The Problem: Bodh Gaya

ABHISHEK S. AMAR

Associate Professor, Hamilton College, USA

SANJAY KUMAR

Founder, Deshkal Society, and Researcher

A visit to Bodhgaya in the winter months (October through February) is an amazing experience. The small town is filled with people, which includes locals and tourists from different parts of India and world. All the monasteries in this small town are aesthetically decorated with flags and flowers and bustling with tourists and pilgrims. Seasonal markets including Tibetan ones are crowded with people looking for Buddhists memorabilia and souvenirs. A variety of restaurants, offering food from different parts of the world, are bustling and attraction points for locals, who visit from Gaya or other cities to taste international food. Among all of this, one also encounters a long queue to enter the Mahabodhi temple complex, within which different Buddhists groups are busy performing their own rituals. Bodhgaya, in a way, comes alive as the center of the Buddhist world at this time.

This understanding of Bodhgaya as the center of the Buddhist world is not a new development. In fact, multiple biographies of Buddha, composed and written almost two thousand years ago, imagined Bodhgaya to be the center of the world. These imaginations drew on the association of the place with the most important event of the Buddha’s life- his enlightenment, which eventually led to the beginning of Buddhism as a religion and its subsequent spread to various parts of Asia. Because of this important history, the place attracted devotees, and pilgrims from the third century BCE onwards, who patronized the construction of shrines, stupas, temples, images, and monasteries. Many of these structures, specifically the Mahabodhi temple became an inspirational model for several Buddhist countries that resulted in its replication in many of these countries including Burma, Thailand, China, and Nepal. These examples demonstrate the centrality of Bodhgaya in the Buddhist imaginations. Bodhgaya also attracted several pilgrims from other Buddhist regions including Sri Lanka, China, Tibet, who have left valuable accounts of how this place was used by devotees that indicates its complex multi-layered history. This history has been studied and examined in detail by professional historians but they may not be accessible to others because of their academic focus. This volume aims to tackle this by incorporating articles written by these scholars that are meant for a much broader audience.

The Buddhist past of Bodhgaya began to be examined in the nineteenth century after it was reported by Hamilton Buchanan during his survey of Bihar in 1811-12. Several works followed, however the most important ones included that of Alexander Cunningham (1892) and Rajendralal Mitra (1878). Both Cunningham and Mitra produced a monograph each on the Buddhist history of the place. This emphasis on the Buddhist history created a trend and set up a model that recognized ancient history and ignored recent and early modern history. This mode of thinking was clearly evident in overlooking the history of the local Hindu Shaiva Dasnami Giri monastery that was established in c. 1590 CE. This monastery also controlled the Mahabodhi temple and its surrounding areas in the nineteenth century. This not only resulted in a long drawn legally contested battle over the control of the temple complex but also the neglect of a living institution. This practice continues even today. The tourists or visitors barely notice the samadhis of Dasanami mahanths, which is located on the eastern side within this temple complex. Majority of them also ignore the white painted fortified monastic complex, which is barely 50 meters northeast from the Mahabodhi temple. Neither are listed on any tourist map of Bodhgaya even though the monastery contains several Buddhist sculptures. Despite being a living institution with over three hundred years of history, it is almost invisible to the tourists.

If one considers both of these phases of Bodhgaya’s history, what emerges is a tangled and multi-faceted past of the place that is reflected in the material remnants including Buddhist and Hindu images (art), temples, stupas, and monasteries (architecture), and religious histories (Buddhist and Hindu). This past is reminiscent of India’s spirit of civilization, which hints at coexistence and collaboration of multiple religions within its expanse. This rich past led to the designation of Bodhgaya as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002.

The portfolio submitted for the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation emphasized, unsurprisingly, on the ancient Buddhist past. This emphasis on the Buddhist past was not a new phenomenon. In fact, India’s leaders such as the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru engaged with this past to articulate a new vision for India, which aimed at strengthening India’s connections with Asian Buddhist countries. Nehru articulated this vision on the occasion of 2500 years of Buddhism in 1956. This vision led to the arrival of numerous Buddhist groups from multiple countries, who established their monasteries and temples to facilitate pilgrimage/claim their presence at Bodhgaya. Today, there are more than two hundred monasteries from these countries including Tibet, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan, Japan etc. Despite the presence of these international monastic institutions and consistent tourist attraction, it is problematic that the site of Bodhgaya is predominantly identified merely as a pilgrimage site, oriented primarily toward the Mahabodhi temple complex.

In post liberalization India, the pace of growth at Bodhgaya has been inordinate, making it extremely difficult for the scholarship to keep up with the new developments. This is apparent in the construction of new Buddhist monasteries and religious shrines, meditation centers, and tourist infrastructure including roads, hotels, restaurants, and cafes. This unprecedented growth has also led to tensions, at times, among the local stakeholders such as the hotel owners and international Buddhist monasteries over the issues of revenue and resources. These tensions have resulted in the demands to rethink and reconstitute the Bodhgaya temple management committee that was established in 1949 to maintain the temple. Clearly, the temple management committee in its current form does not have representations of multiple stakeholders such as the Ambedkerite Buddhists, and international Buddhist monasteries. These issues hint at the growing complexity of socio-political, religious, and developmental matrices of Bodhgaya, which can only be addressed if the Indian and Bihar state governments develop an integrated vision. This vision is crucial for developing a blueprint for the future planning and growth for Bodhgaya.

Bodhgaya is also a part of a broader Buddhist circuit within India and Nepal. The pilgrims explore Bodhgaya as a part of the Buddhist circuit such as Sarnath, Kushinagar or Shravasti and many of them visit Lumbini in Nepal as well. These tourists also frequent other sites within Bihar such as Rajgir, Nalanda and Vaishali etc., because of the geographical proximity. These sites together can be construed as a local Buddhist circuit, that are beginning to attract local and international Buddhist community, leading to flurry of developmental activities. This is apparent in the new construction of monasteries and shrines within Rajgir, Nalanda, and Vaishali. For these sites, the rapid growth of Bodhgaya has become a developmental model, which needs to be avoided because if its unprecedented and somewhat unplanned growth. In contrast, these sites require a coherent vision, which can only emerge through a careful inter-disciplinary examination and understanding of Bodhgaya and its growth in last two decades, a task that needs the attention of policy-makers. This also raises an important question: what policies need to be developed to tap the potential of these Buddhist sites?

The historical trajectory of Bodhgaya demonstrates its position as a part (or center) of the local, regional and global Buddhist network today. With the development of better infrastructure, the site now has witnessed significant increase in the number of international tourists and pilgrims. A vast majority of them are from the Buddhist countries that have at least one monastery here. These international Buddhist monasteries, therefore, are potential sites to examine the inter- and intra-Asian dialogues. These monasteries also attract Buddhists and/or tourists from different parts of the Euro-American world, who visit Bodhgaya because of its historical importance. However, they are also attracted to the live Buddhist traditions of these international Buddhist monasteries. Interestingly, this leads to a dialogue between the past and the presence of Bodhgaya and shows the global appeal of Buddhism. This global appeal connects India with the rest of the world and enhances the possibility to create a ground for soft diplomacy between South, South-East, and East Asia. It has the potential to be a crucial part of the ‘Look East Policy’ of the Government of India, that somehow remains under-examined vis-à-vis Bodhgaya.

In summary, the tangled and multifaceted past and present of Bodhgaya raises many questions. How can we represent the multifaceted history of Bodhgaya? How can this layered history be made accessible to the wider public? What strategies are required in the policy domain to engage with this layered past? Despite Bodhgaya’s appeal to a much broader/international audience, why does Bodhgaya continue to be underrepresented in the public and policy domains in India as well as the rest of the world? These questions have not been adequately addressed in publications. Therefore, this volume will examine these questions in an accessible manner to reach out to general enlightened readers including undergraduate/postgraduate students, young researchers, international tourists, visitors, and pilgrims.