Importance of Lumbini: Prominent Pilgrimage Center...

Prominent Pilgrimage Center

Lumbini remained the most hallowed pilgrimage center for Buddhists worldwide after the Buddha's great passing away. The reason behind it was that the Buddha himself had spoken highly regarding the purity and virtues of this site and asked his disciples and laities to visit this site as one of the most sacred pilgrimage centers. The Buddha's words in the context are:-

"1. The birthplace of Buddha,

2. The place where Buddha attained Enlightenment,

3. The place where Buddha established the incomparable Wheel of Truth (Dharmachakra), and

4. The place where the Buddha attained Parinibbana.

And they who shall die with a believing heart, in the course of their pilgrimage, will be reborn, on the dissolution of their body, after death, in a heavenly state."

Authentic History

The authentic history of Lumbini, however, starts with the pillar inscription or rock edict erected by Ashoka, King of Magadha and Emperor of India, in the third century 300 B.C. Ashoka, the icon of the Maurya dynasty, had waged war with Kalinga and conquered it too. But, he repented the loss of innumerable human beings in the war and renounced warfare as a means of victory. He converted himself to Buddhism, the religion propounded and expounded by the Buddha, under the guidance of Monk Upagupta. Then, guided by his spiritual teacher Monk Upagupta, he visited almost all the prominent sites where the Buddha had once trod and paid special reverence to them. It is said that Ashoka visited first Lumbini and then only other sites. While arriving at Lumbini, "the Mauryan Emperor was deeply moved by ecstasy and consecrated the spot with monuments and then went to Kapivastu, Bodhgaya, Saranath, Kushinagar, and Sravasti." Here, in Lumbini, he also erected a stone pillar to commemorate this spot as the sacred birthplace of the Buddha. The inscription runs as follows:-

"His Gracious Majesty, the King beloved of Gods (Asoka), visited in his twentieth year of regin this scared spot to worship it, for here4 the Enlightened One, the Sakyan Sage, was born. Having worshipped at this holy place, the King granted tax relief to the villagers here, and commanded that this pillar be raised here to commemorate the auspicious event."

Credit, thus, goes to Emperor Ashoka for leaving such an inscribed monument at the native place of the Buddha. The other prominent figures who visited this site later on, were the two Chinese pilgrims—Fa-Hien and Huen-Tsang. Fa-Hein visited this site in the 5th century A.D. when he could find a pond (puskalini) where Queen Maya Devi had taken a bath before giving birth to the bodhisattva. Similarly, Huen-Tsang visited this site in the 7th century A.D. when he found the Ashokan pillar surmounted by a horse capital. But the records left by him trace that the horse-capital was in a broken state and fallen to the ground by the hitting of a thunder stroke. Lumbini was frequented by the visits of other prominent pilgrims, including Tibetan and Nepalese, up to the 12th or  13th century A.D... Some of these visits are found recorded in the Ashokan pillar, too. After the rise of Muslim rule in India, Buddhism began to disappear from the Indian subcontinent. This made Lumbini also to be lost in oblivion. For many centuries, this area was buried under the mass of debris and remained a neglected area.

Discovery of Lumbini

With the rise of British power in India, the attention of western scholars was drawn toward the religions of the east. While researching this sphere, these scholars found in the Buddha a founder of great civilization whose soul was indeed a religion, but the body was a body politic. Huston Smith quotes Trevor Ling in this context: "As a civilization, Buddhism was a total view of the world and man's place in it. It created an entire universe for the community of its adherents, one that gathered into coherent whole levels and aspects of life that the modern world divides into economics, politics, ethics, law, art, philosophy and the like." This led western scholars to carry on the archaeological survey of ancient Buddhist monuments everywhere in India. In the year 1896, the inscribed Ashokan Pillar was discovered in Nepal at Lumbini by General Khadga Samsher and Dr. A. Fuher, marking it as the first historical record of the Buddha's birthplace. From this time onwards, the world's attention was focused on Lumbini. Buddhist people from all around the world frequented this pace to pay reverence to it as the place sanctified by the birth of the Buddha.

Development Activities

Despite such discovery, Lumbini has remained a neglected site in the development sphere for more than half a century. The Nepal government undertook no substantial measures to develop it on a massive scale. However, in 1954, King Mahendra disbursed several thousand rupees for initiating development works in the Lumbini area. With this amount, a fair-weather road to Lumbini and a rest house were made along with several landscape developments. But the development measures could not continue for a long time, or they could not take a considerable speed. In 1967, the world's attention was drawn to the Lumbini area as the birthplace of the Buddha. This year, U Thant, Secretary General of the World's Supreme Political Body, United Nations Organisation (UNO OR UN), visited Lumbini, paid homage to this spot, and initiated the Nobel task of developing this area. After this visit, he proposed to the U.N. to hammer out a plan for developing this area as an international pilgrimage and tourist center. U Thant made such a proposal not merely because pilgrims and tourists flock to this area from all quarters of the world but because this spot could contribute much as a center of meditation and spiritual regeneration. In this context, the words expressed by Javier Perez de Cuellar, former U.N. Secretary-General, may be quoted: "Worldwide attention is focused on Lumbini not only because pilgrims and tourists come from all over the world, but because for all mankind Lumbini has a special meaning as a place of meditation and spiritual renewal, a center of cultural exchange and a symbol of peace." As a result, an International Committee for Lumbini's Development was formed in the United Nations in 1970 under the chairmanship of a Nepalese Permanent Representative.

Meanwhile, the U.N. entrusted Professor Kenzo Tange, the world-renowned Japanese architect, to prepare a master plan for developing the Lumbini on a massive scale. Prof. Tange prepared it within due time and submitted it to the U.N. To carry on the development works in the Lumbini area suitably, two institutions were formed in Nepal at different times, the first one under the name of the Lumbini Development Committee and the other one under the name of Lumbini Development Trust. In the initial phase, the Committee and Trust were presided over by Lokadarshan Bajracharya and Prince Gyanendra as the chairperson. During their periods, the land acquisition and forestation programs were carried on very smoothly. The result was that many new species of birds and animals, like cranes, herons, blue bulls, etc., Made their appearance in Lumbinisanctuary. In connection with the forestation program, "six hundered thousand plants of sisau (trees) were being planted in 1979 A.D. in the sixty percent  (five hundered hectares) land of Lumbini Master Plan by declaring it as the forest area. ... Now, more than half of the trees in Lumbini arear are not found in existence. According to the locals, the reason behind it is that the Lumbini area remains like open grazing land, and timber smuggling has increased too. The other tragedy is that during this period, the International Committee for Lumbini's Development was made to remain defunct.

Weakness of the Nepal Government

With the re-establishment of democracy in 1990, particularly with the abolition of monarchy in  2008, the political situation in Nepal underwent a drastic change. From this time onwards, the responsibility of developing the Lumbini area was shifted from the shoulder of the palace to that of His Majesty's Goverment and the Nepal government, respectively. Considering the drastic change, the Nepalese people also cherished a great hope that the newly formed governments would initiate concrete measures to carry on the Lumbini area's development works smoothly. But their utter disappointment, the political situation in Nepal began to worsen. The newly formed governments were not in a good to revive the defunct International Committee for Lumbini's Development. In lieu of restoring this committee, the government devalued the position of this area by enlisting it in UNESCO'S world heritage list. An interaction program organized by well know experts of Lumbini took this measure as a deviation from the right track and expressed words like:

"The process initiated by the United Nations Organisation in 1976 for Lumbini's development has now derived from its objective. The step undertaken to enlist it under UNESCO has led it afar from the process of Lumbini's development as had once been conceived by U Thant, former Secretary General of United Nations, U Thant." Moreover, the new government began to encroach and meddle upon Lumbini Development Trust by deploying their henchmen as members and staff. This led the Trust to appear as a dumping place for the political workers, which made the Trust spend much more money on staff maintenance than on development works. And this has hampered much in the implementation of the master plan. As regards the political encroachment and meddling in the Trust, the BBC Nepali correspondent Surendra Phuyal quotes the words of local journalist Madhav Dhugana and expresses, "All the grandiose plans have vanished like a bubble. The main reason is massive and dangerous political meddling in the Trust each time the government changes. And you know how many governments have come and gone since  1978.

Moreover, the surrounding areas of Lumbini, say Lumbini Protected Zone (LPZ), is becoming polluted area owing to the installation and concentration of a large number of heavy industries like cement factories, brick kilns, steel mills, pulp, and paper mills, etc., which emit a huge mass of carbon dioxide. In this context, the words of James G. Heller, Associate Prof. of Tronto University, may be quoted:

"These industries produce over 2.3 million tons of cement products annually and their emissions and effluents have contaminated local groun d water, streams and atmosphere in flagran tcontravention of Nepal's Enviromental Protection Act. This pollution impacts local agriculture, drinking water, the heath of Lumbini residents as well as wildlife and endangered species in surrounding nature preserves. Their cement trucks have caused accidents, traffic snarls and road deterioration on the Bahirahawa- Lumbini highway."

To curb the trend of emissions and effluents, the Industrial Promotion Board (IPB) under Industry Ministry, on November 37, 2009, responded to the petition submitted by the participants of an environmental conference. The response was made by undertaking certain decisions that would (a) exclude new carbon-emitting industries in the LPZ area in the future and (b) ask the existing industries to respect Enviromental Protection Act and, if not, relocate themselves within two years. It has also been designated a Lumbini World Heritage Property (LWHP) area extending up to "15 km north, east and west of the LWPH boundaries, south to the Indian border, and 800 meters on both sides of the road along the Lumbini-Bhairahawa Corridor." But the tragedy is that the IPB has not been able to implement its decisions very effectively. However, the long hours of load-shedding caused by power shortage in the country have somewhat helped to reduce the emissions and effluents of carbon dioxide to a large extent.

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