Bodhi Has Writ

• With a 511-acre campus, the Gautam Buddha University (GBU) will have the biggest library and hostel facility of any government university
  
• GBU will be a modern technology/ management university but with a Buddhist soul
  
• With a budget of around Rs 1,000 crore, the university will eventually have 5,000 seats to offer
  
• GBU will have a school for Buddhist studies, wi-fi connectivity and a meditation centre

***

In October 1956, B.R. Ambedkar, along with around 3,00,000 Dalits, had converted to Buddhism in a public gesture that set the momentum for the new Buddhist revival

in India. The GBU campus, much of it yet to be developed, has replicated in stone the scene of Ambedkar's conversion. Lokesh Chandra, former Rajya Sabha member and an eminent Buddhist expert, says, "Even the Pali Tripitaka (a formal term for the Buddhist canon of scriptures) has not been translated entirely into any modern Indian language. It needs to be done, more so into Marathi and Hindi, so that the neo-Buddhists in India have a better idea of the Theravada school of Buddhism that they practise."

The university comes at a time when there's renewed interest in Buddhism in the country, more so as a tool for diplomacy with Asian countries where Buddhism is predominant. Chandra says that "most of the foreign students who come to study at Delhi University do not come to pursue degrees in physics or chemistry, but to study Buddhism. If this university does well, it will do a lot to boost India's status as a cultural power".

Dahiwale predicts that the university will also have a political impact, helping Mayawati reach out to the new Buddhist electorate all over India, whose size, he claims, is around 20 million. "Ambedkar's followers, irrespective of their religious background, are open to Gautam Buddha as an emancipator," he states. But Nirjar differs. "Let's not attribute any political motive to this university. It is above all that," he says.