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Fading Curve of Buddhism in India / 101
15. Fading Curve of Buddhism in India
Rajendra K. Sharma
A New Dawn:- Buddhism, which burst forth on the Indian spiritual firmament like a meteor, had an equally precipitous fall and relapsed into a sudden quietitude of public apathy and amnesia. It disappeared from India, the place of its origin with a startling speed that surprised even its worst detractors. It was certainly not a consummation most devoutly to be wished for a belief system that arose as a reaction to Brahammanical orthodoxy and domination of Hindu society as also the rigidification of its spiritual precepts. It was a religion, shorn of personal divinity of the of its chief protagonist Lord Buddha, who unlike Prophet Mohammed who claimed to be the messenger of God or Jesus Christ who called himself the son of God, remained essentially humane and commonplace, with no pretensions of any identification with the Creator through the route of incarnation as in Hinduism. He was unlike Rama or Krishna who were depicted as Gods in human form. It was essentially the religion of the common man with no elitist pretensions of a super human identity. In Buddhism, orthodoxy gave way to doctrinaire flexibility and rigid fixations of divinity and otherworldliness were replaced by routinisation of charisma. There was no attempt at defication of Lord Buddha who remained essentially a human being whose simplicity and earthliness was indeed remarkable. Bereft of the halo of personal divinity of the originator, it was verily the religion of the common man, not tied to the apron strings of a rigid caste order, resting on the ideas of high and low, which was the characteristic of post Vedic Hinduism. A highly segmented religion which encompasses myriad caste congeries, creating the differential of status, Hinduism became too elitist and exclusive. Buddhism, shunned caste rigidification and Brahamanical ritualism and its rigidity and was too compliant of a common man's urges and aspirations. Its all-incorporating character came as a big boon and solace to the ritually low-ranked underdogs who for the first time got an opportunity for an easy transition to equality and upper mobility. The down-trodden had as much spiritual space as the upper caste individuals and women suffering no stigma of weaker sex, were not to be used as to the plaything of the domineering male. Here there was no recognition of an officious patriarchy resting on the pretence of superior power. The essential and in-built inegalitarianism of caste ridden Hinduism gave way to a simplistic, ritual free belief system whose fundamental core was universalism and equality, a just place for all votaries, with no sex segregation and caste discrimination. The loud noise of temple rantings gave way to the serenity, solemnity and silent quietitude of a less ostentatious, less pretentious, ritual free religion resting on simple precepts. It rested on consensus-building among the devotees and votaries whose ideology was free from the rigidity of orthodox Hinduism.
