Not silent anymore

If the Centre thought that by making Bhadant Arya Nagarjuna Shurei Sasai, a monk of Japanese origin, a member of the National Commission for...

If the Centre thought that by making Bhadant Arya Nagarjuna Shurei Sasai, a monk of Japanese origin, a member of the National Commission for Minorities NCM it had bought peace with Buddhists over the control of the Maha Bodhi temple in Bihar, it was badly mistaken.

8216;Japani Baba8217; as Bhadant is commonly known, is speaking up this time as an empowered NCM member. 8216;8216;I will not sit quiet till Indian Buddhists get back the control of their sacred shrines and the Government stops treating them like untouchables,8217;8217; he told The Indian Express.

Bhadant came to Bodh Gaya as a 30-year-old monk. On what he thought would be his last visit to India, he saw visions of Nagarjuna an incarnation of the Buddha telling him to go to Ratnagiri in Maharashtra. 8216;8216;I had no idea where Ratnagiri was nor could I speak a word of Hindi,8217;8217; Bhadant recalls.

After 37 years, Bhadant speaks only in Hindi. He8217;s the most vocal Buddhist leader in India having led movements for reservation for Buddhists, handing over Bodh Gaya to the community and even against India8217;s nuclear testing at Pokharan.

It was probably to cut short his crusade, that the NDA Government handpicked him from about 50-odd nominees to NCM. He also became the first ever foreign-born person to be an NCM member.

8216;8216;But I knew that it was a clever ploy of the government 8212; they cleverly sealed my mouth,8217;8217; says Bhadant. 8216;8216;However I saw in this a great honour as well as an opportunity to work for the betterment of Indian Buddhists,8217;8217; he says.

But before this honour, he had to go through several trials to prove that he was not a Japanese spy. 8216;8216;I have gone through all this 8212; everything I did was attributed to a Japanese plot.8217;8217;

Story continues below this ad

He was forced to go underground for years while the Centre sat over his application for Indian citizenship. Finally, Rajiv Gandhi helped him get citizenship in 1988.

Bhadant has only faint memories of his native Osaka but remembers his visit to Hiroshima at the age of eight where he saw the serpentine queues in front of the government van distributing food for survivors of the nuclear blast. He says he wished to visit Japan once to pay tributes to his dead parents and his gurus.

In his new avatar, the 8216;Japani Baba8217; 8212; coined by Laloo Prasad Yadav 8212; has his new job cut out. As a NCM member, he swears that the recently released Census report inaccurately puts the number of Buddhists in India at 79 lakh, while it should be around two to five crore. Since most Buddhists do not prefer to identify themselves for fear of losing job quotas, the error needs to be rectified.