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Theme: 5. Transmitting Knowledges: Institutions, Objects and Practices
Sanjukta Datta
Ashoka University, India
Swargajyoti Gohain
Ashoka University, India
Neekee Chaturvedi
University of Rajasthan, India
Aniket Alam
International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India
Swargajyoti Gohain
Ashoka University, India
Sanjukta Datta
Ashoka University, India
This panel probes the complex ways in which Buddhism has been entangled with political authority and world affairs in the past and the present. Understood to be a religion where personnel, precepts, and traditions have constantly sought to reinvent themselves in accordance with changing times in order to keep up its relevance, Buddhism affords a window into the many different layers and locations of a dynamic religion, embedded in national and geopolitical contexts. This panel highlights some of these processes of movement and reinvention in South Asia and the trans-Himalayan region, from the ancient to the contemporary period. Neekee Chaturvedi traces the evolving relationship between pre-modern states in South Asia and the monastic community (sangha) beginning with the establishment of Buddhism as an organised religion in 6th-5th century BCE. Sanjukta Datta examines a category of material objects, that is, copper plate inscriptions associated with the Pala kings of eastern India in order to re-evaluate their conventional characterization as Buddhist kings. Both these papers complicate the understanding of state patronage in sustaining Buddhist institutions. The two papers on contemporary Buddhism touch on Buddhist institutions such as monasteries and universities, following their negotiations with competing national powers, modern civilizational ideologies, and questions of survival. Aniket Alam traces the changing lay-monastery relations in the Western Himalayas, as they interact with the demands and politics of recognition vis-à-vis a modernising state. Swargajyoti Gohain investigates Buddhist higher educational institutes that were formed with the support of the Indian state following the closure of the Indo-Tibetan boundary and the exile of high-ranking Tibetan monks to India, and the emerging circuits associated with them.
Presenter: Neekee Chaturvedi – University of Rajasthan
Presenter: Aniket Alam – International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad
Presenter: Swargajyoti Gohain – Ashoka University
Presenter: Sanjukta Datta – Ashoka University