Understanding the social, cultural and geographical contexts of Buddhism

The Hindu

23-05-2025

The world is increasingly getting obsessed with self-promotion and the thinking that it alone can bring about peace and progress. The growing selfie culture is a manifestation of this daily obsession, backed by the technology of the day. Often, a 'perfect' identity is carefully curated on social media with a focus on the self.
Swayed by the glitter of social media, there appears to be no actual pursuit of knowing the inner self. Eventually, this relentless self-promotion is leading to distress. The fear of having less and the desire for more have contributed to a balance sheet of unhappiness.
The illusory self
It's perhaps the right time to re-read the teachings of the Buddha, who argued thousands of years ago that the self is an illusion -- and that our belief in it is the cause of most, if not all, of our sufferings. Poring over ancient Buddhist texts, Jay L. Garfield, Maria Heim, and Robert H. Sharf have teamed together to dismantle notions of the self in How To Lose Yourself: An Ancient Guide to Letting Go (Princeton University Press).
Their suggestion? 'Better to lose your self!' The writers contend that Buddha had argued for letting go of the self, which allows us to see more clearly the innumerable causes and conditions that come together to create our experience and that make us who we are. 'When we allow our fantasies of self to dissolve, we discover instead the radically interdependent nature of our existence.'
Opening up another flank of study on the ancient religion, Douglas Ober contests the commonly held belief that Buddhism 'all but disappeared' from India after the 13th and 14th centuries, and saw a revival only in the mid to late 19th century. In his book, Dust on the Throne (Navayana), he notes that Buddhism had always been there, and that two centuries of archaeological excavation and textual scholarship now point to a long, enduring, and 'unarchived' Indian Buddhist afterlife that extends to the modern day. Ober's exhaustive research told him that Buddhism had an indelible influence on shaping modern India.
As he writes in the Introduction, 'A Dependent Arising', the theory of Buddhism's 'disappearance' from the subcontinent is 'little more than a useful fiction, deployed to wash over a more complicated historical terrain involving periodic Buddhist resurgences and trans-regional pilgrimage networks.' He shows that Indian's modern Buddhist revival began nearly a century before 1956, when the Indian government celebrated '2,500 years of Buddhism' and when B.R. Ambedkar led half a million followers to convert to Buddhism.
Backstory of a revival
Ober argues that the 'revival of Buddhism' in colonial and postcolonial India led to a slew of movements, from Hindu reform movements, the making of Hindu nationalism, Dalit and anti-caste activism, as also Nehruvian secular democracy. He tells the stories of individuals and communities that kept Buddhism alive, not least the incredible account of J.K. Birla, eldest son of entrepreneur B.D. Birla, who financed major Buddhist constructions in pilgrimage centres like Rajgir, Sarnath, Bodh Gaya, and also in new centres of 'urban Buddhist activity', including Calcutta, Bombay, and New Delhi.
While Ghanashyam Birla, J.K. Birla's younger brother, sided with Gandhi and Congress, J.K. and his father firmly supported the extreme Hindu right and the Hindu Maha Sabha, although as Ober notes, 'they never stopped supporting Gandhi either.'
Efforts to resurrect Buddhist archaeological heritage are an ongoing process to help connect its monumental past with its philosophy.
In his book, Casting the Buddha (Pan Macmillan India), Shashank Shekhar Sinha traces the Buddhist heritage sites and the cities they are located in to understand their larger geographical, sociocultural, and historical contexts. It is an illustrated history of Buddhist monuments in India, spanning 2,500 years. For the purposes of this book, Sinha writes in the Introduction, 'monumental history' plays on the word 'monument' and discusses Buddhist edifices, sites, and connected histories.
Lives of monuments
A closer look reveals how the 'lives of the monuments' resonated with the people and communities around them, including monks, laity, kings, traders, guilds, landlords, agriculturalists, and villagers.
Over time, these structures have acquired different forms and meanings, and have also become important 'sites of social and cultural interactions.' The buildings are 'complex ecosystems' which capture the changing times and give an idea about belief systems, rituals, stories, and folklore. For instance, writes Sinha, the sculptured panels on the gateways of Sanchi not only depict events from the life of the Buddha but also the Jataka tales and the mythical bodhisattvas.
Ober contends that Buddhism was an indispensable part of the daily lives of Indians from many walks of life. 'They spent their days reading and reinterpreting Buddhist scriptures, attending and delivering dhamma talks, building and rebuilding Buddhist shrines.' The lives of Ambedkar, Birla, Kosambi, Mahavir, Sankritayan, and many other figures 'help us realise that there is no one single identity at the heart of modern Indian Buddhism... [it] continues to have an important but often unacknowledged role in Indian society.'
As Indians relived the past to find a better present and future, 'a classless, casteless, egalitarian society,' they found the Buddha, writes Ober. That as a society we have not yet been able to eradicate discrimination and poverty means the debates on issues like 'caste, inequality, morality, social order, and belonging' are not over. The quest to grasp the historical Buddha and understand his 'inherent mission' must continue, and this says a lot about our modern times and predicament.
Sudhirendar Sharma is an independent writer, researcher and academic