The Honourable MP from Karnataka and now President of the Indian National Congress (Sonia Gandhi) asks:
“The Hindutva ideologues project Gautam Buddha as the ninth avatar (incarnation) of Lord Vishnu. They accept the eight avatars and respect their thoughts. When it comes to the ninth avatar [Buddha], they not only disagree with the Buddhist thought, but they also make every effort to kill the Buddhist thought. Because the Buddhist thought is scientific”. Why ?
Kharge’s question only exposes his ignorance of both Indian History as well as Hindu Religion and Theology.
In the Hindu pantheon of “Dasaavataara” (the 10 Avatars of Vishnu) , Buddha is not included at all . And much less is he the “eighth avatar” . The Puranas clearly list the dasaavataara to be Matsya, Koorma, Varaaha, Narasimha, Vamana-Trivikrama, Parasurama, Rama, Balarama, Krishna and Kalki, the much awaited avatar of an indefinite future. The Buddha was never accepted as a Vishnu avatar in Hinduism.
The Buddha represented firm anti-Vedic thought and naasthikam or atheism. Buddhism rejected the idea of God and Soul. It’s conception of all life as “dukkha” (a vale of samsaaric suffering and endurance) was in stark and fundamental contrast to the Vedic conception of life as an opportunity to ascend to Vishunu’s “parama padam” — the abode of everlasting bliss. To the Buddha, the monotheistic yet multi-deistic theology of the Vedic path was anathema. He could never have ever been seen to be subscribing the the Vedic theory of avatar —- the descent of God into mortal realms. To thus hold , as Kharge does , that Buddha was denied a place in the “dasaavataara” is not only ludicrous but it is a gross insult to the fundamentals of both religions.
The Buddha was most likely, at some time in history between 1 BCE and 4 CE, simply parachuted into the dasaavataara pantheon by the Buddhist ecclesiastical establishment in India while helplessly witnessing the steep decline and decay of its religious empire under the onslaught that the Advaita Vedantic tradition had unleashed upon it by Adi Sankara in the 5-6th century CE.
The Buddhist orthodoxy was witnessing the deep and growing disillusionment with it of the common people in many parts of India. The cult-hood of Buddha thus became a reflexive reaction. It became suddenly imperative to give Buddha the status of Godhood to convince people that Buddhist thought was not entirely atheistic. Nor was it nihilistic or a doctrine of world-weariness and world-rejection (shoonya vaada). The Buddha as an Avatar was an idea that began to be promoted amongst the people through a deliberate Sangha ploy. It began deifying him as first Tathaagatha and a Vishnu Avatar too himself! Buddha thus turned into an interloper into the ranks of the Dasaavataara replacing Balarama.
Some historians and modern-day religious theorists in India interpret the displacement of Balarama — and replacing him with the Buddha in the Dasaavataara — to be a brief period in history when Hinduism and Buddhism found it merely expedient to appease and accommodate each other — or, co-opt each other — in the face of a common adversary viz. the purvameemaaksaka tradition and schools which in the time of Adi Sankara were making some sort of revanchist comeback and had to be beaten back.
All these well-known facts of India’s history seem to be unknown to the honourable Member of Parliament, Sri Mallikarjun Kharge.
Well, in all fairness, that may all be distant history. And one may be forgiven if one’s knowledge of it is found deficient or scant. But then Mr. Kharge only compounds his display of ignorance when he segues to modern-day history and makes even more ludicrous statements about it! Just read this fulmination of his below:
“At a time, India was poor and the vast majority of its population was starving. It was dependent on the grains provided by America. Jawaharlal Nehru adopted the scientific method to put India on the track of development. The Green Revolution that followed made India starvation-free. Then came the white revolution that phenomenally increased milk production. Sonia Gandhi went for the National Food Security Act to ensure that no person starved in India. These thoughts of Congress leaders were influenced by the scientific thoughts of Buddha. It is said that there are 33 crores of Gods and Goddesses. Why didn’t they provide food to people? Why was India starving despite the large number of Gods and Goddesses? No God can help you if you don’t work hard. Everything goes as per the laws of nature and you cannot change it. It is the scientific thought that Buddha said”.
If this kind of blithe and prejudiced nonsense were to be aired by any ordinary man on the street, it could be dismissed as the ravings of an illiterate mind turned bigoted. But this same arrant nonsense we see is being purveyed publicly by the president of the second most important national political party of India. How can it be let go unnoticed, ignored and un-refuted?
In Mr. Kharge’s vaulting worldview, which is truly more all black than white, Buddhism is Scientific and Hinduism is anti-Science!
If the adherents of the Vedic faith (for Kharge, it becomes ipso facto euphemism for the reviled Manu Smriti!) had been of unscientific mind or aptitude, Mr. Kharge must have the humility and curiosity to ask himself how did they ever come to unravel the following scientific/ mathematical discoveries long before even the Buddha?: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/youth2020/science-diplomacy-and-vedic-knowledge-28801/
1. Law of Gravitation, Newton’s laws of motion, Pythagoras theorem, the value of Pi, the timing of eclipses, distances of stars and planets from the earth and many such laws of astronomy, theories, inventions and discoveries have been found quite accurate by modern scientists when they referred to Vedic literature.
2. Medical science: Many spices which are used in India are also patented by many international companies knowing their benefits on a physical and mental level. The most common example is turmeric and black pepper.
3. The Vedic Scriptures have been shown to be scientifically and historically proven truth. More than 5,000 years ago, in the Vedic scripture called Srimad Bhagavatam (3rd Canto, Chapter 31) the unique information on the development of the embryo was already explained beautifully. Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) was the first westerner to describe the concept of embryology but his research was very limited compared to the literary description mentioned in Mahabharata, Srimad-Bhagavatam, Garbhopanishad.
4. Management has been recognised as a science since the 1950s. (One of the fathers of modern management is guru Peter F. Drucker). As a nation, we have over 5000 years to our credit. Did we not have management scientists in our country before the 20th century? In the ancient Indian scriptures — Ramayana, Mahabharata, the various Upanishads — we found brilliant discussions of management principles, practices and strategies. Chanakya’s management philosophies/principles chronicled in his Arthasaastra were all used to distill modern principles and are in fact being acknowledged and used worldwide today.
5. Modern metallurgists, it is said, have not been able to produce iron of comparable quality to the 22-foot high Iron Pillar of Delhi, which is the largest hand forged block of iron from antiquity.
6. The thousand-pillared hall of Madurai Meenakshi Amman Temple has absolutely Zero ECHO. We can very well gauge from it the knowledge our Vedic ancestors possesses about concepts of sound and acoustic engineering.
Anyway, let’s not forget that Mr.Kharge is in politics. As a self-setting politician the business of truth-speaking has nothing to do with him. The only thing that matters to him is of course to make politically correct statements in public — even if they are way off the mark as far as the history of science is concerned. He just has to please his masters, it’s all that matters to him … and it is unnecessary to name them here…
Kharge’s masters, I ask myself, what do they know really about Indian History, Religion, Theology, Science and Arts? They are, after all, only school and university dropouts, aren’t they, every one of them?
If there is anything though that Mr. Kharge seems to have mastered, it is probably only this: the art of the absurd.
Sudarshan Madabushi