This volume is based on the proceedings of the Kalinga International Foundation`s first international conference — PURBASA: East Meets East: Synergising the Northeast and Eastern India with the Indo-Pacific, held in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, in March 2018. Following soon after the India-ASEAN Commemorative Summit of 25 January 2018, this conference clearly demonstrated what a carefully choreographed convergence of politics, diplomacy, arts, and scholarship can produce by way of specific ideas to deepen India's relationship with the East.

India's Act East Policy has extended the nation`s vision beyond ASEAN to the larger Indo-Pacific region which unifies the Indian Ocean region and the Western Pacific region into a singular construct. This is a natural progression of the civilisational connect that India's East and Northeast has enjoyed with other countries, both overland and through the waters of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, over the centuries. The deliberations of the conference provide interesting answers as to how the relationship between India and the countries of the region should develop in this period of geopolitical flux in the wider Indo-Pacific.