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"In 1956, B. R. Ambedkar publicly converted to Buddhism, raising questions about his turn from constitutionalism to religion. The answer lies in Buddhism itself. In the late colonial era, the struggle to produce an appropriate Buddhism for a nation-in-the-making reveals a secret history foundational to modern India. Thinkers, activists, reformers, pilgrims and monks from around South, Southeast and East Asia discussed universalism, nationalism, modernity, democracy and caste radicalism and advocated an Indian return to Buddhism and the Buddha. This book traces this genealogy through the Buddhist itineraries and political projects of figures such as Anagarika Dharmapala, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vinayak D. Savarkar, Rahul Sankrityayan and Ambedkar to reveal how Buddhism emerged as democracy's dhamma, the religion of democracy"--
Sommario
List of Figures; Acknowledgements; List of Abbreviations; Introduction: Buddhism in the Making of Modern India; 1. Anagarika Dharmapala in India; 2. Dharmapala and Vivekananda in an Age of Universalism; 3. Buddhism and the Bhadralok; 4. The Buddhist Bay: Buddhist Mobility across the Bay of Bengal; 5. Buddhist Relics, the Mahabodhi Temple and the Discourse of a Shared Buddhism; 6. Buddhism as a Civil Religion and Hindutva; 7. Buddhism, Anti-Caste Radicalism and Socialism; 8. Ambedkar, Dhamma and Democracy; Conclusion: The Destinies of Buddhism; Bibliography; Index.
Info autore
Gitanjali Surendran is Professor of History at O.P. Jindal Global University. Her research interests are modern South Asian cultural and intellectual history, environmental and gender history. She is also interested in public history and is exploring ways to bring academic history into public discourse. She is the author of Anand Bhawan: An Intimate History (Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 2018).
Riassunto
Democracy's Dhamma is a genealogy of the engagement with Buddhism in modern India illustrating how Buddhist activists experimented through Buddhist ideas and heritage with socialism, liberalism and democracy.
