Editorial - Anti-Buddhist India

19 March 2013 07:41 pm

“At Sarnath, near Benares, I would almost see the Buddha preaching his first sermon, and some of his recorded words would come like a distant echo to me through two thousand five hundred years”
- Jawaharlal Nehru

Nehru certainly was fortunate that he did live to see the tragedy –how Buddhists, especially Buddhist monks, were hounded and beaten up by his compatriots during the reign of his own kith and kin – the Gandhis, while the family maintained stony silence.

And this family also includes his charismatic great grand-daughter Priyanka who holds a masters’ degree in Buddhist philosophy.

The DMK pull out, notwithstanding the silence by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), has left the unprincipled UPA in the lurch exposing its moral degradation. The Congress today is a far cry of the Indian National Congress led by Nehru who kept a photo of the Anuradhapura Samadhi statue, even in his prison cell.

Interestingly the attacks on Buddhist monks also almost coincided with the India-Italy diplomatic row over the Indian Supreme Court decision to forfeit Italian ambassador Daniele Mancini’s diplomatic immunity. The ruling which Rome considers a blatant violation of the Vienna Convention was given over the envoy’s alleged connection in securing the release of the two Italians accused of killing two Indian fishermen.

One wonders whether India has fast tracked its goal to become a xenophobic nation.

Armed with video cameras the organised attackers of the monks were out to incite violence in Tamil Nadu to trigger a backlash in Sri Lanka. Immediately after the attacks these separatists flashed the videos on websites to propagate their cause.

The law and order mechanism is almost dead as regards the attacks on the monks.

A mature and wiser Sri Lankan electorate has so far acted prudently and one only hopes that it continues to be so.

When India accommodated the fleeing Dalai Lama it created the impression that it’s a nation that is compassionate towards the followers of the Buddha, who chose the land to spread his message of compassion.

With hardly any strong message to hooligans from New Delhi, today India or rather South India has turned out to be one of the most dangerous places in the world for Buddhist monks, almost as dangerous as its neighbour China for a Tibetan monk.

India certainly is not shining.