3 - Buddhism and The Bhadralok

Summary

BUDDHIST CALCUTTA

By the late 19th century, Calcutta was not only one of the most important cities of the British empire, it had also emerged as a pivotal city for Buddhists in South Asia and colonial Southeast and East Asia. From the first decade of the 20th century onwards, Calcutta was visited by various Buddhist leaders—Japanese priests, Tibetan lamas that included the Thirteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet and the Grand Lama of Siberia, Burmese reformers and others, who addressed gatherings and offered prayers. Calcutta would soon boast of a Burmese Buddhist pagoda and an association of Burmese Buddhists, Buddhist temples in Howrah and Lake Road, and Chinese Buddhist temples in Chinatown. A number of new societies and study circles focused on Buddhism and Buddhist study were established. There was the Buddhist Text Society started by Sarat Chandra Das, the Buddhist Shrine Restoration Society, which had a life of about 10 years, and the popular Bauddha Dharmankur Sabha and the Mahabodhi Society, which still exist. A branch of the Young Men's Buddhist Association was set up in Darjeeling in 1912. Many Buddhist periodicals were in circulation in Calcutta too. The scholar of Pali, Beni Madhab Barua, and Nepali Buddhist activist, Dharma Aditya Dharmacharyya, began a journal called Buddhist India in 1927, which lasted until 1929. Numerous articles on Buddhism found their way into the pages of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Indian Culture, Indian Historical Quarterly and many others. The Mahabodhi Society had an English-language journal that brought together figures involved in the Buddhist revival. For a time, it also had a Hindi journal called Dharmadhuta that was published from Sarnath. Participants in the emerging public sphere were not only from the bhadralok but included a much more international presence with people like Dharmapala and Dharmacharyya, art historian Ananda Coomaraswamy and others. This lent a global aspect to these discussions.

Colonial Calcutta was witness to wide-ranging discussions on Buddhism and comparative religion in the burgeoning media, that is newspapers, journals, pamphlets and modern publishing, and in venues like the new university in Calcutta, study circles and religious reform societies.