Hope for India's 'broken' Buddhists
By Kalinga Seneviratne
NAGPUR - Over 50 years ago, the author of India's constitution, B R Ambedkar,
set in motion a Buddhist socio-political movement which many believe is now
ready to fructify through Mayawati, chief minister of northern Uttar Pradesh,
India's most populous state.
Both Ambedkar and Mayawati, who goes by one name, come from India's so-called
"untouchable" caste, better known as Dalits (the broken people).
It was in this central Indian city that Ambedkar converted to Buddhism, along
with a million of his followers on October 14,
1956. Mayawati has not publicly disclosed her religious beliefs, but as a
follower of Ambedkar, Buddhists expect her to make his dream come true - that
of obtaining for Dalit Buddhists the right to be treated as equal citizens in
the land of the Buddha.
Mayawati, who figures in the Forbes magazine's list of 100 most powerful women
in the world, has already declared her ambition of becoming India's prime
minister and is expected to make her bid in general elections due in the first
half of this year.
"We were converted into Buddhists in 1956, but we still face a lot of
discrimination, injustice and violence," said Devidas Ghodeshwar, talking to
Inter Press Service in front of the impressive Deekshabhoomi Stupa built here
to mark the site of Ambedkar's historic conversion, along with thousands of his
followers.
The monument is built after the famous Sanchi stupa built in the third century
by emperor Ashoka who renounced Hinduism to become a Buddhist. Thereafter,
Buddhism flourished in India until the seventh century when it went into a slow
but steady decline, mostly owing to a powerful Hindu revival.
Even as Buddhism spread to Tibet, the Far East and Southeast Asia, its
followers in India suffered persecution.
However, Buddhism has continued to haunt India through the remains of
impressive stupas and monasteries, sculptural art, and through its many
philosophical concepts and teachings, such as non-violence. Other than Dalits
(also called neo-Buddhists), sizeable communities of Buddhists continue to hold
out in the Himalayan marches of the modern day states of Uttarakhand, Himachal
Pradesh, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh where they were pushed by advancing
Hinduism.
In contemporary India, while attacks by Hindu militant groups on the minority
Muslim and Christian communities have drawn the attention of the Indian and
international media, atrocities on Buddhists go unreported, mostly because they
fall into the lowest rungs of the caste ladder.
In September 2006, a family of Buddhist Dalits - 45-year-old Surekha Bhotmange,
her 18-year-old daughter Priyanka, sons Roshan and Sudhir - was lynched by an
upper caste mob in Khairlanji about 30 kilometers from here.
On October 24, 2008, eight people were convicted for the massacre and six of
them given the death sentence. But Ghodeshwar says that was a rare instance of
justice catching up on such atrocities perpetrated by upper caste Hindu
fanatics.
Over the past few years, however, Buddhists have been quietly building up a
political base from which to fight caste-driven discrimination. Their hopes
have been raised by the rising political fortunes of Mayawati and her Bahujan
Samaj Party (BSP) which claims support from the poor and deprived in every
caste and religious community.
Many Buddhists believe that her political movement - which in many ways
resembles US president-elect Barack Obama's successful grassroots initiative -
could propel her to the prime ministership of India this year, at the head of a
grand coalition of the poor and deprived.
"There's a good number of Buddhist members of parliament and in Uttar Pradesh
and [western] Maharashtra states there's a vibrant Buddhist movement,'' says
Dhamma Viriyo Mahathera, spiritual director of the All Indian Bhikku Sangha.
"Mayawati is working for all the people. So now, Muslims and Brahmins, day by
day, accept that the Buddhists are the people of this country. They are good
hearted and they can rule this country well,'' added the monk, himself a former
member of parliament.
In this central Indian city of over 2 million people over 60% are believed to
be Buddhists - though most live in squalid and crowded neighborhoods.
One problem for the Buddhists is that the Hindu establishment does not accept
the fact of their conversions or even that Buddhism is a separate faith system.
Officially, less than 1% of 1 billion Indians are listed as Buddhist, but most
people agree that the majority of the 200 million Dalits of India follow the
Buddhist faith.
"We have converted but still the Hindus aren't accepting that we have been
converted and they don't understand that we belong to a separate group now.
They refer to the Buddha as the ninth incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu and
do not see Buddhism as a separate religion,'' said Ghodeshwar.
"We are seen as part and parcel of Hinduism and this is also linked to our
oppression and discrimination as Dalits,''Ghodeshwar added.
Yet, there is a palpable air of confidence among Buddhists here. Though they
talk with bitterness about their treatment at the hands of high caste Hindus,
they are also hopeful that change is on the way.
In the suburb of Kamla, a predominantly Buddhist community on the outskirts of
Nagpur, a community leader introduced to IPS many Dalits who are lawyers,
teachers, engineers and accountants.
Sadanand Fulzele, secretary of the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Smarak Samiti [founded
to perpetuate the leader's memory], agrees that Buddhist Dalits are now more
confident than they were before. "I was myself converted to Buddhism along with
Babasaheb Ambedkar," he told IPS. "Prior to conversion, those who were known as
untouchables had an inferiority complex. But now, they feel they are no less
than anybody. That's a great change.''
Yet, Buddhist communities, like the one in Kamla, rarely have a resident monk
or a community temple. This is in contrast to most Buddhist countries where
monks are housed and supported in monasteries or temples, because they are not
allowed to earn a living.
"Buddhist communities here are still very poor," explains Fulzele, "We can't
build huge monasteries like in Burma [Myanmar], Sri Lanka or Thailand, where
they follow centuries-old Buddhist traditions. We only converted 50 years ago".
Viriyo Mahathera is critical of Buddhist countries and organizations that
contribute money to build grand temples in Buddhist pilgrimage sites across
India such as Bodhgaya - the place of Buddha's enlightenment - but do not
contribute to the benefit of Buddhists in India.
The monk, who resides in Bodhgaya, eastern Bihar state, says that while the
provincial government has drawn up a master plan to attract investments from
rich Asian Buddhist countries to develop the area, it has not associated Indian
Buddhists with the plan.
"There should be a Bodhgaya development board where 50% of members can be drawn
from the (Indian) Buddhist community," he argues. "Monks and Buddhist people
can then take active part in the development of Bodhgaya and create a Buddhist
environment there".
Sulekhatai Kumbhare, a former minister in the state government of Maharashtra
and a Buddhist leader here, argues that the number of Buddhists in India is not
large enough to affect political changes. ''We need to get the support of other
communities. But Hindus think that because we left their religion we cannot be
friends,'' she says.
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