In August 1923, the air in Benares was thick with the scent of incense and the din of a restless crowd as the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, or the All-India Hindu Mahasabha, gathered for its seventh annual meeting. Thousands were gathered before the ornate stage, with Hindu symbols on display. To the surprise of many in the crowd, the figure who stepped forward to take the dais was neither a brahmin nor a Hindu politician. It was the famed Sinhalese Buddhist globetrotter and founder of the Maha Bodhi Society, Anagarika Dharmapala.
Wearing flowing white robes, Dharmapala raised his voice and proclaimed loudly: “Buddhists are also Hindus.” The crowd erupted in cheers. Dharmapala pressed on, weaving a grand narrative of Hindu-Buddhist civilisational unity – how Buddhism had carried Hindu civilisation across the seas, but how centuries of conversion to Islam had torn them apart and how they must now be brought back. “They must all be reconverted,” he declared, as cries of approval rippled through the audience.
As the cheers subsided, another voice rose from the dais – Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, the newly elected President of the Mahasabha. A revered scholar and statesman, Malaviya echoed Dharmapala’s claim with unwavering conviction. “Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism,” he proclaimed, “are but sects of this great religion we call Hinduism.” The Buddha, he insisted, did not preach a separate faith; he merely emphasised aspects of Hinduism suited to his time. Newspapers across the country would carry the message far beyond Benares, cementing the notion that Buddhism was, and always had been, part of the Hindu Rashtra.
A century later, at the 2025 Kumbh Mela – the world’s largest gathering of people – the present seems to echo the past. Reports from the Press Trust of India (featured in the Deccan Herald among others), have documented how Buddhist monks from across Asia shared the stage with RSS leaders like Bhaiyyaji Joshi and Indresh Kumar at the Kumbh. The event featured grand processions, speeches by RSS functionaries, and symbolic gestures of solidarity between Sanatan Dharma and Buddhism. Resolutions were passed condemning the persecution of minorities in Bangladesh and Pakistan, advocating for Tibetan autonomy, and affirming the spiritual kinship between Buddhism and Hinduism. Speakers invoked the shared heritage of these traditions, likening their coming together to the Sangam – the confluence of rivers Ganga, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati. Prominent Tibetan exiles also appeared, including the former defence minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Gyari Dolma (sister to famed Tibetan diplomat, Gyari Rinpoche). Dolma hailed the event as historic, expressing joy at seeing monks and lamas marching alongside Hindu sadhus, affirming that “Buddhists and Sanatanis have always been united and will continue to move forward together.”
Yet, this narrative of an eternal, harmonious bond between Hinduism and Buddhism is less Sanatan (eternal) than its proponents would like us to believe. Although the idea that early Buddhism developed largely free from Brahmanical influence is gaining traction among historians, it is clear that these traditions evolved over time within the same intellectual milieu, thereby developing a common vocabulary. Both traditions, for instance, were deeply invested in exploring pramāṇa (means of knowledge), the nature of reality, and the means of attaining wisdom. Superficially, this suggests a philosophical concord. But a more rigorous analysis of the subcontinent’s Hindu-Buddhist past reveals a landscape rife with competition, schism, and outright hostility.
Then
The Pali-language Tevijja Sutta ridicules brahmins for their pretence of knowing the divine while being incapable of pointing to a single person who has actually seen Brahma. The Ambaṭṭha Sutta goes further, portraying brahmins as arrogant and spiritually bankrupt, upholding a caste system that the Buddha flatly rejects in the same text. In response, brahminical texts portrayed the Buddha not as an enlightened teacher but as a disruptive force – comparable to a hailstorm destroying the caste-ridden fields of Vedic society by luring away young men and women into the sangha, or community of monks and nuns. The Sanskrit Vishnupurana offers perhaps the most damning portrayal of Buddhism from a brahminical perspective. In it, the Buddha is depicted not as a world savior but as an incarnation of Vishnu sent to lead demons astray – a trickster whose false teachings were designed to delude the unworthy. Such narratives illustrate the extent to which Buddhism was cast as a heretical, even dangerous force in the brahminical imagination. Even the famed Shaiva saint and child prodigy Sambandar, reserved the closing verses of his devotional Tamil poems to denounce Buddhists (and Jains) as deluded, corpulent charlatans.
By the time European Orientalists arrived in India, this antagonism had become deeply entrenched. Figures like William Jones, the founder of the Asiatic Society, were perplexed when their brahmin informants simultaneously described the Buddha as a god and a misfit – an object of ambivalent reverence and stigma. According to the eminent Telugu scholar, V. Narayan Rao, by the 19th century, the term Buddhist had become among brahmins a term to ridicule brahmin boys when they deviated from expected caste norms (stop acting like a damn Buddhist!). Indian intellectuals like Swami Vivekananda grappled with this paradox, often presenting Buddhism as a noble but ultimately misguided experiment, tragically swept away by deviants and foreigners who misinterpreted the teachings of the Compassionate One.
It was only in the early 20th century, with the emergence of new colonial laws and a shifting politics of religious identity, that Hindu nationalist leaders sought to firmly position Buddhism as an integral part of the Hindu fold. As the Hindu Mahasabha and its affiliates sought to consolidate political power, they adopted an expansive definition of Hinduism – one capacious enough to include Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains as members of the “Hindu Nation.” This redefinition was both pragmatic and exclusionary: flexible enough to incorporate so-called untouchables and marginalised groups, yet rigid enough to exclude the “de-nationalising” traditions of Islam and Christianity.
Even figures like Anagarika Dharmapala engaged in these debates, more out of pragmatism than any deep conviction, navigating the currents of anti-colonial nationalist politics to further his own goal of gaining ownership over the then Hindu-controlled Maha Bodhi Temple complex in Bodh Gaya. Among the most striking examples of this strategic Hindu–Buddhist rapprochement was the invitation extended to U Ottama, the Rakhine (Arakanese) Buddhist monk from Burma to lead the Hindu Mahasabha in 1935. Ottama still remains the only Buddhist monk to have held the Presidentship of the Mahasabha. Though not a Hindutva ideologue, he had long sought Hindu support for his anti-colonial campaigns against the British and saw in the overtures of the Hindu right an opportunity to forge solidarities across British India (which included Burma at the time). His presidential speech before the Mahasabha was music to the ears of Hindu nationalists, replete with Islamophobic invective and declarations of Hindu-Buddhist unity. It was an alliance forged not out of spiritual kinship but from shared anxieties – chief among them, the spectre of the Muslim “other.”
Also read: Guru Purnima Has Its Roots in Buddhism and Jainism, Not Hinduism
Now
Today, the dynamics of this alliance have evolved but remain underpinned by similar political calculations. The Muslim bogeyman is ever apparent in the resolutions at the Kumbh Mela. There should indeed be more support and protections for minorities in Bangladesh and Pakistan – persecutions there are real and tragic – but the absence of resolutions for the equal protection of marginalised communities in India is telling. The situation in Manipur appears dire. Dalits continue to be subject to gross abuses that violate the core principles of the Indian constitution. Yet, not a single resolution casts a critical eye at the BJP-led government. But as Hannah Arendt reminds us, to remain silent in the face of oppression is to grant it legitimacy. The truth is not a luxury, it is a necessity.
The participation of Tibetan exiles at the Kumbh Mela signals another shift from the colonial period. It is less an organic embrace of Hindutva than a tactical manoeuvre. With the Dalai Lama’s advancing age and an uncertain succession looming, many within the Tibetan exile community fear for their future in India. Officially, the Indian government has granted asylum only to the Dalai Lama himself, while tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees remain in a liminal space, accommodated and tolerated but without the legal protections, either as citizens or as internationally recognised refugees. In an era where the BJP’s support is crucial for their continued presence in India, Tibetans must toe a delicate line – publicly ingratiating themselves to the RSS and BJP while privately wary of their all-encompassing embrace.
The grand spectacle of Hindu-Buddhist unity at the Kumbh Mela is thus less an eternal truth than a political performance – one with deep historical precedents and equally profound contradictions. To understand this alliance, we must look beyond the rhetoric of confluence and harmony to the complex realities of power, history, and survival. One cannot understand B.R. Ambedkar’s public conversion to Buddhism in 1956 and the revival of an anti-caste Buddhism today without this broader history in mind. The chants of unity at the Maha Kumbh echo across the century, but behind them lies a history of shifting allegiances, not eternal bonds. If history tells us anything, it is that alliances of convenience rarely endure without tension. The question that remains is how long this “Hindu-Buddhist bhai bhai” will last before it goes bye-bye.
Douglas Ober is a Lecturer in History at Fort Lewis College (USA) and an Honorary Research Associate at the University of British of Columbia (Canada). He is the author of Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in Modern India, published by Navayana and shortlisted for the Cundill Prize in History, 2023.