Democracy's Dhamma

Buddhism in the Making of Modern India, c. 1890–1956

Inbunden, Engelska, 2025

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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 like 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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2025-01-02
Mått157 x 235 x 26 mm
Vikt747 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieSouth Asian Intellectual History
Antal sidor368
FörlagCambridge University Press
ISBN9781009424950

Tillhör följande kategorier

Religion: allmänt inom Filosofi och religion
Buddhism inom Filosofi och religion
Asiens historia inom Historia och arkeologi

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.

'Democracy's Dhamma is a lively account of the emergence of what we might call a modern Buddhist cosmos in South and South-east Asia. Through the mapping of pilgrimage and memory circuits, tales of unusual lives and journeys into the dhamma, and a review of ideas to do with Buddhism in the time of democracy and socialism, Gitanjali Surendran has created an unusual diorama-for us to re-examine the making of modern India. Buddhism by the Bay (of Bengal), a formulation that the book invokes, helps situate anti-colonial and anti-caste thought and struggles in India within a wider and older geography.' V. Geetha, feminist historian and writer, author of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and the Question of Socialism in India (2021)