Mahabodhi Temple sacrilege has hit India’s soft power

THE recent occasion of Buddha Purnima — the holiest day in the Buddhist calendar, celebrating the birth, awakening and display of passing away of the Buddha — was marked formally in New Delhi by the Government of India in numerous ways. Ministerial visits to the Buddha Relics at the National Museum took place on the day itself, followed a few days later by an event at the imposing Dr Ambedkar International Centre, with broad ministerial presence as well as a wide swathe of diplomatic representation from numerous Buddhist countries.

The event included a viewing of a movie made by the International Buddhist Confederation on the Buddha Relics sent by India to travel across four cities of Vietnam, with up to 18 lakh Vietnamese having made the effort to pay their respects in person, despite a last-city stop yet remaining. The footage showed visibly moved Vietnamese paying homage to this temporary, yet extremely holy site, for, in the Buddha’s own words, out of compassion, after his passing, anyone viewing the Buddha’s Relics should consider it akin to being in his actual living presence.

The recent successful efforts by the Government of India to stall the private auction by Sotheby’s, at the very last minute, of the Piprahwa relics of the Buddha (excavated in 1898 at Piprahwa Stupa in Uttar Pradesh, India) was laudatory. To prevent the auction, the Indian government argued that their sacred heritage and religious value to the over 500 million Buddhists across the world put them beyond the reach of simple commodification and sale, and to think otherwise — even if their discoverer William Claxton Peppe was permitted at the time to retain a fraction of the find — was beyond the pale of the widespread ongoing decolonisation project.

All of the above are very much in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s far-reaching vision of Buddhism as a soft power tool, on display and indeed foregrounded at the G-20 Summit in 2023 hosted by India and visibly so in many national and international forums and events. Given that India’s most real and serious adversary today, China, has approximately 200 million people self-identifying as Buddhists, such a strategy has more advantages than can be mentioned here.

An obvious one is the economic and political power of Buddhist pilgrims, who — given the Buddha’s entire life being inexorably intertwined with various sites in India, many lying unexcavated to date — must visit the land at least once in their lifetimes. Wealthy Buddhist-majority countries, too, have undertaken aesthetic and efficient work to build and maintain various holy sites associated with the Buddha’s life. For example, the minimalist, elegant Rajagriha, Nalanda, associated with the Buddha’s teaching of The Second Wheel of Dharma on the sacred doctrine of emptiness and the recitation of The Heart Sutra to innumerable beings is of immense merit.

It, therefore, came as a shock recently to view the footage circulating widely in social media of Hindu rituals being forcibly performed on Buddha Purnima in the innermost sanctum sanctorum of the world’s Buddhist community — ie, the innermost precinct of the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, Bihar. It is the site of the Buddha’s own awakening, and it is the site where all the Buddhas to come are prophesised to awaken. That this is the site associated with the awakening of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni is contested by no group, of no religion. What then justifies — on the domestic, but equally and more importantly international stage — such an act of grave sacrilege, reportedly attended by the Bihar Governor and with the Bihar Police on duty to contain communal clashes, wherein Buddhist monastics even faced violence?

In recent months, large-scale demonstrations and fasts by Indian Buddhists (both Himalayan and Navayana), fast spreading to the global community, have been held. They have been demanding the repeal of the Mahabodhi Temple Management Act of 1949 and its stipulated administration of the precincts by a mix of Buddhists and non-Buddhists. This is the latest chapter in a decades-long demand, originating with Sinhalese reformist monk Anagarika Dharmapala’s historical quest in this direction, which took the form of legal action and the posthumous achievement of at least wresting the complete control of the temple from Hindu Brahmins.

While the issue of the management of the temple remains unsettled, India needs to think of what it is projecting on the global stage as regards Buddhism and soft power in this unfortunate and violent latest incident, no doubt viewed countless times across the globe. Given the complete lack of contestation of the Mahabodhi Temple being the most sacred site for Buddhists of any persuasion and denomination across the world, of the past, present and future, it behoves this government to assert the sanctity of the one area where India truly and already is the ‘Vishwa Guru‘, over prioritising internal discord and communal disharmony.

This is also an opportunity for India to display another of its unique qualities — the harmonious worship of one religious site by people of different religions — whilst honouring and respecting the site’s chief historical righteous custodians as belonging to one faith. Of the countless examples, let me cite the Golden Temple, Amritsar — of the Sikh community, and managed by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandhak Committee, but also a place where over 60 per cent of the daily pilgrims are non-Sikhs. It’s also where khatri Punjabis and Tibetan Buddhists go in faith, because they see their own version of divinity in Guru Nanak (or Lama Nanak, as the latter call him).

In conclusion, at this truly unstable moment in global politics and a new multipolar order, when alliances and loyalties change day by day if not hour by hour, India can do with every tool in its foreign policy kit. Buddhism is a key soft power lever, as recognised by PM Modi himself, affording immediate and long-term stable power to India on its vulnerable Himalayan borders and with its immediate neighbours in Asia and beyond. The government should, therefore, act decisively to put out the unnecessary communal fires that disrupt this image on the international stage, such as this most unfortunate display at the Mahabodhi Temple, Bihar, for it is an own soft power goal that India can ill afford.

Kaveri Gill is Senior Fellow, Centre for Excellence in Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar University.

Comments