Editing Adi-Hindu Movement (section)

== Bodhananda and the Buddhist Wing ==

=== Identity and Sources ===

The sources name the monk differently. Ober and the ''Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism'' write "Bodhananda", the latter listing "Bodhananda Mahastavir (1874–1952)" among the pioneers whose example Dalit Buddhist organizations invoke.<ref name="Handbook">Geary, [Given name], & [Given name] Mukherjee (2017). "Buddhism in Contemporary India". In: Jerryson, Michael (Ed.), ''The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism'': 36–57. Oxford University Press, p. 50.</ref> Hunt and Gooptu write "Swami Bodhanand". No source consulted states that the "Swami Bodhanand" of Hunt and Gooptu and the "Bhadant Bodhananda Mahastavir" of Ober are one person. Ober, however, quotes Hunt on the same book and the same collaboration with Jigyasu, which indicates that he treats them as one man, and this page follows that reading while noting that it is an inference.<ref name="Ober2023">Ober, Douglas (2023). ''Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India''. Stanford University Press, ch. 5, pp. 205–214.</ref> Much of what follows rests on Ober, with Hunt and Gooptu as independent partial accounts; Geetha's account is drawn from Ober's earlier dissertation and is second-hand.<ref>Geetha (2021), ''Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar'', pp. 266–267 (her n. 55 on p. 267 gives Ober's 2016 dissertation as her source).</ref>

=== Life ===

According to Ober, Bodhananda (1874–1952) was born Mukund Prakash Lahiri to a Bengali Brahmin family and was orphaned young.<ref name="Ober2023" /> He passed through Brahmoism, the Arya Samaj, Theosophy, Christianity, and the life of a Vaishnava ''sadhu'' (as "Nil Bodhananda") before turning to Buddhism after meeting Sinhalese monks at Sarnath during the famines of the 1890s. He took full ordination in Calcutta, in the Ramanna Nikaya, under Kripasaran and Gunalankar, possibly with Anagarika Dharmapala present. The year of his conversion is uncertain: Geetha, following Ober's dissertation, says he became a Buddhist in 1916, while Ober's book dates his conversion to the 1890s and gives 1916 as the year he founded his society.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', pp. 205–214; Geetha (2021), ''Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar'', p. 266.</ref>

In 1916 he founded the Bharatiya Bauddha Samiti (Indian Buddhist Society) in Lucknow, and in 1924–25 its vihara at Risaldar Park. Ober describes the Samiti as the organizational centre of anti-caste Buddhism in the United Provinces, serving oilmen, ropemakers, betel-nut sellers, porters, boatmen, and potters, and reproduces its nine founding goals.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', pp. 205–213 (the goals at pp. 206–207).</ref> Geetha lists among its aims the removal of casteism and of feelings of hierarchical difference, and the comparative study of Buddhism in relation to present-day science.<ref>Geetha (2021), ''Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar'', p. 266.</ref> Hunt describes the Lucknow mission, with its library and newspaper, as continued after his death by his adopted son, Mahathera Pragyanand, and as co-edited with G.P. Prashant in the late 1950s; her wording does not make clear whether this period follows or overlaps his lifetime.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', p. 46.</ref>

=== Writings and Ideas ===

Bodhananda's best-known work is ''Mool Bharatvasi aur Arya'' ("The Original Inhabitants of India and the Aryans", 1930), which argues that the Dalits and Shudras were the original Buddhist inhabitants of India, oppressed by conquering Aryans and Brahmins. It includes a chapter that recasts the medieval sant poets Kabir, Nanak, Dadu, and Namdev as Bodhisattvas carrying on the Buddha's mission.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 213.</ref> Hunt calls it "the most important historical text of the Adi Hindu movement".<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', p. 39 (quoted in Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 213).</ref> Ober also records a Hindi translation of the ''Dhammapada'' (c. 1928), a life of the Buddha, ''Bhagavan Gautam Buddh'' (1933), and a manual of Buddhist practice, ''Bauddhacharyapaddhati'' (1947).<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', pp. 205–214 and bibliography.</ref> According to Bhagwan Das, as reported by Hunt, the ''Bauddhacharyapaddhati'' was among the first Hindi books to instruct Dalits in Buddhist festivals and rituals.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', p. 46 (citing Das 1998, pp. 18–19, 68).</ref> Geetha, following Ober, reports that he presented the Buddha as the founder of the old and true religion of the subcontinent, destroyed by the Brahmins, which makes his position the Buddhist counterpart of Achhutanand's anti-Vedic, anti-Brahmin history of the original inhabitants.<ref>Geetha (2021), ''Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar'', p. 266.</ref> In the sources read, Bodhananda's writing shows no Marxist or socialist element.

=== Relations with Others ===

Ober reports that Bodhananda met Ambedkar in 1920 at the Kolhapur Non-Brahmin Conference.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', ch. 5; see also [[BR Ambedkar|B.R. Ambedkar]].</ref> Geetha adds that Ambedkar stayed in touch with him and discussed his plan to convert.<ref>Geetha (2021), ''Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar'', p. 269.</ref> The claim that Ambedkar had hoped Bodhananda would officiate at the conversion of 1956 rests on a single second-hand report by Shanti Swarup Bauddh, relayed by Ober; Bodhananda died in 1952, and U Chandramani administered the precepts at Nagpur.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 214.</ref> Hunt says that Bodhananda introduced Jigyasu to Ambedkar.<ref>Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', pp. 38–39.</ref> Ober also dates [[Rahul Sankrityayan]]'s meeting with Bodhananda in Lucknow in 1917 as the trigger of Sankrityayan's lifelong Buddhist engagement, and records that Yashpal acquired much of his knowledge of Buddhism from him in Lucknow.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', p. 332 n. 24.</ref> From 1935 he wrote for ''Dharmadoot'', the Hindi Buddhist journal of the Sarnath branch of the [[Maha Bodhi Society]], alongside Har Dayal, Sankrityayan, Jagdish Kashyap, P.C. Bagchi, [[Narendra Deva]], and Jigyasu.<ref>Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', pp. 195, 210.</ref>