Vaibhav Kharat
The pensive protest at the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya reveals the extensive structural discrepancies in India’s religious and media outlook. While Buddhists rightfully demand legitimate control over one of their holiest space, the dominant mainstream media, including television channels, newspapers, radio news, and even widely followed independent digital YouTube, Podcast, audio-video broadcasting platforms have almost explicitly shrugged off the ongoing Bodhgaya protest. This selective omission, elimination, and invisibilization raises fundamental questions about caste, power, and narrative control in India. Why is it that to the utmost, Hindu temples are strictly regulated by Brahminical power, mosques by Muslim authorities, and churches by Christian influence. Yet, one of the most revered Buddhist sites in the world remains under the supremacy of Brahmins. Why is there an apparent indifference from even the so-called Savarna progressive independent journalists in covering this struggle/protest? The answer lies in the caste hegemony penetrating institutionalized religion and media discourses to the state’s actions.
This article critically examines Bodhgaya’s ongoing struggle by situating it within the broader context of caste, power, and media narratives. Drawing from critical-psychoanalysis insights, it aims to unpack why the Brahmins Savarna-dominated state and media resist this movement and why the assertion of so-called ex-untouchables, today’s Buddhists for religious ownership, spark off deep psychic and social anxieties among the Savarna castes.
The Brahminization of Buddhism.
The protests demanding Buddhists overseeing the Mahabodhi temple are not just religious; they represent a larger struggle against the centuries-old tyrannical caste structure. A significant fact often ignored in public discourse is that more than 85% of Buddhists in India today are from so-called formerly ex-untouchable castes who embraced Buddhism as a complete rejection of caste Hindu oppression and humiliation. Their demand for institutional control is seen as a direct and consciously audacious challenge to the Brahminical caste society, which historically and culturally regulated religious authority in terms of sacred and profane access and approaches.
The erasure of Buddhist agency over its sacred sites was/is part of a larger historical project of the Brahminization of Buddhism – the process by which Buddhist traditions, scriptures, practices, and institutions are forcefully and gradually snatched and conspired into the Brahminical order, often leading to the distortion, perversion and erasure of their original ideological and social underpinning. After the decline of Buddhism in India, as pointed out by scholars like D.D. Kosambi, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Romila Thapar, and many more, largely due to state-sponsored Hindu revivalism under the Shunga, Guptas, and later Islamic invasions, Buddhist sites were either destroyed, abandoned, reoccupied, or reinterpreted, appropriated through a Brahminical state of mind. The very figure of the Buddha was manoeuvred into Hinduism/Brahmanism as the “ninth avatar of Vishnu,” erasing his radical critique and rejection of the Brahminical caste society. This process of Brahminization in its present form can be revealed in two primary ways:
- Institutional control: The administration of major Buddhist sites, either private or public, particularly the Mahabodhi Temple, has been systematically taken over by Savarna Hindu authorities. Subject to the Bodh Gaya Temple Act of 1949, a committee dominated by Savarna Hindus was established to look after the temple’s management of national and international resources, leaving Buddhists with little or negligible authority/power.
- Cultural superimposition: Hindu pilgrimage narratives and metanarratives have been superimposed onto Buddhist spaces, subtly reducing their significance to merely Hindu ritual spaces. This can be observed in the way Hindu rituals and deities are introduced and re-introduced, installed and re-installed onto Buddhist sacred spaces, blurring distinctions and eroding Buddhist exclusivity and culture.
For these reasons, this protest for Buddhist handle over the Mahabodhi Temple retards the historical and cultural pattern of Brahminization of Buddhism at large. These Buddhist protestors don’t see it as a religious demand but as a demand for their institutional and cultural power by people who were historically excluded from such power. This assertion is deeply unsettling for the Brahminical order, which has controlled religious and cultural institutions for centuries.
The psychosomatic panic of ‘ex- untouchables’ taxing power.
In this regard, psychoanalysis can provide a useful framework to understand the Savarna’s strong resistance to Buddhist protests by all means, authorities, and ends. ‘‘The so called erstwhile Untouchables, impure, unwholesome who were once denied entry into temples, deliberately excluded from public access, who have nothing to do with divine sanctity, whose touch even defiles god are now control tax of one of the most significant religious sites in the world, this is indigestible to Savarna’s state of mind. This fans the flames of what psychoanalysts would describe as a “collective neurotic anxiety” among the savarna caste groups. The anxiety originates from the fear, the panic that caste power structures may be inverted or annihilated by those who were once the most oppressed and suppressed, who may now have institutional authority which further act as psychological and cultural space for capital production. The Mahabodhi Temple protests are a straight and direct confrontation with Hindu majoritarianism. Unlike the Babri Masjid-Ayodhya dispute or the Gyanvapi Mosque controversy, where the Hindu demands the takeover of Islamic sites based on conspired and pseudo claims, here, the Savarna castes face an assertion from within, from the former Untouchables, who reject Hinduism itself by all means to ends. This confrontation turns upside down the deep-seated caste consciousness and unconsciousness of Savarna, leading to three distinct psychosomatic responses:
- Denial – Local and national, public and private mainstream media refuse to acknowledge the protests, ensuring the movement remains inconspicuous to the larger public audience.
- Displacement – Hindu narratives attempt to distort or appropriate Buddhist spaces rather than recognize their distinctness.
- Projection – Buddhists’ taxing autonomy is framed as politically motivated or a threat to Hinduism or anti-Hindu, sponsored by Islamic elements even though their demand is simply for religious self-space and self-determination.
By refuting and resisting Buddhist ethical control over the Mahabodhi Temple, the Brahminical state and media are essentially defending, maintaining, and legitimising the caste privilege of Brahmins in the realm of religious institutions.
Media’s voicelessness: Who handles the narrative?
In a democratic nation, the media is the fourth pillar, looking after transparency and loudening marginalized voices. However, in India, the ownership and editorial control of the mainstream media are intensely controlled by Savarna-caste writers. Studies on media representation reveal that Scheduled Castes/Tribes, Minority-Bahujan opinions/perspectives are significantly belittled in journalism, television debates, and newsrooms.
The Savarna caste-based hegemony over media has profound implications for issue prioritization and propagation. If an issue does not align with the savarna caste interests, it is ignored/dismissed. The Mahabodhi Temple protests exemplify this phenomenon. Despite being a major human rights and religious freedom issue, it has not received significant coverage from so-called notable newspapers such as The Hindu, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, and Times of India or the prominent television networks including NDTV, CNN-News18, Aaj Tak, and Republic TV neither from dominant independent YouTubers such as Ravish Kumar, Dhruv Rathee or Akash Banarjee, who claim to champion marginalized voices but have remained voiceless on this Buddhist protest. This selective voicelessness contrasts sharply with the media’s warmongering coverage of Hindu temple claims over Islamic sites. The Babri Masjid-Ayodhya dispute, the Gyanvapi Mosque controversy, and the Krishna Janmabhoomi issue have been overwhelmingly covered, often with a clear majoritarian Hindu nationalist framing. Why is the demand for Buddhist control over the Mahabodhi Temple not given the same media attention? The answer is in caste hegemony and its vivid labyrinth of media ownership and ideological frameworks.
Furthermore, the Savarna’s caste resistance against the taxing of the Mahabodhi Temple by Buddhists is not limited to a single site; it is a distortion and reduction of Buddhist spaces and institutions everywhere in India. This has serious implications: 1) repudiating institutional power to Buddhists. Without a handle in their own sacred sites, Buddhists in India remain institutionally weak, limiting their ability to mobilize resources for their own religious propagation and community development. 2) Deletion from public discourse – the complete absence of Buddhist issues from mainstream media strengthens the perception that Buddhism is a minor or irrelevant force in India, despite its deep historical roots. 3) Subsist caste oppression – the negation of Buddhist autonomy is part of the larger Brahminical enterprise of maintaining Savarna caste hegemony by ensuring that non-Hindu groups do not have independent institutional power
Unlike Hindu and Muslim discourses, the Mahabodhi Temple protests lack coverage, showing a fundamental crisis of Buddhist discourses. When mainstream media is indifferent to cover an issue, when the state remains complicit in religious marginalization, and when independent journalists with progressive reputations remain silent, it is evident that alternative platforms/institutions must be built. Dr. B.R. Ambedkar visualised a society where the caste structure would not dictate power. He saw Buddhism as a radical alternative to Brahminism, one that could challenge the structural inequalities of caste Hindu society, and this ongoing struggle at Bodh Gaya is a continuation of the Ambedkarite Buddhist identity and assertion.
~~~
Vaibhav Kharat is a Ph.D. Research Scholar, working on ‘Buddha Viharas’ at Dept. Of Sociology. Delhi School of Economics, New Delhi.
Image courtesy: Wikipedia
