Journey
Modern Buddhist revival — Bodh Gaya, Calcutta, Nagpur
Buddhism had effectively disappeared from the country of its origin by about 1300. Its return in the twentieth century came from two directions that barely met: a Sri Lankan campaigning to recover Bodh Gayā, and an Indian jurist who concluded that caste could not be reformed from inside Hinduism. Ambedkar's conversion at Nagpur in 1956 brought some four hundred thousand people with him in a single afternoon.
Stops (3)
- Anagārika Dharmapāla · Anagārika Dharmapāla — the campaign for Bodh Gayā
A Sinhalese who found the Mahābodhi temple in Hindu mahant custody in 1891 and spent the rest of his life in litigation and agitation to recover it for Buddhists. He invented the anagārika status — homeless but not ordained — for himself, and addressed the 1893 Chicago Parliament of Religions alongside Vivekānanda.
- Mahabodhi Society, Calcutta · The Mahabodhi Society — Calcutta, 1891
Founded by Dharmapāla to press the Bodh Gayā claim and to reconnect Buddhists across Asia, with its headquarters in Calcutta because that is where the colonial courts and the presses were. It rebuilt vihāras at Sārnāth and elsewhere, and its journal carried the campaign across the Buddhist world.
- Deekshābhūmi, Nagpur · Deekshābhūmi — 14 October 1956
Ambedkar took Buddhist vows at Nagpur with several hundred thousand followers, administering twenty-two vows that explicitly renounce the Hindu deities and caste. He died seven weeks later. The stupa built on the site is among the largest in Asia, and the conversion continues annually.