PART 1
Introduction
One of the major disruptive narratives spread about India, starting with the colonials and continuing in the post-independent India, is the story of Buddhism and its supposed antagonism with Hinduism. Nehru, Ambedkar, later followers, and textbook writers finally crystallised the notion that though born a Hindu, Buddha at some point in his life broke away, rebelling especially against the ‘caste-system’, to form his own religion. Indians generally have internalised this story.
But no one knows when exactly did Buddha break away. Nehru had a poor understanding of traditional India and was west-oriented. Unfortunately, even a thinker of the calibre of Dr Ambedkar went wrong in his understanding of Buddha, Buddhism, and the traditions of India. This has now led to an unfortunate division in society and shows no signs of abating. On the other hand, Dr Ambedkar was right in the rejection of the Aryan theory which sadly his followers are not too keen to follow.
The persistent narrative is that Buddha was a revolutionary rebelling against the atrocities prevalent in Hinduism. In this manner, a deep discourse builds up of Buddha standing against Hinduism or the Vedas along with other narratives such as Adi Shankaracharya driving away the Buddhists. However, the facts are so different as Koenraad Elst sums up clearly in his brilliant essay, ‘Buddha was every inch a Hindu.’ In fact, Savarkar commented when Dr Ambedkar embraced Buddhism that the latter has ‘surely jumped into the fold of Hinduism.’
Gautama the Buddha
Prince Gautama (563 BCE-486 BCE) following his enlightenment after severe austerities became the Buddha. His teachings form the basis of the Buddhist tradition. Siddhartha Gautama was a Kshatriya of the Ikshvaku dynasty belonging to the Shakya clan, and often called a Shakyamuni– renunciate of the Shakyas. Buddha himself described Rama as his previous incarnation; it was not the work of wily Brahmins as Koenraad Elst says. The Shakyas, as Hindu as possible, considered themselves as the progeny of Manu, and the Buddha never rejected this name till the end of his life.
At 29, he became an ascetic following an existing tradition within the Hindu society of giving up rituals (karmakanda) for knowledge (jnanakanda). A knowledge of the Vedas is never a pre-condition for enlightenment in Indic traditions. Ramana Maharishi is a prime example of this and stressed this point many times. Buddha’s techniques like anapanasati (breathing practices), Vipassana (mindfulness), and extreme asceticism were rooted in the philosophy of Yoga. He exercised his freedom in the best of Hindu traditions to evolve his special method for helping people. Parallels with the Kriya Yoga technique of Paramhansa Yogananda or the Sudarshan Kriya of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar are clear here. Developing an own method does not imply any rebellion; Hindu traditions liberally allow this.
He stressed that he was not the first one to achieve Enlightenment; many before had achieved a similar awakening. Finally, as guided by Vedic gods Brahma and Indra, he started teaching his way to others. His “wheel of the Law” (dharma-cakra-pravartana) and liberal use of Upanishadic terminology shows no break or rebellion against an existing system. He was simply promising a restoration of the degenerated Vedic ideal.
Buddhist Philosophy
The rich and vast Buddhist literature is divided into many traditions but two are the most important: the Hinayana in the Pali language and the Mahayana in Sanskrit. The core of the former is the Pali Canon, the original teachings of Buddha after his enlightenment. The Four Noble Truths formed the subject of the first sermon Buddha delivered in Benares:
1. Life is evil, full of pain and suffering.
2. The origin of all evil is ignorance (avidya)- not knowing the true nature of the self. The feeling of the self as apart from the body-mind complex is false and it undergoes constant change. Nirvana is the cessation of this change. The clinging to the false self is the reason for all misery in life.
3. There are twelve links in the ‘chain of causation’ of evil. This chain starts with ignorance leading to a craving. Unfulfilled desires lead to repeated cycles of rebirth and deaths. Breaking from this karmic chain of repeated lives, one attains a state of serene composure-Nirvana.
4. Right knowledge (prajna) is the means of removing evil. Right conduct was the means to attain authentic knowledge in the original teaching. This expanded in later forms of Buddhism to include meditative practice (Yoga).
The recommended middle path of Buddha for everyone to know the truth was devoid of severe austerities. Right conduct (sila), right knowledge (prajna), and right concentration (samadhi) being the most important. The rest five of the ‘Eight-Fold Path’ is for those entering the order of ascetics.
Buddhism spread to other countries like Sri Lanka, Japan, and China but broke up into many schools of thought. Common to the main two Hinayana (Pali) and Mahayana (Sanskrit) creeds is the most important doctrine of momentariness– nothing lasts for more than a moment (kshana-bhanga-vada). Everything continues as a series for any length of time giving the illusion of continuity. Regarding differences, Hinayana school was atheistic- looking at the Buddha as a human being but divinely gifted; the Mahayana deified Buddha with elaborate worship rituals.
The Mahayana school has two doctrines: the Yogachara and the Madhyamika. The former, akin to the modern subjective idealism, reduces all reality to only thought and mind with no external objective counterpart (Vijnana-vada). Madhyamika is nihilism that denies the reality of both the external world and the self too; its greatest proponent Nagarjuna concluded, ‘There is neither being nor cessation of it; there is neither bondage nor escape from it.’ The Madhyamika school hence maintains the important doctrine of sunya-vada– the ultimate reality is the void or vacuity-in-itself.
Hinayana Buddhism and the Yogachara doctrine (of Mahayana school) admit to an Absolute Consciousness, a positive ground for all experience. The goal of life would be to merge in this Absolute. The Madhyamika doctrine of Mahayana school rejects any positive ground and states the goal of life as the annihilation of all illusion into a void. In the latter, the enlightened person works for the good of society and doesn’t just stay satisfied with one’s own Nirvana. This Bodhisattva ideal is far more excellent than the person who is an arhan, concerned only with individual salvation.
Advaita and Buddhism: Different or Similar?
There are only a few differences in the philosophies of Advaita and Buddhism which, in the context of the essence of Indian traditions, could have never given rise to conflicts-violent or otherwise. Debates, maybe; violence, unlikely. In fact, Advaita philosophy is closer to Buddhism than to some other orthodox Indian philosophy schools.
Ignorance for Advaitins is thinking that our senses and intellect along with the phenomenal world is the ultimate reality; for Buddha, ignorance is absent knowledge about the impermanence of everything. Both believe that Karma is a state of bondage due to ignorance and generated by one’s own thoughts, words, and deeds leading to repeated births. Moksha or Nirvana is freedom from ignorance and bondage which one must strive to attain here and now.
Most importantly, both agree that Knowledge and Truth are of two kinds- the higher and the lower. The lower is the product of our senses and the intellect applicable to the phenomenal world, and the higher is transcendental; non-conceptual, non-relative, and intuitive. The higher knowledge is soteriological– capable of intense personal transformation.
With so many common ideas, it is an ignorant notion, enhanced by political agendas, that Advaita was in opposition to Buddhism. Buddhism spread to other countries due to many factors- royal patronage and the missionary zeal of its monks to name a few. It just receded in the country of origin as people might have continued with their regular traditions. The destruction of Buddhist libraries by Islamic invaders helped its demise to some extent too.
The Buddhist tradition was one of the many popular ones in Indian society at the time. After the Buddha died, Buddhism divided into many schools and teachings, which included a good amount of ritualism, something which Buddha never encouraged in his life. It was another tradition that grew in India with an underlying essence of an indifference to differences.
It is easy to see that there is plenty of similarities between both philosophies except for some nuanced differences. Advaita Vedanta claims Brahman as the unchanging reality. A major school of Buddhism however believes there are no eternal entities. The final state of enlightenment is merging in the Brahman for Advaita, whereas Buddhism speaks of Sunyata, silence and nothingness- not eliciting an answer. Hardly a reason for violent or unpleasant encounters with the background of Indian traditions.
The Discovery of ‘Hindus and Hinduism’
Darius of the Achaemenid Persians used the word ‘Hindu’ in a geographical sense for those inside and beyond the Indus region. The medieval Muslim invaders used it for Indian people (without any doctrinal context) except for the Indian Muslims, Christians, or Jews. Koenraad Elst says,
‘It included all varnas, Buddhists, Jains, ascetics, tribals, and the future yet unborn Lingayats, Sikhs, Hare Krishnas, Arya Samajis, Ramakrishnaites, and any others who nowadays reject the label Hindu’.
The Hindu Marriage Act adopts this ‘neti-neti’ (not this-not this) definition of exclusion for a Hindu- not Christian, not Muslim, not Jew, and not a Parsi.
The Portuguese referred to Indians as ‘gentues.’ The British made them ‘Gentoos.’ These were the same ‘Hindus’ referred to by the Persians. The 18th-century world spoke of the ‘religion of the Gentoos’, which in the 19th century, became the religion of the Hindus. Later, it became a full-blown ‘Hinduism.’ The Asiatic Society in Calcutta began a ‘second Renaissance’ as they rediscovered the Sanskrit literary texts. This oriental Renaissance unified world history by absorbing a living heathen culture into the paganism of antiquity. The Romantic thinkers called India the ‘cradle of civilization’; no credit in fact. Such characterization implies that a living culture is still in the cradle, and has been in it for thousands of years, unlike their European counterparts.
Hindus became ’childlike’, ‘unspoiled’, ‘less sophisticated’ and so on; strangely, a living culture of antiquity became primitive and innocent. That included religion too as Hegel put it in unflattering terms, ’fantasy makes everything into a God here.’ The Romantics finally depicted India as the seat of a primal culture. From Hegel through Marx, India’s description was of stagnation. ‘A tremendous fossilized organism, dead at the core, yet standing strong by its vast mechanical solidity and hoary antiquity,’ said one. Of course, the social organization or the ‘caste system’ was the cause. One consequence of this extended childhood is the dominance of religion in all aspects of life. But, if all-pervasive, how does one define religion? The final message was that one could admire the good things that Indian civilization had to offer without having to admire its current state, living inhabitants and the actual culture, says Dr SN Balagangadhara in his book The Heathen in His Blindness.
Contradictions, Manipulations, and Obfuscations
The popular narrative now becomes contradictory because though Hinduism did not exist at that time, Buddhism still broke away from it. The historical definition of a Hindu having an advantage of primacy and not an idea of cunning Brahmins makes Buddha and his followers invariably Hindu, says Elst. Further, the word “Hindu” presently undergoes a lot of manipulations. Secularists put all kinds of groups (Dravidians, Sikhs, Dalits) as non-Hindus but when Hindus complain of aggression by minorities, the response is, “How can the Hindus who are more than 80% feel threatened?” Missionaries call the tribals “not Hindus”, but when they revolt, it becomes a narrative of “Hindu rioters”.
Koenraad Elst says, ‘‘One meaning which the word “Hindu” definitely did not have when it was introduced, is ‘Vedic’. Shankara debates against Patanjali and the Sankhya school (just like the Buddha) which do not cite the Vedas, yet they have a place in every history of Hindu thought. Hinduism includes a lot of elements which have only a thin Vedic veneer, and numerous ones which are not Vedic at all. In the Buddha’s case, ‘Hindu’ often narrows down to ‘Vedic’ when convenient, then restored to its wider meaning when expedient.’’
PART 2
Buddha and Buddhism as Saviours – The creation of a clash by the best European minds
Orientalists had started treating Buddhism as a separate religion because they discovered it outside India, without any conspicuous link with its original home, India. When its origins became clearer, writers made Buddha a Martin Luther and Buddhism a Protestant-like to attack and successfully convert a branch of a massive Indian traditional tree into a religion called Buddhism. It now supposedly rebelled against another branch called Hinduism.
The clearer texts of Buddhist traditions rapidly crystallised into a proper religion in seventy years in Western libraries and institutes. By the mid-19th century, a West, that alone knew what Buddhism was, started judging Buddhism that existed ‘out there’. Buddhism became a textual object; defined, interpreted, and classified through its textuality.
Like Hinduism, Buddhism also had a corrupted ‘popular’ Buddhism and a pure, simple, and original ‘philosophical’ Buddhism. Everyone was not enamoured with Buddhism because of its ‘corruptions’ and ‘repressions’. Even a Max Mueller, sympathetic to Buddhism, felt compelled to compare it with Christianity only to find the former inferior. By the turn of the 20th century, Buddhism fully matured in the libraries of Paris and London.
The so-called clash of Buddha with Hinduism is just the fevered imagination of later intellectuals. There were deep flaws in their conceptualisation of Buddhist traditions. SN Balagangadhara (The Heathen in His Blindness) shows that the supposed clash between Hinduism and Buddhism was a European colonial project simply failing to understand the nature of Indian traditions and unjustly transposing European ideas to the Indian soil. Writer after writer successfully made the ‘religion’ of Buddhism rebelling against the tyrannies of ‘Hinduism’ like a Martin Luther attacking the Church. Also, European authors and their Indian followers imaginatively superimposed the medieval Europe religious wars on the supposed Hindu-Buddhist encounters. Shankara driving out Buddhism with his debates is ignorance on the part of believers of both.
Was there an exclusive Buddhist sect?
There never was a separate non-Hindu Buddhist society. As Koenraad Elst says, ‘this box-type division of society in different sects is another Christian prejudice infused into modern Hindu society by Nehruvian secularism’. They were Hindus and some of them had a veneration for the Buddha. In a traditional Indic household, one can have deities and saints of all kinds adorning the pooja room and the walls. An exclusive belief in Buddha to the complete rejection of any other god or saint is quite simply an unbelievable proposition in traditional cultures like India.
Buddhist buildings, temples, rituals, and mantras follow established Hindu Vedic patterns and Vastu Shastra. Buddhist monks to China and Japan took the Vedic gods like the twelve Adityas and Saraswati (River goddess Benzaiten) with them. Buddha’s seven principles for ensuring that a society does not perish included respecting the festivals, pilgrimages, rituals, and holy men. These festivals were mainly ‘Vedic’, of course, like the pilgrimage to the Ganga. Buddha, a conservative, thus wanted the existing customs to continue both in social and in religious matters. He was hardly a revolutionary.
Did Buddha ever reject the Varna System?
Buddha in his many teachings never had told them to give up varna. He was more interested in spiritual transformations rather than social matters of creating egalitarian societies. Buddha accepted the varna Vyavastha; he, in fact, put the Kshatriyas at the top of the hierarchy. Many of his recruits were Brahmins who developed many intellectual arguments of Buddhism in debates. The common narrative is that universities are a gift of Buddhism, but Buddha’s friends, Bandhula and Prasenadi, studied at the University of Takshashila. The universities existed at the time of the Buddha; later Buddhists developed these institutions.
Buddhist texts, The Dhammapada and the Sonadanda Sutta reveal that the Buddha, contrary to popular narratives, never rejected the varnas. Buddha clearly describes a true Brahmana and places the Kshatriyas at the top of the hierarchy while explaining the evolution of castes. Rejection does not try to define the perfection of the rejected. Calvin rejected Catholicism but defended Christianity in trying to define a true Christian. Marx rejected capitalism but not by trying to define who a true capitalist is. Hence, Buddha’s explanation of the social systems placing Kshatriyas at the top, criticising exploitative Brahmins, and a keenness to define a true Brahmin is not rejection in any sense.
The Kshatriya kings and magnates considered Buddha as their own and patronized his monastic order. After Buddha died, the elites made a successful bid for his ashes based on the Kshatriya varna. Buddha predicted the coming of a Maitreya, a future awakened leader and that he would be born in a Brahmin family. Prasenadi rejected his wife because she was the daughter of a king by a maid-servant. Buddha convinced him to take her back by reminding the king of the old view that varna passed on exclusively in the paternal line.
The Shramanas or the Bhaktas, a tradition that later gave rise to the Ajivikas, Jains, and Buddhists, became a revolutionary movement in scholarly writings. For them, renunciation was the primary condition for enlightenment in contrast to the Brahmana tradition of rituals and philosophical schools. The Shramanas were outside the caste system, but not ‘outcastes.’ Buddha as a part of the Shramana tradition had clear terms of dialogue with the Brahmana tradition. He taught the eight-fold path and told that everyone in their position in the Varna vyavastha could follow them in their quest for enlightenment. All four classes are equally pure and what matters is their conduct. Even the most hostile critics of Hinduism have agreed on this.
Ambedkar’s rejection of Hinduism
The conversion of a Buddhist tradition or sect into a religion became full-fledged with the conversion of Dr Ambedkar along with thousands of his followers in 1956. This also strengthened the anti-Hindu program of Buddha in a retrospective manner. Conversion, implying a rejection of all previous beliefs, is a typical religious concept prevalent in Christianity and Islam. Traditional cultures do not put such demands. One can embrace another tradition keeping the old view perfectly intact.
Dr Ambedkar was a great intellectual and his contribution to the Constitution is well-known. He rightly rejected the Aryan theory which scholars today now gloss over. He also clearly enunciated the problems arising from the extra-territorial loyalties of the Indian Muslims, seeing themselves as members of universal Islamic brotherhood in his book ‘Pakistan and Partition of India’. Of course, some of the mischievous elements in society do not want to mention this when they try to forge a unity of Dalits, Muslims, and tribals into a single platform against the Hindus.
Both Nehru and Ambedkar, who did not much like each other, went wrong in their understanding of a tradition as a religion. Ambedkar radicalized the notion of a separate Buddhist religion further. The twenty-two pledges of Ambedkar and the Neo-Buddhist are almost a polemic against all the Hindu Gods, Brahmins, and Hindu rituals. It rejects the claim of the Buddha as a reincarnation of Vishnu by calling it propaganda. Ironically, this was a self-claim of Buddha himself and not of cunning Brahmins. The pledge asks for following the Buddha’s message of rejecting Hindusim completely as it is detrimental to societal progress. The pledge, unfortunately, makes a caricature of Buddha and Buddhism in Indian history by promoting enmity despite claiming, again ironically, that all human beings are equal.
Nehru suffered from a major cultural disconnect with India; the Indian experience and conceptualization of the sacred and the divine made little sense to him. As Saumya Dey (The Cultural Landscape of Hindutva) quotes Nirad Chaudhary who wrote in his book Thy Hand, Great Anarch that ‘Nehru had no direct access to the Indian mind; Nehru was both ignorant of Hindu traditions and sometimes even hostile to them.’
Nehru and Nehruvians were comparatively not as radical in their implementation. Nehru made Buddhism the unofficial state religion by adopting the “lion pillar” of Buddhist Emperor Ashoka as a state symbol and putting the 24-spoked Chakravarty wheel in the national flag. The concept of Chakravarty (“wheel-turner”, universal ruler) predates Ashoka even as the 24-spoked wheel can have other interpretations, as Elst says. It could represent the Sankhya philosophy view with the central Purusha and the 24 elements of Prakriti. Nehru, with his limited understanding of traditional India, broadly believed that most of the good things in Hinduism emanated from Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Greece, the West-anyone or anyplace except Indians and India.
Conclusion- Traditions and Religions
The clash of Hinduism and Buddhism is simply a popular internalised myth. It has roots in a poor and continuous misunderstanding of Indian traditions as religions. Dr Balagangadhara explains this with clarity in his classic book The Heathen in His Blindness. India is a land of traditions and not religions. If Islam, Christianity, and Judaism classically are religions, then there are no religions in India. As a corollary, if what we have in India are religions then Islam, Christianity, and Judaism are not religions. Indian traditions do not meet the criteria of religion – A Book, A Church, A Messenger, One True God by any stretch of the imagination.
Traditional cultures like the obliterated Greco-Roman world of the past and the living Indian world of the present characteristically have multiple gods, including the divine feminine. Jain or Buddhist traditions and darsanas (or philosophies) like Yoga, Samkhya, Nyaya, and Vaisesika have no need of a god too in their expositions. The single purpose of multiple paths, including atheism, is Enlightenment (Moksha, Nirvana, merging with the Self or Brahman, and so on) and the discovery of Truth. There is typically deification of even animals and nature. This stands in contrast to the typically male True God of Abrahamic religions with every other god being false. What comes down from ancestors is tradition and this is religio for Indian culture just as it was in the past in the Greco-Roman world.
Rituals form the basis of traditions and these help in uniting people. Religions with their specific concept of My One True God versus Your False Many Gods divides people and breeds intolerance and hate. The history of Christianity and Islam is quite evident across many centuries. Traditions however evolve- merging, dissolving, and exchanging with other traditions of the land. The main principle is not tolerance or acceptance which is the maximum a religion can achieve but an indifference to the differences.
This indifference to differences allows traditions to survive without the threat of violent personal attacks. Intense debates, yes; violence, almost never. This allows a person to hold multiple views and believe in multiple gods too. Cicero was officiating as a priest but the entire arsenal of Enlightenment thinkers was from his single work questioning the existence of God. The Charvakas of India could argue about the non-existence of god from temple courtyards without fear of their lives.
This is the Indian solution to the pluralism and multi-culturalism of the world now packing into smaller geographical areas. India could absorb so many alien religions without major disruptions in society. This was because the religions took the form of traditions in a genuine manner, sometimes maybe as a continuation or modification of many ancestral Hindu practices of the converted. Religions became traditions as they lost the focus on proselytization too. In a traditional world, conversion entailing complete rejection of previous beliefs is unknown and almost unethical.
Muslims and Christians playing the highest devotional music to Hindu gods without any threat to personal identity or faith is a small example. Many Hindus enter the Church or the mosque with equal faith as anyone else but without feeling a loss of his or her belief systems. This is what tradition means. Further, in traditional cultures, many practices may not have a scientific explanation like the Bindi on the forehead or the worship of the linga or the devotion to the cow. These are simply traditional practices handed down by ancestors.
Looking for scientific explanations, the why question, is typically in a religious culture where these questions become important. Hence, the West persistently asks these questions to which Indians struggle to find an answer- what is the purpose of the Bindi? Why is the cow revered so much? Is linga puja worshipping the phallus? Is Ganesha’s trunk a limp phallus? And so on. Religious cultures ask the why question and hence it gives rise to atheism and science, says Dr Balagangadhara. Traditional cultures ask ‘the how’ question and bring people together.
This is how Buddhism was just another tradition in the Hindu land where new traditions, sects, and gurus evolve all the time showing many paths to the final enlightenment. The many paths, many gods, and many philosophies are a rich reflection of the traditional land of India. A profound misunderstanding of traditions as religions is the cause of much friction and trouble. The Buddha sits happily with many deities and saints in many Hindu households.
Though a few intellectuals had some clue regarding this, most of the influential and dominant thinkers, including the well-wishers, went wrong on this. Religionizing traditions takes one from tolerance, acceptance or indifference to intolerance, discrimination, or hate. This is precisely the route that Buddhism in scholarly writings and intellectual understandings took. Dr Ambedkar made it even more radical. Converting Hindu traditions into a Hindu religion in the classic Abrahamic mould similarly makes it more intolerant and self-asserting. The rise of the Hindutva phenomenon is a manifestation of this process.
The solution for India is not secularism which was applicable to medieval Europe only with multiple Christian denominations fighting each other. Secularism paradoxically will be the cause of increasing fundamentalism as Dr Jakob De Roover warns in his book Europe, India, and The Limits of Secularism. The solution is to traditionalise religions rather than religionising the traditions. We require more research into this, says Dr Balagangadhara. As we are carving out separate identities of various traditions and sects, some in the form of religions, like ‘Buddhism’, ‘Sikhism’, ‘Jainism’, ‘Ramakrishnaites’, ‘Arya Samajis’, ‘Lingayats’, and so on as being different from ‘Hinduism’, India is just losing its capacity to handle and absorb the pluralism and multi-culturalism which had always been our forte and the key to survival.
Buddha was not fighting anybody the way scholars want him to. He was showing another path and was simply a beneficiary of an established Hindu pluralistic tradition.
References and Further Reading
- https://pragyata.com/how-buddha-was-turned-anti-hindu/ by Koenraad Elst
- Were Shramana and Bhakti Movements Against the Caste System? Martin Fárek in Western Foundations of the Caste System: Sufiya Pathan and Prakash Shah (Eds.) Martin Farek, Dunkin Jalki (Author)
- The Heathen in His Blindness: Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion by S. N. Balagangadhara
- Do All Roads Lead to Jerusalem? The Making of Indian Religions by Divya Jhingran and S N Balagangadhara (A simplified version of the above book)
- Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism (Religion and Democracy) by Jakob De Roover
- Fundamentals of Indian Philosophy by Ramakrishna Puligandla
- Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies by Karl H. Potter
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240585568: How to Speak for the Indian Traditions: An Agenda for the Future by S. N. Balagangadhara
- The Cultural Landscape of Hindutva And Other Essays by Saumya Dey
- Hindu View of Christianity and Islam by Ram Swarup
FIRST PUBLISHED IN PRAGYATA ONLINE MAGAZINE
RANDOM MUSINGS 