US Japan fund to preserve Buddhist centres  

Washington: The US National Park Service (NPS) will help the Indian Ministry of Tourism preserve Buddhist sites in Bihar and develop them as potential tourist centres, according to NPS project coordinator, Ronald Cooksey. The project, which is also expected to be funded by Japan, is supported by the US-India Endowment Fund, formerly known as the PL-480. Cooksey told India Abroad News Service here that an NPS team which had just returned from a one-month study trip of Bodhgaya, Rajgir and Nalanda, had felt that the sites were important not only to Buddhists, but to Hindus, Jains, Muslims and other religions. The project’s theme, “unity in diversity”, is evolved out of this realization, he said. “Perhaps nowhere else in the world does such a circumstance exist”.