Counterpoint: The relevance of Buddha in the Hathras tragedy
By Vivekanand Jha
The death of over a hundred people in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh, in a stampede triggered by the rush to take the leg dust of an impostor on the stage, whose blatant charade to masquerade himself as the reincarnation of Lord Vishnu by hoodwinking the gullible into believing in miracles, is a scathing indictment of the nation’s regressive journey back to feudalistic India.
That Suraj Pal alias Narayan Sarkar Hari aka Bhole Baba, had taken lakhs of people for a ride, by posing himself as the reincarnation of Vishnu, is the sordid tale of a nation claiming to inherit the treasure trove of spiritual heritage of countless saints and seers, puts the entire nation in the witness box today.
Significantly, it was not only the so-called Bhole Baba who had befooled the millions in the name of selling his godliness to the believers, India, time and again, has been falling an inevitable casualty to the scores of charlatans who pretend to be the Avatars.
Asaram Bapu, Ram Rahim– the list goes on and on–who had, much like Bhole Baba of today, sought to hoodwink their disciples too, ultimately to land up in jail on various heinous crimes which included murder and rape.
As I had a glimpse of Bhole Baba’s treacherous amassing of wealth by feeding upon the gullibility of the multitude, I stood petrified for a while, pitying the innocent prey of the shenanigans of these gangs of thugs. Why would a man consider another, however much exalted he or she may be, so much venerable as to touch his or her feet, far less be so much desperate to engender a stampede, befuddled me into the state of inevitable incomprehension.
The cattle class as Shashi Tharoor had dubbed it in the past, is frantically influenced by hypes and hooplas, where the possibility of accidents remains conspicuous.
Buddha’s timeless prescription of ‘Main to thahar gaya tum kab thahroge‘ to Angukimal dawned on me in its pristine purity. One could feel the quintessence of the timelessness of Buddha’s timeless pontification, his vision. His glorious prescription to his newly ordained disciples was to stay in the graveyard for three months to experience how the mightiest of desires and ambitions had disappeared in the sands of time, leaving no footprints behind. Coincidentally, Buddha’s prescription synchronises so befittingly with the pontification of great Adi Shankaracharya in Bhaju Govindam, ‘Sanprapte san nahite kale nahi nahi rakshit dakurin karne, bhaju Givindam, bhaju Govindam, Givindam bhaju mudha mati‘ (When your final moments on earth will come, all your Avidya, so-called materialistic knowledge will be of little help, only the name of Govinda, will help you to cross over the cycle of birth and death).
When Buddha had given his ultimate message of ‘Aap Dip Bhava‘ to a Brahmin Subhadra, he had emphatically impressed upon the fact that in the journey towards enlightenment, one has to traverse the path all alone, with none as a companion.
Incidentally, as I was preparing to sit in deep Gayatri meditation in the cottage of Swami Shantanand Maharaj inside the Ramkrishna Mission Ashram, a man who was staff, questioned me, ‘ From whom you have taken Diksha?’ I retorted, ‘ From none’. He quickly shot back, ‘ How it was possible to proceed on the path of The Life Divine without any guru?’ I reasoned with him, ‘Aap Dipo Bhava‘ (Be light unto yourself). The direction of the Guru might be important at the initial stage, yet the solitary path to enlightenment is the journey of the soul in complete solitude.
The illustrious life of the great saint Mila Repa, a Tibetan Yogi, is the living testimony of the same. Little wonder then when Rabindranath Tagore framed his immortal stanzas of ‘Aekla Chalo Re’, he was revolutionised by the thought process of Upanishads and Buddha’s prescription.
In a journey towards innovation, which needed the firm determination to succeed against all odds, walking all alone on that path becomes sine qua non. Unequivocally, the greatest of the work self- manifest today, has been the consequential trigger of someone to have walked alone, when the caravan was built around him. Significantly, even Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States of America, in a famous letter to the principal of his son’s school, had pleaded with him, ‘Teach my son to stand and fight with the whole world if he thinks what he believes is true’.
In short, Buddha’s sunlit prescription, as time passed, found its reverberation across the world. Ironically, Buddha never got his due in his land of birth, he was unfortunately reduced to becoming a pariah in the country which worships the mushrooming charlatans like Bhole Baba, Ram Rahim, Asharam Bapu and others, who promise them heaven on earth, yet ignore the man who tried to bring heaven on earth -Tathagata Buddha.
*Àuthor, Academician and a Public Intellectual. The views are personal.
