Nov 2002
Massive False Propaganda alleging Hindu Persecution of Buddhism
Dr. Koenraad Elst writes:
“One of the diversionary tactic employed by the ‘eminent historians’ in order to shield Islamic iconoclasm from the public eye is to allege that Hinduism itself is the guilty religion, viz. of persecuting minority religions such as Buddhism. So much this accusation now taken for granted, that any attempt to stick to the historical records fills the secularists with exasperation at such Hindu fanatical blindness. Thus, Tavleen Singh challenges us: ‘Try, for instance, to get a BJP leader to admit that Hindus did to Buddhist shrines pretty much what Muslims were later to do with Hindu temples and you will find that it is nearly impossible.’
Sadly, some Buddhists have taken the bait and interiorized this line of anti-Hindu polemic, which also ties in neatly with the pro-Buddhist bias in Nehruvian and Western Indology. How painfully ungrateful! While Hinduism has received from Islam nothing but murder and destruction, Buddhism owes a lot to Hinduism. Apart from its very existence, it has received from Hinduism toleration, alms by Hindu laymen, sons and daughters of Hindus to fill its monasteries and nunneries, land grants and funding by Hindu rulers, protection by Hindu rulers against lawlessness and against Islamic invaders between the mid-7th and the late 12th century. In many cases, Buddhist temples formed part of large pluralist temple-complexes, and Hindu codes of art and architecture dealt with Buddha on a par with Shiva and other objects of depiction and worship. E.g. VaraahMihir: BrihatSamhita, ch. 57, 59.
Whatever the facts, we are now faced with a massive propaganda alleging Hindu persecution of Buddhism. Let us study one example: the story of alleged Hindu persecution of Buddhism by PushyaMitr, a general in the service of Maurya dynasty, who founded the Shung dynasty after a coup d’etat. This story provides the standard secularist ‘refutation’ of the ‘myth’ that Hinduism has always been tolerant…
The story is in fact given in two near contemporaneous (2nd century A.D.) Buddhist histories, the Ashokaavadaan and Divyaavadaan, the two narratives are almost verbatim the same and obviously have a common origin.
[Note: Avadaan, ‘narrative’, is Buddhist equivalent of Puraan. Divyaavadaan = divine narrative] [Note: Ashok the Buddhist king, PushyaMitr the Hindu king]
This non-contemporary story (which surfaces more than three centuries after the alleged facts) about PushyaMitr’s offering money for the heads of Buddhist monks is rendered improbable by external evidence: the well-attested historical fact that he allowed and patronized the construction of monasteries and Buddhist universities in his domains, as well as the still-extant ‘stup’ of Saanchi. The famous historian of Buddhism Etienne Lamotte has observed:
‘To judge from the documents, PushyaMitr must be acquitted through lack of proof.’ E. Lamotte: History of Indian Buddhism, Institut Orientaliste, Louvain-la- Neuve 1988 (1958), page 109.
In consulting the source texts I noticed a significant literary fact, which I have not seen mentioned in the scholarly literature (e.g. Lamotte, just quoted), and which I want to put on record.
First of all, a look at the critical edition of the Ashokaavadaan (‘Illustrious Acts of Ashok’) tells a story of its own concerning the idealization of Buddhism in modern India… ‘At that time, an incident occurred which greatly enraged the king. A follower of the Nirgranth (Mahaavir) painted a picture, showing Buddh prostrating himself at the feet of the Nirgranth. Ashok ordered all the Ajivikas of Pundravardhana (North Bengal) to be killed. In one day, eighteen thousand Ajivikas lost their lives. A similar kind of incidence took place in the town of Paataliputr. A man who painted such a picture was burnt alive with his family. It was announced that whoever would bring to the king the head of a Nirgranth would be rewarded with a dinaar (gold coin). As a result of this, thousands of Nirgranths lost their lives. Only when Vitashok, Ashok’s favorite Arhat (an enlightened monk, a Theravada-Buddhist saint), was mistaken for a Nirgranth and killed by a man desirous of the reward, did Ashok revoke the order.’
It is at the end of Ashokaavadaan that we find the oft-quoted story that PushyaMitr offered one dinaar for every ShramanShirah, ‘head of Buddhist monk’. Not that he got many monks killed, for, according to the account given, one powerful Arhat created monks’ heads by magic and gave these to the people to bring to PushyaMitr’s court, so that they could collect the award without cutting off any real monk’s head. So, even according to the only story cited as source for PushyaMitr’s persecution, the Hindu villain is a ridiculous failure at killing Buddhists.
At any rate, the striking fact, so far not mentioned in the PushyaMitr controversy, is that the main line of the narrative making the allegation against PushyaMitr is a carbon copy of the just-quoted account of Ashok’s own offer to pay for every head of a monk from rivaling sect. Hagiographies are notorious for competitive copying (e.g. appropriating the miracle of another saint, multiplied by two or more, for one’s own hero); in this case, it may have taken the form of attributing a negative feat of the hero onto his enemy.
But there are two differences. Firstly, in the account concerning PushyaMitr, a miracle episode forms a crucial element, and this does not add to the credibility of the whole. And secondly, Ashok belongs to the writer’s own Buddhist camp, whereas PushyaMitr is described as the enemy of Buddhism.
When something negative is said about an enemy (i.e. PushyaMitr), it is wise to reserve one’s acceptance of the allegation until independent confirmation is forthcoming; by contrast, when a writer alleges that his own hero has committed a crime, there is much more reason to expect the allegation to be correct. In the absence of external evidence, the best thing we can do for now is to draw the logical conclusion from the internal evidence: the allegation against PushyaMitr is much less credible than the allegation against Ashok.
[Sujitkumar] Mukhopadhyaya can only save Ashok’s secular reputation by accusing the Ashokaavadaan author a lie, viz. of the false allegation that Ashok had persecuted Nirgranths. Unfortunately, a lie would not enhance the author’s credibility as a witness against PushyaMitr, nor as a witness for the laudable acts of Ashok, which make up a large part of the text.
The cruelty of Ashok’s conquest of Kaling was exaggerated by scribes in order to highlight the violence-renouncing effect of Ashok’s subsequent conversion to Buddhism. But in this passage, Buddhism plays no role in Ashok’s change of heart: it is only the sight of his own friend, killed by mistake, which makes him revoke the order. And it is his commitment to Buddhism, which prompts Ashok to persecute the irreverent Nirgranths in the first place.”
Question arises: Why would Marxist historians want to promote yet another lie? What is their game plan? We will discuss that in detail towards the end of this book after giving you some more evidence of their academic conspiracies.
Japanese Monk Bhadant Arya Nagarjuna Surai Sasai Joins the Game
Dr. Koenraad Elst writes:
“When anti-Hindu lobbies unite, they often manage to get the contemporary form of Indian Buddhism on their side, viz. Ambedkarite neo-Buddhism. Because of its political background, the conversion of Scheduled Caste leader Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and many of his Mahar caste-men to Buddhism (1956), in effect contributed to the genesis of what one might call Buddhist communalism.
The anti-Hindu bias of Ambedkarite Buddhism was strengthened by the parallel Buddhist animus against Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka and Burma/Myanmar, as well as the tendency amongst Nehruvian intellectuals to construe Buddhism historically as an anti-Hindu revolt. As a materialization of this anti-Hindu animus, the neo- Buddhist movement has tried to create controversies over certain temples in imitation of the Ayodhya temple/mosque controversy.
In particular, the Ambedkarite neo-Buddhists have started a movement for the ‘liberation of the MahaBodhi shrine’ in Bodh- Gaya. Its aim is to remove the statutory four Hindu members of the eight-member temple management committee, and to prohibit worship of ShivLingam [symbol of Shiv] in the temple. Quite in contrast with the secularist calls for ‘composite culture’ and for multi-religious worship at the Raam Janm Bhoomi site, this is a demand to free the MahaBodhi site from multi-religious worship and particularly from the ‘taint’ of Hinduism. The agitation has been marked by petty vandalism, as when the neo-Buddhists desecrated their own holiest site, or at least the ShivLingam standing there, in October 1992.
One of the strange this agitation is that it revives a conflict, which had been solved several decades earlier. Since 1590, Shaiv [worshipper of Shiv] monks had taken care of the temple, which had been abandoned by Buddhists after the massacre of the Buddhist monks by Muslim invaders in ca. A.D. 1192.
In 1890-92, Edwin Arnold, author of the Buddh Romance ‘The Light of Asia’, appealed to the British-Indian Government to hand over the temple to the Buddhists, and even went to Japan to plead for diplomatic support to this demand. A court case ensued which the Buddhists ultimately lost. Negotiations dragged on, involving Swami Vivekananda (1901) and Hindu Mahasabha leader Bhai Parmanand (1935), among others. A compromise proposal by Rajendra Prasad (1924), later on President of India, was thwarted several times but finally became law in 1949: the Bodh-Gaya temple Act, which gives both Hindus and Buddhists the right to worship and an equal representation in the management committee. So, the goal of the Bodh-Gaya temple movement is not to get the Buddhists in (they are in since 1949), only to get the Hindus out. Given the existing compromise and the Hindu record in tending the building after the Buddhists had abandoned it, Hindus consider this Buddhist campaign graceless and ungrateful.
The movement for the ‘liberation’ of the MahaBodhi temple was formally launched by a Japanese monk, Bhadant Arya Nagarjuna Surai Sasai. His involvement provides a typical example of how people spoiling for a fight tend to attack the meek rather than dangerous adversaries. Buddhism had been eclipsed by Christianity in South Korea and among the Indonesian Chinese. In Bangladesh, the Buddhist Chakmas of Chittagong Hill Tracts have been driven out by the Muslim settlers and the Government of Bangladesh. Buddhist is oppressed by Communism in China, North Korea, Tibet and Vietnam. If Sasai had started a similar agitation in those countries, it would not have lasted a single day, and he would have been lucky to get expelled rather than locked up or killed.
By contrast, Buddhism is not oppressed or endangered in India. It is not obstructed in worshipping at its traditional sacred sites, including the MahaBodhi temple, which Hindus have made available for Buddha worship. India provides shelter to Dalai Lama, and has sanctioned the creation of a network of Buddhist monasteries and institutes, including a Tibetan-Buddhist university (in Sarnath near Varanasi) and the nerve centers of several Buddhist international organizations…It is, moreover, one of the few countries where even most non-Buddhists have a sincere respect for the Buddha and his Dharma. And yet, of all places, India is the one where Arya Sasai has to ‘liberate’ Buddhism from Hindu ‘oppression’.
Arya Sasai reported thus on the high point of his campaign: ‘On October 14 [1992], a big rally was held at the Boat Club, New Delhi, and over 3 lakh [3 hundred thousand] Buddhists of India and foreign countries attended it…
The equation of Ayodhya with Bodh-Gaya, commonly made in the press, is not tenable at all. Hindus never destroyed the MahaBodhi temple, they never took it from the Buddhists, they have handed it over for Buddhists worship in a settlement piloted by the Hindu Mahasabha, and they are not interfering nor claiming a right to interfere with Buddhist practices there.
More than that, a Buddhist member of the Bodh-Gaya temple management committee has admitted that ‘the laudable work of the construction of the MahaBodhi temple’ was ‘undertaken by a Braahman minister of Shaivite [worshipper of Shiv] persuasion’.
The local RSS leader explains: “the earliest and most authentic record is of course by Hiuen Tsang [=Xuan Zang] who visited Bodh-Gaya in A.D. 637. He says that two Braahman brothers prayed to Lord Maheshwar [Shiv] in the Himaalay to grant their wishes, upon which Maheshwar instructed them to carry out the meritorious task of erecting a large temple and excavate a large tank and devote all kinds of religious offerings near the most sanctified Bodhi-tree for attaining ‘the fruit of a Buddha’. The elder Braahman devotee accordingly built a large temple,” etc. Not only did Hindus refrain from demolishing the temple, but also they actually built it. Now find us a Hindu temple built by Babar.
Studying the backgrounds of this quarrel throws a new light on the now-common allegation that Buddhism was persecuted by the Braahmanical reaction under the imperial Gupt dynasty. In Bodh-Gaya, the Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zang stayed in the MahaBodhi Sangharama, a ‘splendid monastery’ with ‘1000 monks’, which had been built, at the auspices of SamudrGupt, the Gupt Emperor. Bodh-Gaya has a large number of dated sculptures from the Gupt period, which was in fact one of the most fruitful periods in Buddhist art. Reported in Abdul Quddoos Ansari: Archeological remains of Bodh-Gaya, Ramanand Vidya Bhavan, Delhi, 1990, p.15.
…It may therefore be noted that the Buddhist membership of the Bodh-Gaya temple management board does not altogether share the anti-Hindu animus of the neo-Buddhists and their secularist manipulators…
Whether the Braahman control of the MahaBodhi area since 16th century up to 1949 was similar in nature to the Muslim control of Raam Janm Bhoomi site during the same period, can perhaps best be decided after considering this statement by a Muslim scholar, Dr. Abdul Quddoos Ansari: ‘The iconoclastic fury of Islam must have [had] a terrible effect on the shrines of Gaya region, and particularly on Buddhism, with the result that a time came when, there being no Buddhist to look after their own shrines and worship at Bodh-Gaya, the Braahmans had to do their work even by going [outside] their jurisdiction.’ Dr. Ansari’s testimony against Islam rather than against Braahmanism as being the destroyer of Buddhism in India is doubly strong because otherwise he is a subscriber to the now-popular theory of an intense Buddhist-Braahmanical antagonism.
‘According to [the famous Tibetan monk] Dharma swami [1234- 36 in that area], the Bodh-Gaya establishment had been deserted by all except for [some] monks, on account of repeated Turkish conquests.’ A. Q. Ansari: Archeological Remains, p.26. The popular support base and training grounds for Buddhist monks were being destroyed in all of North India, and Bodh-Gaya was dying as a Buddhist center along with all those other establishments that were being physically eliminated by the Turks. Not Hinduism but Islam destroyed Buddhism in India.”
One of my learned readers SY wrote to me
“Apparently you do not know of the incidents in history when Brahmins poured hot metal into the ears of Jains who were listening to, or wanted to listen to Veds; and other such nice episodes.”
I wonder if my learned reader had been reading such historical conspiracies by politicized scholars. Considering numerous accounts given by contemporary visitors to India over a period of 2,300 years documenting essentially the same characteristics about Hindus as compared to totally opposing views presented by people who did not witness such events and who have done repeatedly various attempts to paint Hindus as intolerant and Muslims as tolerant. Question must be asked: are their accounts creditworthy and why they had been doing all this on purpose? As we proceed we will certainly seek answers to all these questions.
Know the Enemy Within
Dr. Shourie writes in the introduction to his well-researched and unchallenged book ‘Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud’:
“In June-July, 1998, progressives kicked up quite a racket. The Government has packed the Indian Council of Historical Research with pro-Raam Mandir historians, they shouted. It has surreptitiously altered the aims and objectives of the Council, they shouted.
As is their wont, they had sparked the commotion by giving wind to a concoction.
As is their wont too, they were charging others with planning to do in some unidentified future what they had themselves been actually doing for decades – that is, write history to a purpose.
The commotion led me to look into their record – to look at what they had made of an institution like the Indian Council of Historical Research, and to read the textbooks they had authored.
Small scandals turned up too. So accustomed have we become to Crores [10s of millions] being raked off that the amounts mentioned in this narrative will seem less than pilfering of pickpockets. That is so in part because our standards have become so lax. And in part because the real crime of these eminences does not lie in the loss they have inflicted in terms of money. It lies in the condition to which they have reduced these institutions. It lies in their dereliction – because of which Projects that were important for our country have languished. It lies even more in the use to which they have put those institutions.
They have used them to have a comfortable time, of course. They have used them to puff up each other’s reputations, of course. But the worst of it is that they have used their control of these institutions to pervert public discourse, and thereby derail public policy.
They have made India out to have been an empty land – filled by successive invaders. They have made present-day India, and Hinduism even more so, out to be a zoo – an agglomeration of assorted, disparate specimens. No such thing as ‘India’, just a geographical expression, just a construct of British; no such thing as Hinduism, just a word used by Arabs to describe the assortment they encountered, just an invention of the communalists to impose a uniformity – that has been their stance. For this they have blackened the Hindu period of our history, and, as we shall see strained to whitewash the Islamic period. They have denounced ancient India’s social system as the epitome of oppression, and made totalitarian ideologies out to be egalitarian and just.
They have belittled our ancient culture and exaggerated syncretistic elements, which survived and made them out to be an entire ‘culture’, the ‘composite culture’ as they call it. Which culture isn’t? And all the while they have taken care to hide the central facts about these common elements in the life of our people: that they had survived in spite of the most strenuous efforts spread over a thousand years of Islamic rulers and the ulema to erase them, that they had survived in spite of the sustained efforts during the last hundred and fifty years of the Missionaries and British rulers to make us forget and shed these elements, that the elements had survived their efforts to instead inflame each section to see its ‘identity’ and essence in factors which, if internalized, would set apart. Most of all these intellectuals and the like have completely diverted public view from the activities in our own day of organizations like the Tablighi Jamaat and the Church which are exerting every nerve, and deploying uncounted resources to get their adherents to discard every practice and belief which they share with their Hindu neighbors.
These intellectuals and their patrons have worked a diabolic inversion: the inclusive religion, the pluralist spiritual search of our people and land, they have projected as intolerant, narrowminded, obscurantist; and the exclusivist, totalitarian, revelatory religions and ideologies – Islam, Christianity, Marxism- Leninism – they have made out to be the epitomes of tolerance, open-mindedness, democracy, secularism!
This has been their real crime. It has also been a bit of a feat. For they have been just a few: during the Ayodhya controversy, for instance, every other week a press statement would appear in favor of the stand of Babri Masjid Action Committee – one week over the names of ‘eminent historians’, the next over the signatures of ‘distinguished social scientists’, and the week after that in the name of ‘leading intellectuals’! But they would always be the same lot. Always the same lot: six in one statement, eight in the next; their high was 42. Once. But what commotion they have been able to create, and what mischief.
They had been able to do so because what they were advancing – for instance, the Marxist ‘thesis’ they were parroting in their textbooks – was in accord with the temper of the time. Because their kind were in critical positions in professions like journalism and universities. And because the rulers reckoned that to garner votes it would be politic to dress up in progressive plumes: patronizing persons who had taken out a copyright, so to say, on the progressive hue was accordingly useful.
Most of all, they were able to work their mischief because of the control they came to acquire over institutions.
Times have changed: the committed progressive of yesterday is the unthinking conservative of today.
The needs of the rulers have changed: who can fool the masses today by nationalizing banks and parading certificates from progressives?
The Theory in which progressives preened about had been shown decades ago to be without basis. At that time no one listened. But today no one invokes it! For it has floundered on the one test the progressives had said alone mattered: the test of practice. Whatever the theoretical imperfections, whatever empirical evidence, the one thing that counts is that it has worked in practice – in the Soviet Union, in Eastern Europe, in China: that was their argument. And as only those facts about these countries were the facts, which they certified, the argument could scarcely be countered. Today that very argument works to the opposite effect: whatever the logical coherence you can claim for it, whatever scraps of empirical evidence you adduce in its favor, the one thing that counts is that it has failed in practice!
So, the fashions are changing, the patronage of rulers is evaporating, their Holy Books have been repudiated in their Meccas.
All that remains is their hold over governmental institutions. The remedy is two-fold. Enable a multitude of other institutions to come up: for this, a few changes in laws, some marginal incentives for setting up and running foundations, and faith in other – that persons outside the State also are eager to do good by the country – are all we need. Second, loosen the hold over existing institutions of eminences of the kind surveyed here: for this all that is needed is to document what they have made of those institutions.”