The most important site in Buddhism has been under contested management for more than a century, and the dispute is not settled.
How a Shaiva mahant came to hold it
Buddhism had largely disappeared from the Indian plains by the thirteenth century. The Mahabodhi Temple did not vanish with it, it was maintained, but by others. By the sixteenth century a Shaiva monastic lineage had established itself there, and by the nineteenth its head, the mahant, held the temple as property.
The Buddha image was being worshipped as a Hindu icon. This was not a seizure; it was what happens to a building when the community that built it is no longer there and another is.
Dharmapala's campaign
In 1891 the Sri Lankan reformer Anagarika Dharmapala visited, found the temple in Hindu hands, and founded the Maha Bodhi Society to recover it for Buddhists. The campaign ran through the courts for decades and became one of the founding episodes of modern transnational Buddhism, it is a large part of how Buddhists in Ceylon, Burma, Japan and the West came to think of themselves as a single international community with shared property.
He did not succeed in his lifetime.
The 1949 Act, and its compromise
The Bodh Gaya Temple Act, 1949 produced the arrangement that still governs the temple:
- A management committee of four Buddhist and four Hindu members.
- Chaired by the District Magistrate of Gaya, an official of the state, not a religious appointment.
- That office was required by the Act to be held by a Hindu, a requirement removed by amendment only in 2013.
So the holiest site in Buddhism is administered by a committee on which Buddhists have never held a majority, chaired ex officio by a civil servant.
The continuing dispute
Buddhist organisations have pressed for repeal of the Act and exclusive Buddhist control ever since, with renewed agitation from 2023: protests, fasts, and a campaign under the slogan of liberating the temple. The Supreme Court declined a petition seeking that in 2024, and the Act stands.
The arguments on each side are straightforward and both are serious. Buddhists ask why any other community should hold a veto over their principal shrine. The counter-arguments are that Hindu worship at the site is itself centuries old and not an intrusion, that the Buddha is widely regarded within Hinduism as an avatar of Vishnu, and that the 1949 settlement ended a genuine conflict.
The bombing
On 7 July 2013 ten small bombs were detonated in the complex, injuring several people. The main temple and the tree were undamaged. Five men were convicted in 2018.
The site is where a man is said to have understood the cause of suffering. Its management has produced litigation for over a hundred and thirty years.