Over the past two months, large-scale demonstrations have erupted across India demanding that the control over the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, be handed over to Buddhists. These protests are the latest chapter in a decades-old dispute over who controls one of the holiest sites in Buddhism. Buddhists want the repeal of the Bodh Gaya Temple Act, 1949 (BGTA), under which the temple is currently governed. The temple in Bodh Gaya It is in Bodh Gaya, while meditating under the Bo tree, that Prince Siddhartha attained enlightenment to become the Buddha (literally, “the Enlightened One”) in 589 BCE. A simple shrine was constructed to mark the site by Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE, of which only the Vajrasana (Diamond Throne), a stone slab under the Bodhi tree next to the temple, remains. Additional structures were built during the Shunga period (2nd to 1st century BCE). Fifth-century Chinese traveller Faxian (also known as Fa Hien) wrote that there were three Buddhist monasteries around the temple in Gaya. But the current pyramidal structure can be dated to the reign of the Guptas in the 6th century CE. The Palas (8th-12th century CE) were the last major royal patrons of the Mahabodhi temple. By the 11th-12th centuries, Buddhism was gradually declining in the subcontinent, and so were its many centres, including in Gaya. Lengthy struggle for control The shrine was in a state of disrepair when Alexander Cunningham, the founder of the Archaeological Survey of India, began restoration in the 1880s. According to the website of UNESCO, which granted the Mahabodhi temple the World Heritage Site tag in 2002, the shrine was largely abandoned between the 13th and 19th centuries. But according to popular legend, which also finds mention in the shrine’s official website, a wandering Shaivite monk named Mahant Ghamandi Giri arrived in Gaya around 1590, and established what would become the Bodh Gaya Math, a Hindu monastery. Giri’s descendants continue to control the Mahabodhi temple, which they say is a Hindu site. “Our Math’s teachings treat Lord Buddha as the ninth reincarnation of Lord Vishnu and we consider Buddhists our brothers,” Swami Vivekananda Giri, the Hindu priest currently in charge of the Bodh Gaya Math, told Al Jazeera. Calls for the temple to be handed over to the Buddhists can be traced to the late 19th century. These were initially led by the Sri Lankan monk Anagarika Dhammapala, who even took the Hindu priests controlling the Mahabodhi temple to court. Dhammapala’s struggle culminated in the passage of the BGTA by the Bihar Assembly in 1949, 16 years after his death. Why BGTA is controversial The BGTA provided for the creation of a Committee to run the Mahabodhi temple. “The Committee shall consist of a Chairman and eight members nominated by the [State] Government. of whom four shall be Buddhists and four shall be Hindus including the Mahanth,” the Act says. The Act says the District Magistrate of Gaya shall be the ex officio Chairman of the Committee, but adds that “the State Government shall nominate a Hindu as Chairman of the Committee for the period during which the district Magistrate of Gaya is non-Hindu”. So while the BGTA gave Buddhists a stake in the management of the shrine, control effectively remained with Hindus. This is at the heart of the tensions today, with the Buddhist side claiming that Hindu rituals have gained predominance in the temple over the years. “It is painful to see the Mahabodhi temple being made home to non-Buddhist rituals,” Dr Siddharth Dhende, former deputy mayor of Pune Municipal Corporation, told The Indian Express. Legally speaking, the Buddhists’ case is complicated by the Places of Worship Act, 1991. Introduced in the wake of the Ayodhya movement, the Act provides for the maintenance of the religious character of any place of worship as it existed on August 15, 1947. “The Places of Worship Act. blocked any legal attempts by the Buddhists to regain control of the temple,” said Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi youth leader Rajendra Patode. The Act is currently under challenge in the Supreme Court. In 2012, two monks filed a petition before the Supreme Court seeking a repeal of the BGTA, but 13 years on, the case is yet to be listed before the court. The ongoing protests were triggered when a group of Buddhist monks, who were fasting against “non-Buddhist” rituals in the temple, were forcibly removed from the temple premises at midnight on February 27. The protests are being led by the umbrella organisation All India Buddhist Forum (AIBF).
