While addressing the Abhidhamma Divas in Delhi in early November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke on the historic significance of conferring classical language status on Pali. He mentioned how in the past one decade, an intense and successful effort has seen the preservation and dissemination of many dimensions of Buddha’s sacred legacy.

He drew a very interesting symbolic link when he said that along with Pali, Marathi was also conferred the status of Classical Language and that Babasaheb Ambedkar’s mother tongue was Marathi while he took his Dhamma-Deeksha in Pali. It was a poignant observation.

Among the last public programme that Babasaheb Dr Ambedkar attended and addressed was the one at the Mahabodhi Society’s Mulagandhavihar Kuthi, at Sarnath on 25 November 1956. As the description goes, the programme was ‘held under the Dhammek Stupa within the Mahabodhi Buddha Vihara premises.’ Lord Buddha had delivered his first message in his hallowed precincts.

Dr Dharmarakkhita, (1923-1977) eminent educationist, Buddhist scholar and thinker associated with the Maha Bodhi Society of India, introduced Dr Ambedkar. Dr Dharmarakkhita had met Babasaheb at the Kushinagar Vihara in 1943. Babasaheb had then encouraged his research and writing. Dr Dharmarakkhita welcoming Babasaheb said that India was witnessing a ‘resurrection of Buddhism after a lapse of twenty-five hundred years post Lord Buddha’s great demise (Mahaparinibbana). And the Bodhisatta who has taken up this task upon himself is present himself before us in the person of Babasaheb…’

Earlier that day, Dr Ambedkar had inaugurated the Kashi University Students Union and concluded his address lamenting on how Muslim invaders had carried out an onslaught on Buddhism and had destroyed one of its most imposing centres of learning with a global renown. In India, Dr Ambedkar told his eager audience:

Buddhism suffered the severest onslaught from Islam. When the Muslims invaded India, the first people they encountered were followers of Buddhism. The invaders’ word for an idol (or icon) was ‘but’ and ‘butshikan’ for an iconoclast. I think they were ‘ghazi-ists’. They were more vehement than the Hindus in their attack on Buddhists. They massacred the Buddhist bhikkhus during the years from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Historical facts evidence the fact. They also demolished the world-renowned Buddhist University at Nalanda. Like the Hindus, the Buddhists did not have Brahmins who would preach the doctrine conventionally. Following the massacre of the Buddhist monks, Buddhism declined fast…

Historians of Buddhism in India have attested to this destruction leading to the decline of great institutions of learning and knowledge. Bakhtyar Khilji’s ‘attack on the Buddhist monasteries, attested to by both the Muslim and Buddhist sources, is generally considered responsible for the final extinction of Buddhism in India.’A British explorer and Tibetologist L Waddell writes, that the:

Muhammadan invasion swept over India in the latter half of the twelfth century A.D. and effectually stamped Buddhism out of the country. The fanatical idol-hating Afghan soldiery especially attacked the Buddhist monasteries, with their teeming idols, and they massacred the monks wholesale…

Dr Ambedkar, felt that now after a hiatus of six hundred years India ‘is recalling the Buddha’ and by embracing his essential doctrine would her future be bright.

The last decade has seen an indefatigable and successful effort by Prime Minister Modi to preserve and disseminate the Buddha legacy in its myriad dimensions. The resurrection of the Nalanda University in its modern shape is a historic response to Dr Ambedkar’s lament on how Buddhism’s greatest world university was destroyed by Muslim ghazis. Nalanda symbolized a thought, it was a dominant beacon signifying civilisational India’s stature as a centre of knowledge, an epicentre of wisdom and a pre-eminent knowledge society of the ancient world.

The rise of Nalanda today, PM Modi’s drive to launch it with the aspiration to make it evolve into a similar seat of knowledge is one of the greatest feats in this saga of preserving and disseminating the Buddha legacy. That destruction in the past signified the decimation of Buddhism, its revival today in a modern framework symbolizes the resurrection of the Nalanda thought as an indestructible and ever-expanding dimension, propelling India’s civilisational rise. The rise of Nalanda University is thus one of the most significant and lasting tribute to Dr Ambedkar’s vision.

While speaking on the significance of conferring the classical language status on Pali, PM Modi movingly spoke of how it was our ‘responsibility to keep the Pali language alive to keep the words of Lord Buddha alive in their original spirit.’ This was the deeper symbolism of the declaration. It was this that needs to drive future efforts at preserving and popularizing Pali.

Looking at history, some interesting parallels come to the fore. The first department of Pali to be established in India was in the University of Calcutta in 1907. Initiated by its then Vice Chancellor, Asutosh Mookerjee (1864-1924) an avant-garde educationist, modernizer and nationalist. Asutosh Mookerjee, as the second president of the Maha Bodhi Society supported Anagarika Dharmapala’s (1864-1933) quest for reviving Buddhism in its land of birth and encouraged the founding and growth of Buddhist studies in India. It was Kripasaran Mahasthavir (1865-1927), the iconic founder of the Bauddha Dharmankur Sabha and of the influential Buddhist periodical ‘Jagajjyoti’ who introduced the young Beni Madhav Barua to Asutosh Mookerjee. It was with Asutosh’s support that Barua ‘proceeded to England as a state scholar and the joined the University of London.’ Barua was awarded D. Litt in 1917 by the University of London for his thesis on ‘Indian Philosophy – its Original Growth from the Vedas to the Buddha.’ It is said that B.M. Barua was the first Indian Buddhist to obtain a D. Litt. Asutosh Mookerjee was himself attracted to Buddhism because of his meetings with Kripasaran who had moved to Calcutta in 1886. Asutosh Mookerjee, along with other eminent Bengali public personalities played ‘central roles’ in the Bauddha Dharmankur Sabha.

On his return to India, Barua joined the Department of Pali at the University of Calcutta and developed it as a leading centre for Buddhist and Pali studies in those days, with himself emerging as a foremost scholar in the subject. Both Asutosh Mookerjee and his illustrious statesman-educationist son Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901-1953) later, did much to promote the study of Pali and Buddhist studies. Syama Prasad was also a successful Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University and later became, for over a decade, one of the most active presidents of the Maha Bodhi Society of India.  In those days, Calcutta University and its Pali department, was a principal centre for Buddhist studies. It saw a large confluence of monks and samaneras from across Indias neighbourhood who undertook studies in these subjects.

An interesting historical link is that of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the indefatigable Devapriya Valisinha (1904-1956), a direct disciple of Anagarika Dharmapala and the longest serving general secretary of the Maha Bodhi Society of India. Valisinha served as general secretary for thirty-five long years. It was during his tenure, that Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee served as president of the Maha Bodhi Society between 1942-1953. They collaborated closely during those years, undertaking various historic outreach in preserving and rekindling the Buddha legacy in India and southeast Asia.

Devapriya Valisinha was well-known to Dr Ambedkar. He had requested Dr Ambedkar, in 1950, to ‘contribute an article to the Maha Bodhi journal’ and was present at the historic occasion of Dr Ambedkar’s Dhamma-Deeksha in Nagpur on October 14 1956 and welcomed him into the fold of Buddha. In fact, Dr Ambedkar wrote to Valisinha, expressing ‘his desire that Maha Bodhi Society of India should participate in the function.’

The conferring of the status of classical language on Pali is also a symbolic tribute to legions of scholars, scholar-monks who have dedicate a lifetime to its preservation and popularization. In an article he wrote in 1956, Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan (1905-1988) among the leading propagators and scholars of Buddhism in India lamented the propensity to neglect Pali and to marginalize it. He wrote:

It is indeed strange that the unique place that Pali occupies in Indian literature is not appreciated and valued as it should be in India. It is not realised that the Pali language and literature have not only influenced modern Indian languages, but have also affected the growth of the languages of Ceylon, Burma and Siam. It is but natural that its intensive study should help us in strengthening our cultural ties with our neighbours.

In conferring the classical status honour on Pali Prime Minister Modi has also fulfilled that hope, giving a fillip to an intensive study of Pali, which will, it is hoped, lead to further strengthening and deepening of India’s the civilisational and cultural bond with her civilisational partners.

In rekindling the Nalanda tradition through reviving the Nalanda University and in making relentless efforts to preserve Buddha’s legacy by evoking a sense of collective responsibility towards it, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has and is fulfilling Dr Ambedkar’s hopes. He has amplified and magnified an attempt and effort, made long back, by a number of epoch-making thinkers and statesmen, whose lineage he and his efforts represent and symbolise.

[1] D.C. Ahir, The Pioneers of Buddhist Revival in India, Delhi, 1989.

[2] Babasaheb Dr Ambedkar’s The Kathmandu Speech, New Delhi, 2015.

[3] Alaka Chattopadhyaya, Atisa and Tibet, Kolkata, 1967.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Babasaheb Dr Ambedkar’s The Kathmandu Speech, New Delhi, 2015.

[6] D.C. Ahir, The Pioneers of Buddhist Revival in India, Delhi, 1989.

[7] Steven Kemper, Rescued from the Nation: Anagarika Dharmapala and the Buddhist World, Chicago, 2015

[8] D.C. Ahir, The Pioneers of Buddhist Revival in India, Delhi, 1989.

[9] Dhananjay Keer, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Life & Mission, (1954), Mumbai, 1962.

[10] Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, Essays on Buddhism, (ed. D.C.Ahir), Delhi, 1997.