As he waited in line outside a temporary tent kitchen for breakfast, 30-year-old Abhishek Bauddh took in the large crowd surrounding him in Bodh Gaya, Buddhism’s most sacred site.
Bauddh has been visiting the town in Bihar, eastern India—where the Buddha attained enlightenment—since he was 15. “But I have never witnessed such an atmosphere before. Buddhists from across the country are gathering here,” he remarked.
This time, their visit is not just for pilgrimage. Instead, they are part of a growing protest that has spread across India in recent weeks, demanding that control of the Mahabodhi Temple, one of Buddhism’s holiest shrines, be handed over entirely to the Buddhist community.
Several Buddhist organizations have staged demonstrations, from Ladakh in the north to Mumbai in the west and Mysuru in the south. Now, more people are flocking to Bodh Gaya to join the main protest, according to Akash Lama, general secretary of the All India Buddhist Forum (AIBF), the group leading the movement. India’s last census in 2011 recorded approximately 8.4 million Buddhist citizens.
For 76 years, the temple has been governed by an eight-member committee—comprising four Hindus and four Buddhists—under the Bodh Gaya Temple Act, 1949, a Bihar state law.
However, the demonstrators, including saffron-clad monks carrying banners and amplifiers, are calling for the repeal of this law and full control of the temple to be granted to Buddhists. They argue that in recent years, Hindu monks, empowered by their influence under the law, have been conducting rituals that contradict Buddhist principles. Protesters say previous, more subdued efforts to oppose these practices have failed.
Meanwhile, the Bodh Gaya Math, a Hindu monastery responsible for performing rituals within the temple complex, maintains that it has been central to the shrine’s upkeep for centuries and that the law supports its role.
The protesters counter that the Buddha rejected Vedic rituals. “Every religious community in India manages its own sacred sites,” said Bauddh, who traveled 540 kilometers (335 miles) from his home in Chhattisgarh to Bodh Gaya. “So why are Hindus involved in the administration of a Buddhist religious site?”
As he sat down with a plate of steaming rice and dal, he reflected, “Buddhists have not received justice so far—what else can we do but protest peacefully?”
Just 2km (1.2 miles) from the sacred fig tree in the Mahabodhi Temple complex—where the Buddha is believed to have meditated—minibuses from Patna, the capital of Bihar, roll in along a dusty road, carrying protesters from across the country.
For many longtime visitors to the shrine, concerns over Hindu rituals being conducted within the temple complex are not new.
“From the very beginning, whenever we came here, we felt deeply saddened to see rituals being performed in this courtyard that Lord Buddha had explicitly forbidden,” said 58-year-old Amogdarshini, who traveled from Vadodara in Gujarat’s western region to join the protests in Bodh Gaya.
In recent years, Buddhists have repeatedly raised their grievances with local, state, and national authorities. In 2012, two monks filed a petition with the Supreme Court, urging the repeal of the 1949 law that allows Hindus to participate in the administration of the shrine. Thirteen years later, the case has yet to be listed for a hearing. More recently, monks have resubmitted appeals to state and central governments and organized public rallies.
However, tensions escalated last month. On February 27, state police forcibly removed more than two dozen Buddhist monks who had been on a 14-day hunger strike within the temple premises, relocating them outside at midnight.
“Are we terrorists? Why can’t we protest in the courtyard that rightfully belongs to us?” questioned Pragya Mitra Bodh, secretary of the National Confederation of Buddhists of India. He traveled from Jaipur in Rajasthan with 15 other demonstrators. “This temple management act and committee setup undermine our Buddhist identity. The Mahabodhi Temple can never truly belong to us unless the act is repealed.”
Since then, the protests have intensified. Some demonstrators, like Amogdarshini—who had already spent a couple of weeks in Bodh Gaya in January—have returned to join the movement.
Stanzin Suddho, a travel agent from Ladakh currently in Bodh Gaya, noted that the protests are being financed through donations from devotees. “We don’t stay for long,” he explained, having traveled with 40 others. “Once we leave, more people will come to take our place.”
At the core of the struggle over the Mahabodhi Temple—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—is its long-disputed history.
The temple was originally built by Emperor Ashoka, who visited Bodh Gaya in 260 BCE after adopting Buddhism, roughly two centuries after the Buddha’s enlightenment.
For years, it remained under Buddhist management until major political shifts in the region during the 13th century, explained Imtiaz Ahmed, a professor of medieval history at Patna University. The invasion of India by Turko-Afghan general Bakhtiyar Khilji “led to the eventual decline of Buddhism in the region,” Ahmed noted.
According to UNESCO, the shrine was largely abandoned between the 13th and 18th centuries until the British took an interest in its restoration.
However, the temple’s official website states that in 1590, a Hindu monk named Ghamandi Giri arrived at the site, took up residence, and began performing rituals. He later established the Bodh Gaya Math, a Hindu monastery, which has maintained control over the temple ever since.
In the late 19th century, Sri Lankan and Japanese Buddhist monks, disturbed by the situation, founded the Maha Bodhi Society to launch a movement aimed at reclaiming the temple.
By 1903, their efforts prompted the then-Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon, to attempt a settlement between Hindu and Buddhist factions, but his efforts were unsuccessful. Over time, both sides sought political backing, and after India gained independence in 1947, the Bihar government passed the Bodh Gaya Temple Act in 1949. The law transferred temple management from the head of the Bodh Gaya Math to an eight-member committee—composed of four Hindus and four Buddhists—overseen by a ninth member, the district magistrate, who serves as the committee’s head.
Despite this arrangement, Buddhists argue that the Bodh Gaya Math, as the most powerful institution on-site, continues to exert significant control over the temple’s daily operations.
Swami Vivekananda Giri, the Hindu priest overseeing the Bodh Gaya Math, remains unfazed by the ongoing protests, dismissing them as “politically motivated” ahead of Bihar’s state legislature elections later this year.
“Our Math’s teachings regard Lord Buddha as the ninth incarnation of [Hindu] Lord Vishnu, and we consider Buddhists our brothers,” Giri told Al Jazeera. “For years, we have welcomed Buddhist devotees, including those from other countries, and have never prevented them from praying at the temple.”
Giri argues that the Hindu community has been “generous” in allowing Buddhists to hold four seats on the temple’s management committee.
“If the Act is repealed, the temple will rightfully belong to the Hindu side because we owned it before the Act was passed and before India’s independence,” he said, taking a jab at the protesters. “When Buddhists abandoned the temple following the invasion of Muslim rulers, we preserved and maintained it. Yet, we never treated Buddhist visitors as outsiders.”
Meanwhile, at the protest site, Akash Lama, who is leading the demonstrations, expressed skepticism that the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—which heads India’s federal government—and its alliance partner in Bihar’s state government would address their concerns.
“The Act is gradually eroding the rights of Buddhists. Since the temple rightfully belongs to the Buddhist community, it should be handed over to them,” Lama stated. “We have been let down by both the government and the Supreme Court, which has yet to hear our case.”
Still, Bauddh, the protester from Chhattisgarh, remains hopeful—not in the government, but in the strength of the people rallying around him. “This unity is what makes our protest powerful,” he said.
Source: AL Jazeera
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