Democracy's Dhamma

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

AvGitanjali Surendran

Inbunden, Engelska, 2025

Del i serien South Asian Intellectual History

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Beskrivning

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

Utgivningsdatum:2025-01-02
Mått:157 x 235 x 26 mm
Vikt:747 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:South Asian Intellectual History
Antal sidor:368
Förlag:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9781009424950

Utforska kategorier

Religion: allmänt inom Filosofi och religion
Buddhism inom Filosofi och religion

Mer om författaren

Gitanjali Surendran is Professor of History at O.P. Jindal Global University. Her research interests are modern South Asian cultural and intellectual history, environmental and gender history. She is also interested in public history and is exploring ways to bring academic history into public discourse. She is the author of Anand Bhawan: An Intimate History (Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 2018).

Recensioner i media

'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)

Innehållsförteckning

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.