Digital heritage centre:

context and relevance in Bodhgaya

Abhishek S. Amar

Hamilton College, New York

THE Bodhgaya Global Dialogue has made consistent efforts to emerge as a platform to develop and promote an understanding of the multidimensional cultural past and present of not only Bodhgaya but the larger Bihar region and other parts of India. To accomplish this goal, the Deshkal society brought together scholars, policy makers, institution builders/heads, and heritage enthusiasts from various parts of the world to share their knowledge and experiences, which can shape and inform the initiatives that the Society proposes to undertake at the site of Bodhgaya. One major initiative that the Deshkal Society has proposed is to develop a knowledge-based ‘Digital Heritage Center at Bodhgaya’. This chapter aims to spell out the context, necessity and relevance of such a Centre, and how this will immensely benefit the vision and hopefully the establishment of this Centre in near future.

Before venturing into the issue of why we need such a Centre, let me briefly dwell about the context of Bodhgaya here. Bodhgaya’s preeminent position as the paradigmatic center of the Buddhist world has been reaffirmed through its designation as a UNESCO world heritage site in 2002 and its continued importance as a major religious and tourist attraction in colonial and postcolonial India. However, there is a clear disconnect between what has been declared as the world heritage, which is the Mahabodhi Temple complex and what constitutes Bodhgaya today. No doubt, Bodhgaya’s major tourist attraction is the Mahabodhi temple complex but there is much more that the visiting pilgrims and tourists come here for. Even if one looks only at the historic materials at Bodhgaya, there is much more to be seen. In fact, the surrounding areas of the Mahabodhi complex have been largely ignored and a holistic and contextual study of this important site is yet to be done, despite the fact that this site has been studied since the early nineteenth century. A good example of this is the site of Taradeeh, which was excavated between 1980 and 1999, but is yet to be preserved and studied in tandem with the Mahabodhi complex or included within the tourist map of Bodhgaya.

Another excellent example of this phenomena is the Shaiva Dasnami monastery of Bodhgaya, which dates from the seventeenth century. Despite receiving much scholarly attention because of the dispute over the control of the temple complex between the Shaiva monastics and other stakeholders in colonial India, the monastery has neither been studied nor documented in postcolonial India. No tourist goes to see the impressive architecture of this monastery or its beautiful cemeteries and Shaiva temples that have the potential to convey the story of this powerful Hindu monastic center when it was at its prime in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The monastery has not been included in any tourist map of Bodhgaya and there is no guidebook to convey its institutional history either. This is a good example of how we often prioritize the ancient past (of the Mahabodhi temple/Buddhist past) over the medieval or modern, something that we inherited from our colonial rulers. Today, this monastery still functions but is in a critical condition. Its walls are falling off, which needs to be repaired. Similarly, it does have many documents and material remains from the past that can be utilized to write its institutional history but more importantly they need to be documented and preserved for the future generations.

These examples also raise the question about the idea of Bodhgaya. What constitutes Bodhgaya? Is it just the Mahabodhi temple complex or all other past historical remains? The above discussed two examples from Bodhgaya clearly problematize the idea of Bodhgaya. Here, I would like to further complicate this idea by asking us to think about the impressions and experiences the visitors have had at Bodhgaya in the last few years.

Bodhgaya has grown tremendously in postcolonial India. It has emerged as an international tourist destination and attracts millions of visitors and pilgrims every year. To accommodate these pilgrims and their needs, the place has also developed adequate infrastructure including hotels, restaurants, cafes, monasteries/temples, transportation and an airport. It has also become a major hub of employment. This development and growth of Bodhgaya has received some attention in scholarship in the last few decades and scholarly academic presses have come out with guide books like the Marg volume on Bodhgaya (edited by Prof. Janice Leoshko) and Oxford University press, (Prof. Fredrick Asher). Similarly, some scholars including myself have published scholarly pieces and an edited volume titled ‘Cross-Disciplinary perspectives on a Contested Buddhist site’ in 2012. More recently, David Geary has published his monograph titled ‘The Re-birth of Bodhgaya’ in 2017, which is an ethnographic study of the rapid growth of Bodhgaya in the last few decades. Despite these efforts, the scholarship hasn’t been able to keep up with either the new materials found from the region (See Leoshko paper in this volume) or new developments that continue to transform Bodhgaya on a daily basis in post liberalization India. Moreover, scholarly works often have limitations because of their specific focus and limitations imposed by the press. This is visible in the development of new infrastructure at Bodhgaya, specifically new Buddhist monasteries from different countries, new religious shrines, meditation centers, hotels, cafes, that have come up in the last two or three year.

In fact, even a cursory survey of the town today hints at the complexity of socio-political, religious and developmental matrices of Bodhgaya that has neither been mapped nor understood. There are several local stakeholders at the site but none of them seem to either have a coherent vision or engage with the complexities of growth. I will illustrate this by pointing to two examples here. The Bodhgaya Temple Management Committee (BTMC, hereafter) is focused inwards on managing and running the day to day affairs of the temple and is barely concerned with the Buddhist heritage outside of the temple complex. Taradeeh, the site of multiple Buddhist monasteries coterminous with the Mahabodhi temple and example discussed earlier in this paper, is located barely 20 meters west of the temple complex but has never been considered important enough to be included within Buddhist heritage by the BTMC. Magadh University was another local stakeholder, which was established to study and promote local history and culture in postcolonial India. However, it has failed to utilize its potential to either document or oversee the developments within Bodhgaya. Even though the University established different departments to study the historical/archaeological past of Buddhism and developmental patterns, it has failed to generate quality scholarship and any policy related information. Sadly, a number of programs related to Buddhist studies are currently being investigated by Bihar vigilance for plagiarism and fake PhD’s.

The above discussion clearly sums up the context of Bodhgaya and the knowledge production around this site, which can also frame the argument about the necessity and relevance of a ‘Digital Heritage Center’ at Bodhgaya. The Center will have a three-tiered plan of action: Short term, mid-term and long term, which are listed below.

Short-term goals

1. Establish the ‘Living Archive’ and begin documenting the daily developments of Bodhgaya, which can be a knowledge-based resource Center.

2. Immediate survey of all monasteries, their infrastructure and role in religious/touristic activities.

3. Document Rituals during the season carefully and negotiation details.

4. Special events such as Bodhgaya Mahotsava and its impact on tourism and generating awareness.

5. Engage with existing stakeholders critically and advocacy with new institutions.

Mid-term goals

1. Develop digital records and Publish them digitally for research, policy-making and advocacy.

2. Create Digital platforms for facilitating Multi-religious and multi-cultural dialogues.

3. Develop Digital museum of smaller but important Buddhist sites in the Gaya district (Kurkihar, Hasra Kol etc.) to generate awareness and better access.

4. Develop a coherent vision for Bodhgaya’s development, which can act as a developmental model for other sites.

Long term goals

1. Wider engagement with Government Bodies and other policy related institutions.

2. Generate funds through national and international collaborations Publications.

Through the above listed plan of action, the proposed ‘Digital Heritage Centre’ will engage with multiple older and new institutions that have been in existence or have been recently established in Bodhgaya/Gaya and other parts of Bihar. Each of these institutions have their agenda and focus. Many of these recently established institutions are located not too far from Bodhgaya but may not feel the need to engage with Bodhgaya. The proposed Heritage Center will attempt to engage critically with existing stakeholders such as Bodhgaya Temple management Committee and Bihar Heritage Development Society (BHDS), but also work as a resource center (or undertake some advocacy) to develop new stakeholders among the newly established institutions such as the Indian Institute of Management, and Central University of South Bihar in the Gaya district, and the Nalanda University in Nalanda district. It could also work as a resource center for already existing study abroad programs located in/visiting Bodhgaya (such as Antioch Bodhgaya Program), and research students at Postgraduate level in the above listed institutions in creative and critical ways. As a knowledge center, it will attempt to document the ongoing dialogue between past and present, which happens at Bodhgaya on a daily basis.

Bodhgaya, as a UNESCO world heritage site, is part of the Buddhist circuit within India and Nepal. Even though we see Bodhgaya as part of a local Buddhist circuit such as Rajgir or Nalanda, the Buddhist practitioners/followers see it as a part of the regional Buddhist sites such as Sarnath, Kusinagar or Sravasti and many of them go on to visit Lumbini in Nepal and other Buddhist sites in Sri Landa, Myanmar and Thailand that attempted to replicate Bodhgaya by constructing their own Mahabodhi complexes. Therefore, Bodhgaya needs to be evaluated and understood as an important part (or the center) of the local, regional and global Buddhist network. A good example here is the growing number of international Buddhist monasteries at Bodhgaya that are potential sites to locate and document inter- and intra-Asian dialogues. Similarly, its links with local and regional sites are yet to be examined. In fact, Bodhgaya’s unprecedented and somewhat unplanned growth has become a developmental model for other sites (such as Rajgir and Vaishali) that are at different stages of development in the state of Bihar. This is apparent in the new construction of monasteries and shrines at sites at both these sites. However, this unplanned growth needs a coherent vision, which can only emerge through a careful examination of Bodhgaya and its growth in the last few decades, a task that the proposed knowledge Center will earnestly undertake. In future, the Center will foster cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas and different approaches that will benefit the study of Heritage sites in India and across the world.