Buddhism in India

Colonial Challenges and Buddhist Revival 225

to the Arya Samaj or Brahmo Samaj, but they had no inherent

compulsions to defend the existing tradition. Some trends of

conversion to Christianity developed; others sought to create their

own mixed religion. The characteristics of the religion or moral

foundation they sought had to include reason and equality—‘Homo

Hierarchus’ was not for them. Beginning with the role played by

Jotiba Phule, this chapter will trace this search for a rational and

equalitarian religion which climaxed, at the close of the 19th century,

with Buddhism itself.

But first it is necessary to look at a powerful, mass-based movement

of social protest in Orissa, which was a transitional phase between

medieval bhakti movements and the rise of modern revolutionary

protest.

Orissa: Bhima Bhoi and

the Revolt against Caste

Once at the forefront of Indian growth, leading in trade and

commerce with southeast Asia and China, Orissa, included along

with neighbouring Bengal in the same province, had been relegated

to a backward position under colonialism. Commercial agriculture

and industry were much slower to get established in the Oriya-

speaking areas and because the British first established their

foothold in Bengal, Bengalis quickly came to dominate in education

and employment in the whole province. It was in this context that

the Mahima Dharma movement in the 19th century represented

a transition between a bhakti movement and modern social revolt,

a revolt in traditional form against Brahmanical tyranny and

superstition.

Its founder, known as Mahima Gosavi, began his preaching in

1862 in the former feudal states of Orissa. He preached a formless,

unknowable, indescribable (alekha) nirgunadeity, and refused any

organisation except for two ways of ordaining his disciples, as

kaupinadhari(cloth wearers) and kumbhipatias(bark wearers).

He included Buddhist practices in his organisation, for instance

begging for cooked food and holding a ceremony of confession,

and did not recognise any caste distinctions. In the social turmoil

caused by colonialism and a major famine in 1866, the movement

succeeded in winning followers among the groups known today as

Brahmanism or (to use a later word) Hinduism, became the symbol of

nationalism. It was indeed a national religion with its appeal to all

those deep instincts, racial and cultural, which form the basis of

nationalism today. Buddhism...was essentially international, a world

religion, and as it developed and spread it became increasingly so.

Thus it was natural for the old Brahmanic faith to become the

symbol, again and again, of nationalist revivals (ibid.: 91–92).

Proclaiming Hinduism, or Brahmanism, as nationalism was the
underlying theme of the 19th and 20th century development of the
Indian nationalist movement.

Non-Brahman and Dalit Responses

While education under British rule was very heavily dominated by
upper castes, some former ‘Shudras’ and ex-untouchables gradu-
ally began to get access. Some of these became spokesmen for new
mass movements of emancipation. These movements took many
forms, with Dalits joining non-Brahmans to demand access to
education and public employment, and Dalits fighting on their own
for land (usually demands were made for shares in the common
or ‘waste’ lands of the village), for access to public water tanks and
other facilities. At an ideological level, the movements’ radical leaders,
and especially the Dalits, cared little on the whole for the traditions
of hierarchy that the elite were trying to maintain. For many of
them, the European attack on Brahmanical dominance and super-
stitious backwardness provided welcome fuel for their own battles.
The ‘modernistic’ themes of historical rationality and progress,
along with the proclaimed values of the French revolution, were
new ideological weapons, and they were not slow to use them. The
fact that these often linked religious condemnations of Brahmanical
teachings to racial theories of caste was, if anything, an added
attraction.
One of the remarkable features of all low-caste movements from
the 19th century was the search for an alternate dharma. They felt,
in contrast to the elite, that the ‘modern world’ required a new and
rationalistic religion that could not be provided by the developing
construction of ‘Hinduism’; in the 19th century this was inter-
preted as monotheism or deism. Many Dalits and Bahujans
explored Advaita and the bhakti movement; some were attracted

224 Buddhism in India