said it was back in 2016, he went to the Pakistan Embassy in Bangkok to help get visas for his business friends whom he had invited to Pakistan. There he ended up meeting with the Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmed who is currently Ambassador of Pakistan to France who requested him to coordinate a trip for the Chief Monk of Thailand Arayawangso to Pakistan as he wished to study Gandhara. Most Venerable Arayawangso, was also at the faculty of the historic Thammasat University of Bangkok and the Vice Rector of the University was his disciple. In order to get some more details, Imran visited the university and was surprised to see “Pakistan Corner” there. While talking to Pakistan Observer, Imran said he was moved to see that the university had given such an honour to Pakistan. At that moment, I took upon myself to do all I can for the university and the monk. And from then on his journey to discover Gandhara and its importance for the Buddhist countries, particularly, Thailand (which has a 99pc Buddhist population) began.
Since 2016 till now, five Pakistan Days have been celebrated at Thammasat University and the Pakistan Corner has become a living space with around 400 volumes of books donated to the library. Moreover, Pakistan’s cultural show featuring ‘Alhamra Arts council’s artists and Khumariyan was one of the highlights of those Pakistan Days. In Imran’s endeavours, he was supported by Prince Adnan Aurangzeb (late). Besides three faculty trips from Thailand to study Gandhara, a filming and launch of the docudrama “Tipitaka – The Man of Gandhara” in Thailand and the world were also on the list of achievements. A business-to-business (b-to-b) conference of tour operators was also organized and in total, around 30 activities have so far taken place since his first interaction and many more are planned for the coming months.
MV Arayawangso first visited Pakistan in 2019 for a week and met many dignitaries including President Arif Alvi. He loved Pakistan so much that he came again last year in 2022 for the three-month (mid-July to mid-October) Rains Retreat (Vassa) when he did a thorough study of Gandhara and visited many sites., MV Arayawangso has become the biggest promoter of Pakistan in the Buddhist world, said Imran.
Not only Buddhists from all over the world including monks but the visitors from Thailand have increased by 10 fold. Now Imran has been invited by Ambassador of Pakistan in Cambodia, Babar Thaheem to visit Phnom Penh to expand and extend his Gandhara promotional activities.
“I will be visiting Cambodia in September for the first time to meet our Ambassador and the monks and scholars of Cambodia there. We shall talk about Gandhara and Pakistan and I will extend an invitation to them to come and see our rich Gandhara sites. I would love to copy the Thailand model of engagement with Cambodia, and later Malaysia, Vietnam, Korea, Myanmar and many other countries,” he said.
