Has Modi found a
Buddhist Vivekananda in Anagarika Dharmapala?
Ranjan Crasta 9 October 2015 catch
News
On 8 October, Sri
Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena arrived in Delhi. But this
wasn't a run-of-the- mill state visit. Sirisena was accompanied by
150 of Sri Lanka's top Buddhist monks to celebrate the 150th birth
anniversary of the man credited with reviving Buddhism in the
Indian sub-continent - Anagarika Dharmapala.
The memorial event
will begin in Delhi and culminate on 10 October when the delegation
visits Bodh Gaya. While the event obviously has deeper religious
overtones, it's also an Indian attempt to wrest Buddhism from the
cultural claims of China.
China, after all, is
home to the world's largest Buddhist population in addition to its
control over Tibet. The Modi government though, since it has come
to power, has made strident attempts to appropriate the Buddhist
legacy from China. This has been evident in Modi's statements
during state visits to India's South-east Asian neighbours.
Recently, at a Buddhist-Hindu conference, organised partly by the
Vivekananda International Foundation in Japan, Modi even went as
far as to call Buddhism one of India's "crown jewels".
That Sirisena's
visit coincides rather well with China's fourth consecutive Global
Buddhist Forum, further indicates India's ulterior
motives.
Even so, in today's
age where India's religious legacy is being rewritten to promote
the significance of Hinduism at the expense of other religions, the
reemphasis on Dharmapala's legacy is one that we should seemingly
welcome. But if we delve deeper into Dharmapala's story, the Modi
government's affinity for him becomes a little less
surprising.
Even though
Dharmapala played a massive role in the re-popularisation of
Buddhism in India, his journey began in Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it
was called at that time. He was born in 1864 under the yoke of
British colonisation and christened Don David Hewavitharane. But
his life came to be a rejection of and battle against colonial
rule.
At an early age,
even as he was educated in Christian institutions, he found himself
drawn towards Buddhism. This affinity to Buddhism was eventually
cemented when Colonel Olcott and Madam Blavatsky, two of the
founders of the Theosophical society in Britain began visiting
Ceylon and declared themselves Buddhists. A 16-year-old Dharmapala
grew close to the two, assisting Olcott as a translator as he
travelled around Sri Lanka furthering Buddhist
education.
Even though he
eventually broke with the Theosophical Society, rejecting their
beliefs of a universal religion in favour of Buddhism, it is this
period that set him on his path. He took the name Dharmapala, which
means 'guardian of the Dharma'. He also took the title Anagarika, a
title that means "homeless one" and carries a status somewhere
between a layperson and a monk.
His tryst with India
though, was yet to come. That began on a visit to the
recently-renovated Mahabodhi temple where the Buddha, Siddhartha
Gautama, had attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya. The year was
1891, and a 27-year-old Dharmapala was shocked to find the temple
managed by a Hindu priest, with the image of Buddha replaced by
Hindu gods. Buddhists were barred from worship at the temple, one
of Buddhism's most sacred sites.
Dharmapala began an
agitation to return control of the temple to Buddhists. It was a
battle that was eventually won two years after India gained
independence, 16 years after his death. But even as he fought a
protracted legal battle for the Mahabodhi temple, Dharmapala was
busy spreading Buddhism.
Dharmapala's views were often racist. He once described Africans
as 'semi-savage half-animal people'
He set up the Maha
Bodhi Society, initially in Sri Lanka before relocating it to
Kolkata. Through the Society's many chapters he managed to spread
the word and teachings of Buddhism. Incidentally, when the
Mahabodhi temple committee did eventually get its first Buddhist
head, it was the then-head of the Maha Bodhi Society. In fact, over
50 years before Ambedkar encouraged Dalits to embrace Buddhism,
Dharmapala led many Tamil dalits to take up the
religion.
Dharmapala gained
acclaim for his teachings, even travelling with Swami Vivekananda
to speak at the World Parliament of Religions in
Chicago.
But perhaps it is
something other than the work he did in India which has made him so
acceptable to India's unabashedly saffron ruling
dispensation.
Like Vivekananda,
Dharmapala had a strong nationalist bent. He is often credited with
being one of the driving forces behind the rise of Sinhalese
Buddhist nationalism.
Dharmapala preached
that Sinhalese culture and Buddhism were facing extinction due to
colonialism. His vision was for a Sinhalese Buddhist revival in Sri
Lanka. He believed that the Sinhalese were a pure Aryan race and
that it was the influence of Christianity and other religions that
was ruining them and by extension Sri Lanka. This mirrors a lot of
the right-wing sentiments currently being spewed in India. Though
the Indian right-wing is obsessed with Hinduism and Hindu culture,
the discourse is essentially the same.
Dharmapala's views
could often border on the racist. He once described Africans as
"semi-savage half-animal people". Muslims were also on the
receiving end of some of his diatribes - he considered them "alien
people" who prospered at the expense of the Sinhalese. And long
before the Indian right-wing was playing spoilsport to
inter-religious coupling, Dharmapala was busy forbidding Sinhalese
women from marrying non-Sinhalese men.
With such striking
similarities to the current attitude of India's right-wing, perhaps
it's not so surprising that the Modi government has chosen to
project Dharmapala as the face of Buddhism in the
country.