Author: Balbir K Punj
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: April 22, 2006
What can be more astonishing between a saint
confusing people and a rogue speaking the truth? Two such unexpected observations
became media bytes recently. The Dalai Lama, on a month-long trip to the US
and South America, said at San Francisco and Chicago that Islam is a religion
of compassion which is being unfairly marginalised by few extremists. Ye Xiaowen,
the Director of State Administration for Religious Affairs, recently said
that Buddhism can reduce social divisions in China better than Islam and Christianity,
adding Buddhism can help believers cope with fast-changing society plagued
by wealth gap and social unrest.
In the past, the Dalai Lama has criticised
both Christianity and Islam for their evangelisation and conversion programmes.
Communist China has persecuted all religions including Buddhism. But now,
faced with Christian evangelisation and Islamic resurgence, China wants to
promote Buddhism, which is also in sync with the ageless Chinese ethos. Intriguingly,
Buddhism can help cope with psychological problems amongst people of China,
the country with highest execution and suicide rate.
I hold the Dalai Lama in the highest esteem.
However, his certification of Islam left me bewildered. It might be true that
only a minuscule section of Muslims is indulging in suicide bombing. But why
is this section not inspired to work among the sick, poor, illiterate and
lepers like Christians? The answer would seem to lie in the analysis of the
lives of Jesus Christ and Mohammed, which adherents of the respective religions
follow. Why is there a difference between Yasser Arafat and the Dalai Lama
when both Palestine and Tibet are "occupied territories"?
I was going through the schedule of the Dalai
Lama's forthcoming tours on his website. After visiting the US, he is going
to Latin America, then Belgium before returning to India. He then goes to
France and the US. Early this year, he visited Israel where he addressed an
audience at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. But does he visit Islamic countries
like Syria, Morocco, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan? Will he be heard
in these countries the way he is in Europe and America? Israelis visit Dharamsala
in droves. But do Arabs visit him? It is the same story with Hindu monks as
well, who fly from India to England, France and the US (leaving the stretch
between Pakistan and Morocco).
There can be no bitter irony than a Buddhist
monk defending Islam as religion of compassion. Except for mountainous pockets
like Ladakh, Tibet and the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Buddhism disappeared
from India under the sword of Islam. BR Ambedkar, who later embraced Buddhism
along with his followers, writes in the essay, 'The Decline and Fall of Buddhism',
"There can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism in India was due to
the invasions of the Musalmans. Islam came out as the enemy of the 'but'.
The word 'but', as everybody knows, is an Arabic word and means an idol. Not
many people, however, know what the derivation of the world 'but' is. 'But'
is the Arabic corruption of Buddha. Thus the origin of the word indicates
that in Moslem mind idol worship had come to be identified with the Religion
of Buddha. To the Muslims, they were one and the same thing. The mission to
break the idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism. Islam destroyed
Buddhism not only in India but wherever it went. Before Islam came into being,
Buddhism was the religion of Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhar and Chinese
Turkestan, as it was of the whole of Asia. In all these countries Islam destroyed
Buddhism... (Writings and Speeches, Vol 3, p 230)
He continues: "The Musalman invaders
sacked the Buddhist Universities of Nalanda, Vikramsila, Jagaddala, Odantipur
to name a few. They razed to the ground Buddhist monasteries with which the
country was studded. The monks fled away in thousands to Nepal, Tibet and
other places outside India. Muslim commanders killed a very large number outright.
How the Buddhist priesthood perished by the sword of the Muslim invaders has
been recorded by the Muslim historians themselves...".
Seen in this light the destruction of Bamiyan
Buddha by the Taliban in February 2001 does not seem out of place. Smashing
the head of Brahma in Thao Maha Brahma or Phra Phrom Erawan Shrine in Bangkok
on March 21, the "mentally disturbed" Muslim youth who did it, proved
there is a method in this madness. It reflects the atavistic iconoclastic
behaviour of Islam. The tragedy of Chakmas (Buddhists) in CHT is also on predictable
lines. It will be interesting to know whether the Buddhists of Ladakh and
CHT too feel Islam as a religion of compassion.
Peace Campaign Group (PCG) is a New Delhi-based
organisation run by Chakmas, who are Buddhist monks as well, but who fled
Bangladesh due to Islamic persecution in the early 1990s. They later obtained
Indian citizenships and now actively focus on human rights violation in CHT.
PCG recently demanded a Darfur-like UN intervention in CHT, which has been
a victim of Islamic demographic aggression, systematically carried out by
Bangladesh. Bhante Bhikkhu Prajnalankar, general secretary of PCG, travels
around the world on a shoestring budget, to highlight the plight of his people
in Bangladesh. A monk, he has no inclination to teach the world Zen and Nirvana.
Pursuing Nirvana, he says, will not help when the ground beneath your feet
is taken away.
Buddhist Thailand is more aware. It has a
no-nonsense approach towards the Islamic secessioism in the south - Narathiwat,
Pattani, Songhkla and Yala. Buddhists civilians are frequent targets of Muslim
attacks in Narathiwat province of Thailand. But the Thai Government's approach
is as decisive as it could be in a democracy. On October 26, 2004, Thailand
police entered a historic mosque in Pattani where recalcitrant elements had
made a stronghold, and flushed them out. Seventy-eight detained Muslims perished,
many of them crushed and suffocated, after hundreds of detainees were loaded
in two trucks. Thailand rejected any UN probe into the massacre of Islamist
militants in southern Thailand.
Buddhism is a compassionate religion; with
its stress on non-violence, it was ill-prepared to meet Islam militarily.
The Dalai Lama's comments reminds me of Gandhi, whose message of compassion
found no takers amongst Muslims. Speaking about Gandhi's tour of England during
Second Round Table Conference, Subhas Chandra Bose said, "During his
stay in England, he had to play two roles in one person, the role of a political
leader and that of a world-teacher. Sometimes he conducted himself not as
a political leader who had come to negotiate with the enemy, but as a master
who had come to preach a new faith - that of non-violence and world-peace."
(The Indian Struggle 1920-1942, p 252). The Dalai Lama is playing world teacher,
more than Tibetan supreme leader, and this time he has gone overboard.
