The holiest Buddhist sites are the most sacred protests on the Hindu “control” of the shrine policy

Boda Gaia, India – While he was standing on a waiting list outside a temporary tent kitchen for breakfast, Abhishek, his 30 -year -old, could not think about the crowds of the people around him in Body Jaya, the holiest Buddhist sites.

Boda is visiting the city in the state of Bihar in East India, where Buddha has gained enlightenment, since he was 15 years old. “But I haven’t seen such an atmosphere.

Once, it is not only in the Body Jaya for the Hajj. They are part of a protest by the Buddhists who erupted throughout India in recent weeks due to the request to control the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, one of the most sacred shrines of faith, exclusively on society.

Several Buddhist organizations have held marches, from Ladakh on the border with China in the north to the cities of Mumbai in the west and Missuru in the south. Akash Lama, the Secretary -General of the Buddhist Forum of India (AIBF), who is leading the campaign, said that people are increasingly gathering to Body Jaya to join the main protest. India has an estimated 8.4 million Buddhist citizens, according to the last census in the country in 2011.

Over the past 76 years, the temple has been managed by a committee of eight members of four Hindus and four Buddhists-according to the Bodh Gaya Temple Law, 1949, Bihar State Law.

But demonstrators, including monks who wear saffron with loudspeakers and banners in their hands, are calling for the abolition of this act and the full delivery of the temple to the Buddhists. They argue that the Hindu monks in recent years have been enabled by the fact that the influence that society carries under the law has increasingly leading rituals challenging the spirit of Buddhism – and that other most accurate forms of protest.

Body Jaya mathematics, the Hindu monastery that plays the rituals inside the complex, insists that it played a major role in maintaining the mausoleum for centuries and that it has the law alongside it.

The demonstrators indicate that Buddha was opposing the Vedic rituals. “All religions in India” took care of and runs their religious positions. ” “So why does Hindus participate in a Buddhist religious place?”

He said: “The Buddhists were sitting with his hot rice with D. “

Old grievance, the new trigger

Busty two kilometers (1.2 miles) away from the sacred fig tree in the Maabudi Temple Complex, where Buddha is believed to contemplate, small buses reach a dominated road from Patna, the capital of Bihar, which carries demonstrators from different parts of the country.

For some, who visited the shrine regularly, the concern about the Hindu rituals that are implemented in the temple complex is not new.

“From the beginning, when we used to come here, we felt very frustrated to see the rituals that Lord Buddha prevented by people from other religions in this courtyard,” said Umogdardini, 58, who traveled from Vadodara in West Gujarat to join Bodd Gaia.

In recent years, the Buddhists have complained to the local, state and national authorities about the Hindu rituals. In 2012, two monks presented a petition before the Supreme Court seeking to obtain the abolition of the 1949 law that gives Hindus an opinion on the mausoleum management. This issue was not included in a hearing, after 13 years. In recent months, the monks again presented a note to government governments and central governments and took street gatherings.

But things reached her head last month. On February 27, more than twenty Buddhist monks who were sitting on hunger for 14 days were removed at the headquarters of the temple in the middle of the night by the state police, who forced them to move outside the temple.

“Are we terrorists? Why can’t we protest the annihilation that belongs to us?” Pragia Metra Body, Minister of National Buddhists in India, who came from Jaipur in West Rajistan with 15 other protesters. “This temple management law and the preparation of the committee wandering in our Buddhist identity and the Mahabudi temple cannot be fully affiliated with us unless the law is canceled.”

Since then, the protests have intensified – like some, such as Amogdarshini, who already spent two weeks in Body Gaya in January, has now returned to join the protest.

Stanzin Sodho, a travel agent from Ladakh, who is currently in Body Gaya, said the protests are funded by worshipers’ contributions. He said, “We do not stay for a long time,” adding that he came with 40 others. “Once we return, more people will join here.”

The date of the change of property

At the heart of the battle for the Mahabodhi Temple, which is the UNESCO World Heritage site-its legacy, which has been interested for a long time.

The temple was built by Emperor Ashoka, who visited Bodh Gaya in 260 BC after embracing Buddhism, about 200 years after the Enlightenment of Buddha.

Emmaz Ahmed, a professor of medieval history at the University of Patna, said that he has been under Buddhism for years until major political changes in the region in the thirteenth century. Ahmed said that the invasion of India by General Turku Afghan, with the choice of Khailji “led to a decrease in the end of Buddhism in the region.”

According to UNESCO, the shrine was largely abandoned between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries, before the British began renovations.

But according to the location of the mausoleum, a Hindu monk, Gamland Jerry, appeared in the temple in 1590 and began to live there. He began to perform rituals and created Bod Gaia Sports, a Hindu monastery. Since then, the temple has been controlled by Jerry’s descendants.

In the late nineteenth century, the Buddhists and Japanese Buddhists founded the Maha Body Association to lead a movement to restore the site.

In 1903, these efforts led the India virus, Lord Corsone, to try to negotiate a deal between the Hindu and Buddhist sides, but it failed. Later, both sides began mobilizing political support, and in the end, two years after India gained independence from British rule in 1947, the Bihar government pushed the Body Jaya Temple Law. The law transferred the temple administration from the head of the Bodh Gaya Math team to the eight-member committee, which is now chaired by the ninth member, the provincial judge-the best bureaucratic responsible for the province.

But Buddhists claim that mathematics Body Jaya-as the most influential institution on the ground-is effectively controlling the performance of the daily complex.

“Hindus owns”

Swami Vivicananda Jerry, the Hindu priest who currently takes care of Jaya mathematics, is not concerned about the protests, describing the incitement as “politically driven” – with the attention of the Bihar legislative state elections later this year.

Jerry told Al -Jazeera: “Our mathematics teachings are dealing with Lord Buddha as the ninth reincarnation of Roses Fishno (Hindu) and we consider Buddhists our brothers.” “For years, the Buddhist worshipers also hosted, from other countries as well, and we have never prevented them from praying in the building.”

Jerry says that the Hindu side was “generous to allow four Buddhists in the Administration Committee.”

“If this act is canceled, the temple will only belong to the Hindu side because we had this before the law and the independence of (India),” said Jerry, taking excavations on the demonstrators. “When the Buddhists abandoned it after the conquest of Muslim rulers, we preserved the temple and took care of it. However, we never treated the Buddhist visitors in the name of” others. “

At the site of the protest, Akash Lama, who leads the demonstrations, indicated that the demonstrators have no great hope that the federal government in the Hindu Party, BJP), and the state government – in which the Pharaoatia Gatata Party is a partner partner – will listen to their grievances.

He said: “The rights of Buddhists gradually violate the use of the act. Buddhists have the right to the temple, so it must be delivered to the Buddhists.” “We felt disappointed in the government and the Supreme Court (for their failure to hear the case).”

But Boda, the protester of Chathassjar, still has hope – not in the government, but in the people he sees around him. “This unit makes our protest strong,” he said.