Buddha's birthplace courts controversy

   
Buddha's birthplace courts controversy

Author: Sudha Ramachandran
Source: Asian Times Online. <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MK17Df01.html>
Date: Nov 17, 2011


BANGALORE - Nepal's Lumbini project, a plan to develop the birthplace of the Buddha, has an unlikely champion. Former Maoist supremo and current chairperson of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M), Pushpa Kamal Dahal, is courting international support and controversy.

Dahal was in New York last week to meet United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to mobilize support for the Lumbini project. Ban is reported to have agreed to attend an international meeting in Lumbini early next year and play a "lead role in support of Nepal's initiative", a statement issued by Nepal's permanent mission to the UN said.

An important place of pilgrimage for Buddhists, Lumbini was declared a World Heritage site in 1997 by the United Nations


Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Located 200 kilometers southwest of Nepal's capital Kathmandu and 20 km north of the Indian border, Lumbini has an array of millennia-old monuments.

There is the Mahadevi temple complex, where a stone marks the site where Siddhartha Gautama was born. Sculptures of Queen Mayadevi dating back to the 4th century AD and an infant Siddhartha are located here. A pillar erected by the Mauryan emperor Asoka commemorates his visit to Buddha's birthplace and bears the first epigraphic evidence relating to the birthplace of Buddha. But crass commercialization and ostentation evident in new buildings prompted a Western scholar of Himalayan Buddhism to lament that Lumbini was on its way to becoming a "religious Disneyland".

Lumbini is embroiled in complex controversies of late. In July this year, the media in China and Nepal reported an agreement signed by a Hong Kong-based foundation, the Asia Pacific Exchange and Cooperation Foundation (APECF), which is believed to have China's backing, and the China chapter of UNIDO, the UN's industrial development organization, for the investment of US$3 billion in Lumbini.

The plan was to develop Lumbini into a "special development zone" that would include construction of highways, hotels, an airport, convention centers, power projects, and a Buddhist university.

The multi-billion dollar project came under fire in Nepal. Neither the Nepal government nor local authorities or even the Lumbini Development Trust (LDT) had been consulted by APECF. Besides, it emerged that APECF's co-chairmen included two of Nepal's most controversial personalities, Maoist hardliner Dahal and the much-reviled former crown prince, Paras Bir Bikram Shah.
Barely had the dust kicked up by APECF settled than another controversy arose. In October, Nepal's new prime minister Baburam Bhattarai - leading a coalition headed by the UCPN-M that came to power end-August - announced a six-member Lumbini Development National Directive Committee under the leadership of Dahal. The appointment has evoked anger and concern in some quarters in Nepal.

Critics point out that there is already a plan for Lumbini, with the LDT to implement it. There are any number of UN organizations and committees involved in Lumbini. In the circumstances, there is no need for yet another 'high-powered' committee, they argue.

But more controversial is the appointment of Dahal as the head of the latest Lumbini committee.

Dahal, whose nom de guerre was Prachanda, or the "Fierce One", is hardly the kind of person who represents values that Lumbini symbolizes. Critics feel that a person who led the Maoist war and presided over the killing of thousands of civilians and worse, who has never repented the violent path, should not be the face of Lumbini.

Unlike his comrades, like Bhattarai for instance, who were moderates and have made the transformation to democratic politics fully, Dahal, though part of the mainstream today, is yet to distance himself unequivocally from violence.

"Dahal carries political and ethical baggage that now threatens to smear the very idea of Lumbini," points out Himal editor Kanak Dixit in a recent article in Republica. "The record of an unrepentant, utilitarian Dahal is as yet far, far removed from the lofty values of peace and ahimsa" that the world associates with the birthplace of Buddha.

"Lumbini would inject an emotional faith-based element to Dahal's [otherwise violent] image, and for him the trick is to achieve this without having to express remorse, and evading accountability for having unleashed a 'people's war' on the people," Dixit argues. "This attempt to hijack Lumbini is nothing but a very wily man's bid for a fake cleansing in the eyes of the world without abandoning his plans for a totalitarian grip over the society."

Attempts to develop Lumbini go back several decades. It is said that UN secretary general U Thant, a Buddhist, visited Lumbini in 1967 and reportedly wept on seeing the dilapidated condition of Buddha's birthplace. On returning to New York he set in motion efforts for developing Lumbini as an international peace site.

An International Committee for the Development of Lumbini was set up at the UN to energize the process and renowned Japanese architect, Kenzo Tange, who had designed the Hiroshima peace park, was roped in to draw up a masterplan for Lumbini's development. The aim of Lumbini's development was to preserve the ancient monuments even as the site was made accessible to pilgrims and tourists.

But little positive development has occurred in Lumbini in the decades since. Mired in corruption, it evokes despair rather than spiritual upliftment.

A part of the problem lies in Tange's plan for Lumbini. This includes a monastic zone that is divided into the eastern and western zones. While the former is reserved for construction of Theravada monasteries, the latter is dedicated to those of the Mahayana tradition.

This has ''sparked competition among sects'' and encouraged "factionalism - that, too, based on nationality", Rachana Pathak wrote in Himal magazine. "Visiting pilgrim and tourist groups tend to be restricted to their national monasteries. Korean pilgrims stay in Korean temples, Thais in Thai, making quick forays into the Mayadevi temple, which is really the only 'secular' place amidst the tussle of nationalities."

Besides, Tange's plan involved massive funds and was hugely donor-dependent. Thus the richest are the most visible here. "The monastic zone is dominated by Japanese Mahayana sects. Vajrayana, the Himalaya's own distinctive contribution to Buddhism, is the most neglected," Pathak pointed out. Not only did Tange's plan indirectly encourage "boastful competition" among the various sects of Buddhism but also it privileged the moneyed.

The Lumbini project is of deep interest to many outside Nepal. India and China are among a host of countries that are keen to ramp up their role in Lumbini.

For India, interest in Lumbini is two-fold. Given its proximity to the Indian border, it is keen to keep China out of the project. Besides, its sees itself as the home of Buddhism. Although Buddha was born in Nepal, it was in India that all the other important milestones in his life, whether his enlightenment, first sermon or death happened. And it was from India that Buddhism spread to other parts of South, Southeast and East Asia.

Buddhism forms a core component of India's soft power diplomacy in Asia and it is keen to be a part of the project in Lumbini.

Like India, China - with an eye at winning hearts not only in other Asian countries but also in Tibet - is keen to project a Buddhist-friendly image of itself. It is reported to have renovated in recent years scores of Buddhist shrines destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and is involved in the revival of the Nalanda project in India.

China has its own connections with Lumbini that go back many centuries. Chinese scholars Tseng Tsai (2nd century AD), Fa Hein (5th century AD) and Hiuen Tsang (7th century AD) visited Lumbini and wrote about it. But it is its deep pockets that is China's greatest advantage over India.

Already India and China are locked in a tussle for influence in Nepal. This is likely to extend to and intensify over the Lumbini project.

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. She can be reached at sudha98@hotmail.com

(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)