Buddhism, Frontier and Nation-Building: The 1955 Visit of the “Indian Xuanzang” to China

Abstract

Raghu Vira’s 1955 visit to China stands as a significant chapter in the history of contemporary Sino-Indian Buddhist cultural exchange. The diary he kept in Hindi offers a detailed record of this journey. However, this episode remains scarcely mentioned in official narratives of China today, largely because Vira gradually evolved into an emblematic hardline figure toward China within Indian political and cultural circles following his visit. What brought about this shift in Vira’s stance? Moreover, why did Vira, also an advocate of Buddhism, make no mention of the contemporary Navayāna Buddhism movement led by B. R. Ambedkar? This paper seeks to situate these questions within the broader context of Raghu Vira’s life trajectory and the more complex historical and cultural context of India, analyzing the intricate role Buddhism played in the process of Indian nation-building.

1. Introduction

In 1955, Dr. Raghu Vira (1902–1963), a renowned Indian linguist and political-cultural elite whom Premier Zhou Enlai (周恩來) called the “Indian Xuanzang,” embarked on a three-month research expedition of Buddhism in China, marking a significant chapter in the contemporary history of Sino-Indian Buddhist cultural exchange (Vira 1969). However, after returning to India with a substantial collection of Buddhist artifacts and scriptures, Vira’s stance toward China shifted markedly, eventually establishing him as a prominent figure in Indian political and intellectual circles known for his hardline position on China. Vira’s life trajectory can be viewed as a representative case of how Indian political and cultural elites since the 19th century have sought to construct an independent nation-state based on a “Hindu-–Buddhist” cultural foundation. By examining the reasons behind Vira’s shift in stance and his lack of engagement with “Dalit Buddhist Movement,”1 this article explores the complex role Buddhism has played in the formation of the Indian nation-state. It argues that Buddhism occupies an ambiguous position in modern India’s nation-building process: while it serves as a proud historical legacy in India’s engagement with the outside world, it may also be perceived as a potential internal risk when viewed from within. This paradoxical status reflects the complex interplay between religious heritage and nationalist agendas in colonial and postcolonial India.

2. Raghu Vira: Life Trajectory at the Confluence of Scholarship and Politics

Dr. Raghu Vira was born in Rawalpindi, western Punjab of British India (now in Pakistan). He began his academic career at the University of Punjab before continuing his studies in Europe, where he earned doctoral degrees from the University of London and Leiden University. In 1935, Vira founded the International Academy of Indian Culture in Lahore. Following the upheavals of the Great Partition, the institution relocated first to Nagpur and was later permanently established in New Delhi, where it evolved into an internationally recognized center for Indological and Tibetan studies. Vira’s scholarly contributions spanned multiple disciplines, including Indology, Tibetology, Buddhist studies, Sinology, and linguistics.2 Beyond his academic identity, he also achieved notable political accomplishments. As a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, he presided over the finalization of the Hindi version of the Indian Constitution. He was twice elected to the Rājya Sabhā, in 1952 and 1956. In 1961, due to disagreements with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian National Congress over China policy, Vira broke ties with the party and joined the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, eventually becoming its president. He died in a traffic accident in 1963 (Chandra and Ikeda 2007; Grinstead 1972; Li 1992; Vira 1955; Poppe 1968; Yang 2008, 2010; Xiao 2011; Baxter 1969).

Dr. Raghu Vira, who came of age among the early twentieth-century Indian elites, belonged to a generation that urgently sought effective political paths to achieve national independence—a direct response to British colonial assertions that India possessed no meaningful political history. As a member of the geographical and cultural sphere of Asia, Japan—with its deeply Buddhist cultural traditions—profoundly impressed colonially constrained India through its industrial achievements and military victories over European powers.3 Japan’s experience in technology, institutions, and ideology thus became a focus of attention within Indian intellectual circles. According to the renowned scholar Lokesh Chandra, who continued his father’s career, the thought of Japanese intellectual Okakura Kakuzō and the teachings of the Buddhist sage Nichiren significantly influenced his father’s scholarly pursuits and political outlook (Chandra and Ikeda 2007, vol. 25, pp. 42–43). In the early 1900s, Okakura’s emphasis in The Ideals of the East on “Asia is one” converged with Rabindranath Tagore’s contemporary vision of an “Indian spiritual renaissance,” jointly offering intellectual inspiration for India’s national awakening and energizing its independence movement (Chandra and Ikeda 2007, vol. 25; Hay 1970, pp. 35–44). During his studies in London in the 1920s, Vira encountered Nichiren Buddhism through interactions with Japanese students. Through Anesaki Masaharu’s biography of Nichiren,4 Vira not only deepened his understanding of the Lotus Sūtra but also came to a profound appreciation of the interdependent relationship among nation, people and culture. Japan’s path to modernization reinforced his conviction that modernization severed from tradition lacked substantive meaning (Chandra and Ikeda 2007, p. 44). Informed by the Japanese example, Vira developed a core theoretical vision: to construct a pan-Asian civilizational values system centered on India linked through Buddhism, and to advance post-independence nation-building on the foundation of Indian cultural identity. Guided by this vision, he founded the International Academy of Indian Culture, aiming to systematically collect, organize, and study ancient Indian texts dispersed across Asia, seeking to retrieve from India’s ancient traditions spiritual values adaptable to the modern world. National language construction and Buddhist studies thus formed the two major pillars of his lifelong intellectual endeavor.

For emerging nations, shaping a national language and culture has been a common strategy for forging cultural identity. As a linguist, Vira firmly believed that language served as the cornerstone of culture. He dedicated himself to establishing Hindi—a language cognate with Sanskrit—as India’s “national language” (rāṣṭriya bhāṣā), representative of the nation’s cultural orthodoxy, and to building an independent Indian academic system free from colonial influence. Central to Vira’s promotion of a national language was his systematic creation of a unified terminology system characterized by “Standard Hindi-ization,” aimed at replacing English vocabulary in administration, law, and specialized fields. This ambitious project began in 1931, with the first published work, the Great English-Indian Dictionary concerned Inorganic Chemistry, appearing in 1943. Between 1943 and 1955, a series of English-Indian and Indian-English dictionaries covering various disciplines were published, forming an extensive collection of works. The lexicographical approach was highly consistent: each English term was systematically matched with a Hindi equivalent standardized through Sanskrit roots, while synonyms from various Indian regional languages were uniformly rendered in the Devanagari script. This pioneering work earned Vira the trust of India’s first president, Rajendra Prasad, who entrusted him with leading the drafting and finalization of technical terminology for the Hindi version of the Indian Constitution—a responsibility that further integrated Vira into the political processes of post-independence India (Vira 1951, 1955). Concurrently, Vira sought to construct a pan-Asian “cultural network” linked through Buddhism. According to Lokesh Chandra, Vira once explained to Jawaharlal Nehru the historical role of Buddhism in connecting Asian nations, advocating for the formation of a cultural union among Asian countries sharing a common Buddhist heritage, drawing on its spiritual strength and cultural value (Chandra and Ikeda 2007, p. 79). This proposal resonated not only with Nehru’s vision of “Greater India” (Nehru [1946] 1994, pp. 200–7) but also served India’s post-independence foreign policy in Asia that the transnational influence of Buddhism across different regions and nations testified to India’s historical civilizational greatness and provided the newly independent Republic a discursive space in which to claim cultural leadership in the region. Whether through the creation of a decolonized, heavily Sanskritized Hindi terminology or the establishment of an India-centered “Asian cultural network” via Buddhism, the cultural project led by Vira was, in essence, an ideological pathway aimed at building the newly independent Indian nation-state. It sought to resist the influence of colonialism, promote state formation, and assert India’s distinctive status and value within the emerging world order—all rooted in a “Hindu–Buddhist” cultural identity.

With support from the Indian central government, Vira undertook extensive academic expeditions to China, the Soviet Union, Mongolia, and Southeast Asian countries, gathering a wealth of ancient Buddhist manuscripts and cultural artifacts. After his death in 1963, his son Lokesh Chandra edited and published a significant portion of the manuscripts acquired by his father, particularly multi-language materials related to Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolian, Tibetan, Manchu, Sanskrit, and Tangut.5 These primary sources, coupled with the sustained scholarly efforts of both father and son, established the International Academy of Indian Culture as a leading center in post-independence India for the study of Tibetan Buddhism, Mongolian studies, and Tangut studies. It is noteworthy that a considerable number of the multi-lingual Buddhist compilations listed in Lokesh Chandra’s bibliography derive from original materials collected during Raghu Vira’s 1955 expedition to China.

3. Raghu Vira’s Journey to China: Buddhist Ties and Security Concerns

The 1950s witnessed a short yet remarkable “honeymoon period” in Sino-Indian relations, fostered by the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the Bandung Conference. The widely circulated slogan “Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai” (Indians and Chinese are brothers) encapsulated the prevailing atmosphere of bilateral goodwill during this era (Ghosh 2017; Wang 2019). Against this diplomatic backdrop, the long-standing tradition of Sino-Indian Buddhist cultural exchange reemerged as a significant component of public diplomacy between the two nations. During the 1955 Bandung Conference, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru personally proposed to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai that Raghu Vira be invited to visit China. Subsequently, upon the formal invitation of the Chinese government, Vira embarked on a three-month expedition of Buddhism from April to July 1955 in China. This visit was not merely an academic pursuit; his Hindi-language diary, titled Prof. Raghu Vira’s Expedition to China (Vira 1969), offers a micro-level perspective on the distinctive viewpoints and underlying concerns of Indian political and cultural elites as they observed China and sought to understand Sino-Indian relations during the early Cold War period.

Accompanied by his daughter, Vira departed from Kolkata on 20 April, flying to Hong Kong before traveling by train via Guangzhou to Beijing. On 15 May, Premier Zhou Enlai received him in Beijing, with prominent figures from political, academic, and cultural circles including Guo Moruo (郭沫若), Ji Xianlin (季羨林), and Bing Xin (冰心) in attendance. During the meeting, Premier Zhou praised Vira as the “Indian Xuanzang,” who had come to the Eastern Land for scriptures, and announced China’s four principles for providing Buddhist materials to him:

“In the past, Xuanzang went to India to obtain scriptures. Today, you have come from India to China—you are India’s Xuanzang, and these scriptures are your treasures… For texts of which we hold more than one copy, we will permanently gift you one copy of each. For unique manuscripts, we will provide you with microfilm copies. If there is insufficient time to produce microfilms, you may borrow them for a year or a specified period. Finally, you are welcome to consult any of these materials whenever you wish… There has never been a precedent for sending or gifting unique Buddhist manuscripts abroad, but China has complete trust in India. We have hidden nothing from you. It is our duty to assist each other.”

(Vira 1969, pp. 41–42)

Under meticulous official arrangements, Vira’s itinerary focused on visits to major Buddhist sacred sites while also incorporating inspections of New China’s higher education, ethnic policies, heavy industry, and collective agriculture. His route began in Beijing and extended to six historically significant Buddhist centers in northern China: Hohhot, Datong, Dunhuang, Xining, Xi’an, and Luoyang, before returning to Beijing to organize the acquired materials. On his return journey to India, he detoured south to visit Buddhist sites in Nanjing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, finally departing via Guangzhou and Hong Kong by sea to Mumbai. Vira’s expedition yielded substantial results—he later remarked that he had collected texts and artefacts “until his arms could bear no more”. Among the acquired materials were colorful photographs of Dunhuang cave art, silk paintings from Mongolian monasteries, rubbings of Sanskrit and Chinese inscriptions, and precious multilingual Buddhist manuscripts in Mongolian, Manchu, and Tangut (Vira 1969, pp. 11–13). Vira’s correspondence with Nicholas Roerich confirms that he obtained microfilms of 108 volumes of the Mongolian Kangyur, 92 volumes of Tangut manuscripts, as well as fragments of the Manchu Kangyur and Tengyur (Vira 1953–1957). Many publications by Lokesh Chandra, such as the 22-volume Sanskrit Texts from the Imperial Palace at Peking, the 12-volume Multilingual Buddhist Texts, multiple volumes of A New Tibeto-Mongol Pantheon, and Buddha in Chinese Woodcuts, are primarily based on original materials or copies acquired during this 1955 expedition. These collections laid a crucial foundation for the study of Tibetan Buddhism, Mongolian studies, and Tangut studies in India.

Vira embarked on this journey with a clear vision for academic collaboration. During his visit to Beijing’s Guangji Monastery (廣濟寺), he engaged in discussion with Venerable Juzan (巨讚法師). His diary records the following observation:

“A research project is underway at Guangji Monastery aimed at understanding ancient Indian society and political conditions through Chinese-translated Buddhist scriptures—texts that have been lost in India but preserved in their Chinese versions. This research is expected to be completed in several years, though no parts have yet been published. If these publications adhere to academic standards, they will be of great value to us. We intend to translate them into Hindi.”

(Vira 1969, p. 132)

Vira sought to introduce this socio-historical research based on Chinese-translated Buddhist canons to India, thereby strengthening the sense of identity and cohesion within the newly established Republic of India through a shared historical memory rooted in a “Hindu-Buddhist” heritage. Extant correspondence6 indicates that this collaborative intention continued. In 1956, at Venerable Juzan’s request, Vira sent materials related to Yoga studies and expressed interest in learning about the specific progress of the Chinese Buddhist Association’s research on stone sūtras (Zhu 2008, pp. 1331–32). As a cultural heritage shared by both nations, Buddhism has always been a core bond in the millennia-long history of Sino-Indian exchanges, and the widely revered monk Master Xuanzang stands as an enduring symbol of civilizational dialogue between the two countries. Prior to Vira’s visit, a delegation from the India China Friendship Association had already visited Xi’an in 1954, paying special homage to the Xingjiao Monastery (興教寺) and the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda (大雁塔), both closely associated with Xuanzang’s life. While in China, Vira learned of the Chinese plan to establish a Xuanzang Memorial Hall in India. He expressed strong support for this initiative and looked forward to deepening cultural connections between the peoples of both nations by promoting the legacy of Xuanzang (Vira 1969, p. 126).

While embracing the romantic “Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai,” Vira maintained a measured perspective in his observations of the nation-building initiatives undertaken by the People’s Republic of China. He projected a complex attitude—interwoven with both admiration and caution—onto his own reflections regarding India’s path to national consolidation. His visit to the Minzu College of China (中央民族學院, now Minzu University of China 中央民族大學) left a profound impression (Vira 1969, pp. 33–37). Vira’s diary offers a detailed account of the college’s admission system, curriculum, distinguished faculty, treatment of students and staff, religious policies, teaching facilities, and overall academic environment. He recognized the college’s exemplary role in China’s ethnic policies and its core mission was to strengthen national unity and solidarity while safeguarding the linguistic and cultural rights of all ethnic groups. Vira paid particular attention to the institute’s multilingual curriculum. Learning that Han Chinese students systematically studied minority languages to later assist in policy dissemination and local governance in ethnic regions, he discerned a referential model for language governance: by enabling students from the Hindi heartland to acquire the local languages of non-Hindi states, India could disseminate a unifying national ideology and establish a language-based mechanism for national integration. In other words, China’s culturally embedded approach—using language and policy to foster integration—provided Vira with a concrete reference for his vision of forging an Indian national identity centered on Hindi as the sole national language. Similarly, Vira noted that the collection at the Beijing Library (北京圖書館, now the National Library of China 中國國家圖書館) consisted predominantly of Chinese publications, with relatively few foreign-language works. This observation prompted him to reflect on India’s own cultural strategy which should not only include Hindi and other modern Indian languages being vigorously developed, but Sanskrit manuscripts should also be moved out of archival storage and systematically published and circulated to become accessible public cultural resources (Vira 1969, p. 14). Furthermore, upon hearing impassioned Chinese patriotic songs, he was reminded of India’s need to cultivate a unified national identity through similar cultural means (Vira 1969, p. 129). Thus, it can be seen that the educational and cultural measures implemented by the People’s Republic of China to construct a unitary multi-national state empirically affirmed and reinforced Vira’s conviction, shaping national identity through language and culture, represented a viable path toward political integration in India.

While acknowledging the achievements of the People’s Republic of China in maintaining national unity and solidarity, Vira’s apprehensions towards China deepened concurrently. In India, although the slogan “Hindi-Chini Bhai-Bhai” enjoyed widespread popularity, persistent voices—represented by Congress leader, Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel (1875–1950)—advocated for a realist approach to guard against China’s potential threats (Mohanty 2020). As a crucial primary source, Vira’s Hindi diary provides an internal perspective from Indian intellectual circles, offering critical insights into India’s core strategic anxieties within the Sino-Indian geopolitical context during the early Cold War. First was the fear of territorial expansion. Vira perceived that China’s current national unity policy aimed not merely at integrating and stabilizing the various ethnic groups within its borders but was fundamentally directed toward territorial expansion, with intentions to “annex” Central Asia and Mongolia (Vira 1969, p. 129). Second was anxiety over economic competition. The 1954 Sino-Indian Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet Region of China and India, coupled with the completion of the Qinghai-Tibet and Sichuan-Tibet highways, strengthened Tibet’s connectivity with inland China and placed India at a disadvantage in Himalayan trade. Simultaneously, China’s enhanced economic relations with Burma, the Soviet Union, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Ceylon were seen as disrupting the existing Japanese-Indian competition in South and Southeast Asia, thereby undermining India’s regional interests and influence. Third was ideological alert. Within the Cold War context, India remained highly alert to the potential infiltration of socialist ideologies. Vira speculated that China employed a dual strategy toward India: a “Premier’s faction” that sought to exploit Sino-Indian friendship to “extract” value from India, and a “fanatic socialist faction” that, while not openly opposing India, disapproved of its non-socialist character. In his diary, Vira forebodingly predicted: “Although India led China in industrial development in 1955, if the present situation continues unchecked, China will surpass India within a decade.” This sense of urgency reinforced his conviction regarding the necessity of internal unity within India: “To erase inter-state disputes and construct a national language and national sentiment is imperative from every perspective.” (Vira 1969, pp. 24–25).

Upon his return from China, with the support of the Indian Ministry of Education, Vira inaugurated a large-scale India-China Cultural and Art Exchange Exhibition in New Delhi, featuring artifacts acquired during his journey as well as from his personal collection over the years. The opening ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Vice President Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and Chinese Ambassador to India Yuan Zhongxian (袁仲賢), marking an event of unprecedented scale. In his address, Ambassador Yuan poetically likened the return of Buddhist texts and artifacts to India to “a married daughter returning to her parental home” (Vira 1969, p. 165). However, for Vira and for the Indian central government, the significance of the exhibition far surpassed a mere “back-flow” of Buddhist culture. It was, rather, a carefully orchestrated political act aimed at using Buddhism to underscore India’s historical civilizational continuity and its transnational cultural influence.

Vira’s Buddhist expedition to China, characterized by its dual academic and political dimensions, transcended mere scholarly interest. It reflected the deeper reflections and underlying anxieties of an Indian cultural nationalist committed to exploring pathways for national consolidation. Vira envisioned a civilizational system centered on Hinduism—symbolized by the Sanskrit language—serving as a stable ideological foundation for the nascent India. From the perspective of Hindus, particularly upper-caste elites, this “Hindu civilizational system” could incorporate indigenous religious traditions such as Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism as integral components (Sharma 1993, p. 9). Consequently, Vira’s personal scholarly engagement with Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism, was inherently part of a broader, Hinduism-dominated project of ideological construction for national unity. This endeavor represented both a resistance to colonial narratives and an extension of Hinduness7 into the cultural sphere. Moreover, the inherent cross-civilizational portability of the “Hindu-Buddhist” tradition endowed India with unique potential to engage in geopolitical strategy and even shape globalist narratives—a potential vividly demonstrated by Vira’s expedition to China.

4. Raghu Vira’s Break with Nehru: Language and Frontiers

Raghu Vira’s academic reputation was significantly enhanced by his 1955 visit to China, facilitated by conditions that far exceeded the expectations of both Vira and Nehru (Gopal 1997, vol. 30, p. 405). According to Lokesh Chandra, Vira’s scholarly endeavors received substantial support from Nehru. For instance, during Soviet Union leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin’s visit to India in November 1955, they presented Nehru with microfilms of the Sanskrit manuscript of the Lotus Sūtra collected by Petrovsky, which Nehru subsequently handed over to Vira for his research.8 With government backing, Vira continued his Buddhist journey that same year, traveling to the Soviet Union and Mongolia.

However, archival records reveal that the relationship between Nehru and Vira was far less harmonious than portrayed in Chandra’s account. Consistent with his staunch advocacy for Hindi as the national language, Vira adopted radical positions on social issues such as the Hindu Civil Code and the cow protection movement, establishing himself as a key figure within the conservative faction of the Congress Party (Baxter 1969, p. 206). Perhaps due to the right-leaning tendencies inherent in his cultural nationalism, Nehru maintained only “cautious support” for Vira within the context of internal affairs and foreign diplomacy. This caution manifested in two ways: On one hand, Nehru did not obstruct Vira’s cultural diplomacy initiatives aimed at promoting “Indian civilization.” Archives indicate that requests such as Vira’s 1949 proposal to donate Sanskrit books to the library of Kabul University in Afghanistan (MEANEF 1949), and his 1952 seek for official endorsement for an academic visit to West Germany, generally received Nehru’s personal approval and overall support (MEANEF 1952). On the other hand, Nehru consistently maintained reservations about Vira’s proposals. In the case of the Kabul University donation, Nehru explicitly expressed distrust in Vira’s self-compiled book list and instructed relevant departments to conduct rigorous scrutiny. Regarding Vira’s trip to West Germany, while Nehru directed the local embassy to provide help, he firmly refused to issue an official letter of introduction under governmental letterhead. A more significant rift emerged in 1957, two years after Vira’s China visit, when Nehru outright rejected scholar Rahul Sankrityayan’s request for the central government to provide an introduction letter for his trip to China. Nehru articulated two reasons for his refusal: First, although Vira’s earlier visit to China had received official support, his inappropriate personal remarks during the visit were interpreted by Chinese authorities as representing the Indian government’s stance, a matter that had been communicated to India through diplomatic channels. Second, given Vira’s official status, the Chinese side had presented him with numerous manuscripts, scrolls, and paintings that should have been considered state gifts belonging to India, but Vira had retained them all as personal property (Gopal 1997, vol. 40, pp. 613–14). The fragile mutual trust and nuanced tension between the two ultimately collapsed in 1961 when Vira announced his withdrawal from the Congress Party, publicly severing ties with Nehru. Based on available historical sources, it appears that Vira’s right-wing political stance and personal interests created irreconcilable conflicts with Nehru’s domestic and foreign policies.

One manifestation of the conflict lay in the debate over national language policy. Vira dedicated his life to creating standardized Hindi terminology based on Sanskrit and promoting “New Hindi” as India’s national language. However, during a Congress Parliamentary Party Meeting on 7 May 1954, Nehru explicitly opposed Vira’s method of artificially coining vocabulary to construct a “new national language.” While not entirely dismissing Vira’s work, Nehru advocated for a rational and objective approach that acknowledged the value of international terminology, promoting Hindi constructively and non-coercively within the country (Gopal 1997, vol. 25, pp. 100–6). Furthermore, while the Indian Constitution designated Hindi as the official language, it also stipulated a 15-year transition period (1950–1965) during which English could continue as an associate language for official purposes. In April 1959, Frank Anthony, representing the Anglo-Indian community, proposed to Parliament the inclusion of English in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, formally granting it official language status. This proposal provoked strong indignation from Vira, who wrote to President Rajendra Prasad requesting intervention. He accused Anthony’s proposal of aiming to abolish Hindi and other Indian languages at both central and state levels, while implicitly criticizing Nehru’s silence on this matter. When parliamentary debates resumed in August of the same year, Nehru personally attended and spoke. He acknowledged the value of Sanskrit as the symbol for the continuity of Indian civilization but strongly emphasized the indispensable role English played in synchronizing India with the world in industrial and scientific fields. Nehru was particularly sharp in his criticism, even to the point of categorically negating the significance of Indianizing scientific and technical terminology, stating plainly that the language-creating act by certain Hindi enthusiasts are progressively stripping the language of its inherent beauty, rendering it increasingly artificial and incomprehensible, India’s development could not rely on transliterating all scientific formulae into Devanagari script (MEANEF 1959). Nehru’s public statement amounted to a contradiction of Vira’s project dating back to 1931. For conservative nationalists like Vira, granting English constitutional status represented not only a major setback in the prolonged endeavor to throw off the yoke of colonial rule, but also the collapse of the political vision that linguistic unification through a single national language would catalyze India’s national integration.

The conflict, on the other hand, explicitly manifested in divergences over China policy. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and China in 1950, the Tibet issue has remained a central topic in bilateral relations. The Chinese government strengthened its sovereign jurisdiction over Tibet through a series of measures, a process accompanied by the gradual erosion of India’s geopolitical advantages in the region. As indicated by Raghu Vira’s diary, he firmly believed that China pursued a realist expansionist policy, posing threats to India’s national security in terms of territorial integrity and ideology. Consequently, the International Academy of Indian Culture, which he founded, dedicated itself to providing academic support for India’s geopolitical strategy in the Himalayan region. It sought to reinforce Indian cultural influence in this intermediary zone by actively constructing a discourse of “Hindu-Buddhist.” Vira’s correspondence with Roerich (Vira 1953–1957) confirms that the institution routinely recruited and trained young lamas from Kalimpong who, while unfamiliar with Sanskrit-Hindi, were proficient in Mongolian and Tibetan, as a reserve force for research. During the same period, Kalimpong had become an organizational center planning the 1959 Tibet Revolt (Thondup and Thurston 2015). Vira’s right-wing political inclinations shaped his foreign policy stance. In October 1959, when Indian and Chinese forces clashed at the Kongka Pass in the Karakoram Mountains, south of Aksai Chin, border tensions escalated. In 1960, Vira contributed to the compilation of a propaganda pamphlet advocating for a united front of Buddhist nations in South and Southeast Asia to collectively resist China (Baxter 1969, p. 198, fn. 34). In November 1961, Vira publicly told the media that the incumbent Defense Minister Krishna Menon, due to his pro-China stance, lacked judgment on the situation. He insisted that defense affairs must be immediately transferred to others to contain China, declaring that safeguarding the nation was not the sole responsibility of the Congress Party and calling on the public to guide leaders toward correct decisions. Nehru was infuriated by Vira’s remarks, denouncing them as “arrant nonsense.” He accused Vira of seriously violating party discipline and demanded that he had to take the consequences for his words and actions (Gopal 1997, vol. 72, pp. 187–89). In December 1961, Vira formally submitted his resignation to the Congress Party and instead joined the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, assuming its presidency. This party was the precursor to the current governing party in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which carries strong Hindu nationalist connotations. In May 1963, Vira tragically died in a car accident while en route to an election rally.

5. What Raghu Vira Left Unsaid: The Dilemma of India’s Buddhist Path to Nation-Building

The life trajectory of Raghu Vira can be viewed as a typical microcosm of the political and cultural elite in India since the 19th century, who opted to construct an independent nation-state based on a “Hindu-Buddhist” cultural foundation. This cultural strategy can fundamentally be understood as an ideological practice originating from an upper-caste Hindu standpoint, centered on Hinduness, and aimed at shaping cultural memory, promoting national integration, and even influencing regional diplomacy. However, this was not the sole attempt in modern Indian history to utilize Buddhism for nation-building. Contemporaneous with Raghu Vira, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) initiated the “Navayāna Buddhist movement.” (Jaffrelot 2005; Zelliot 2013; Ober 2023). Rooted in the experiences of the marginalized Dalit communities and inspired by Buddhism’s emphasis on equality, this movement sought to establish a new India free from the Hindu caste hierarchy, striving instead for equality and liberty. Against the backdrop of anti-colonial resistance and the imperative to dismantle colonial influence, modern India’s interpretation and deployment of its Buddhist heritage bifurcated into two competing paths. When examined within a broader and more complex historical context, this divergence essentially represents a modern continuation of the long-standing ideological contest between Brahmanism and Buddhism in Indian history.

Since the “rediscovery” of Buddhism in India during the 19th century, colonial academic systems constructed a dominant narrative interpreting the historical relationship between Buddhism and Brahmanism. This narrative posited that Buddhism in India had naturally declined and quietly assimilated into the Brahmanical tradition, which regarded the Vedas as the Śruti. However, in recent years, research by scholars such as Omvedt (2003), Bronkhorst (2011), Verardi (2011) and other scholars has significantly corrected the biased perspectives of early British scholars and their Brahmin supporters. Their work reveals a fierce, millennia-long ideological competition between Brahmanism and Buddhism, during which persecution of Buddhists frequently occurred. The contemporary situation of Buddhism in India since the 19th century appears to echo this historical antagonism. Faced with the historical tasks of throwing off colonial rule and establishing an independent nation-state, the question arose: What role should Buddhism play? How should it participate in the theory and practice of Indian nation-building? The debates surrounding these questions have once again made the relationship between Buddhism and Hinduism a crucial site of ideological contestation among different intellectual and social groups in India.

Hindu leaders and certain advocates of Buddhism, adhering to a syncretic “Hindu–-Buddhist” stance, propagate the view that Buddhism constitutes an “elevated form” of Hinduism. They regard the veneration of the Buddha as a crucial component of Hindu reform and revival, devoting substantial efforts to integrating Buddhism—both ideologically and institutionally—into the Hindu framework (Ober 2023, p. 196). However, the ideological opposition between Hinduism and Buddhism, centered on the caste system, became intensified within the context of anti-colonial resistance and the struggle for national independence. This gave rise to a pressing contemporary critique, “how can you speak of freedom and rights when you knowingly keep the shudras and dalits crushed under your feet?” (Bodhananda [1930] 2009, pp. 148–55; Ober 2023, p. 213) As the assertion that “Hindus cannot represent Dalits; only Dalits can represent themselves” gained increasing recognition, Hindu leaders were compelled to address the ensuing tensions. They confronted profound anxieties over the potential disintegration of the caste system and the erosion of Hinduness. This sentiment has, to some extent, shaped the Hindu assimilation of Buddhism since the 20th century and is likely to influence future dynamics in Buddhist regions situated on the peripheries of the subcontinent (Ober 2023, p. 196).

Raghu Vira’s cultural nationalist position led him to select the “Hindu-–Buddhist” tradition as the cultural foundation for modern India’s national identity. His scholarly engagement with Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, and his assertive stance on the issue of Tibet, were fundamentally manifestations of a conservative cultural nationalist agenda. Under the guise of engaging with Buddhism, Vira sought to defend Hinduness, promote the expansion of Hindu ideology into what he perceived as the Hindu civilizational “borderlands”—such as Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, and Tibet—and ultimately secure the dominance of regional civilizational discourse.

It is noteworthy that Vira, while using Buddhism to enhance the global credit of Indian civilization, simultaneously sought to suppress its anti-hegemonic potential. Parallel to Vira’s efforts to promote a syncretic “Hindu-–Buddhist” assimilation, figures like Ambedkar positioned Hinduism in direct opposition to Buddhism. Ambedkar championed the Buddhist doctrine of universal equality as a liberatory path for Dalits against caste hegemony, urging the oppressed to convert from Hinduism to Buddhism. More significantly, Ambedkar redefined Buddhism through the lens of rationality and the spirit of democratic society, thereby molding it into an ideology and religious tradition inherently compatible with the imagination of a modern, democratic Indian nation. However, what is particularly distinctive is Ambedkar’s endeavor to construct an intellectual dialogue between Marxism and the teachings of the Buddha, attempting a synthesis of Marx’s theories on class conflict and private property into the Buddha’s philosophical framework (Ambedkar [1979] 2019, pp. 441–62). Under Ambedkar’s leadership, Dalits actively promoted Buddhism as an alternative to Hinduism, culminating in the mass public conversion to Buddhism in 1956.

As the chief architect of the Indian Constitution and the first Law and Justice Minister after independence, Ambedkar undoubtedly intersected, both temporally and spatially, with Raghu Vira—a member of the Constituent Assembly involved in finalizing the Hindi version of the Constitution. Vira must have been aware of Ambedkar’s fundamental stance, or at least his critiques of Hinduism. Yet, existing materials reveal little substantive influence of Ambedkar and the Dalit Buddhist movement on Vira’s perception of Buddhism or its relationship with Hinduism. This “abnormal absence” may precisely indicate that Hindu ideology, in the process of assimilating Buddhism, deliberately ignored or even suppressed its anti-Brahmanical, anti-hierarchical dimension. Considering Ambedkar’s leftist stance, this disregard may also have concealed an underlying anxiety about the spread of a “communist threat” within India. Had the anti-caste egalitarianism of Buddhism been fully activated, it would not only have shaken the foundations of Hindu ideology but could also, against the backdrop of the early Cold War, have escalated into an ideological confrontation between liberalism and communism, with India as the battleground. For a newly independent India, this would have been an unbearable burden.

Raghu Vira’s 1955 visit to China constitutes a significant chapter in Sino-Indian Buddhist exchanges during the 1950s. However, Premier Zhou Enlai’s verbal praise, labeling him as the “Indian Xuanzang”, could not obscure a fundamental reality: Vira’s journey to the Eastern land for scriptures differed profoundly in nature from Xuanzang’s pilgrimage to the Western land for Dharma. In the 7th century, Master Xuanzang returned to China with Buddhist scriptures and sacred artefacts, subsequently establishing the Sūtra translation centers and founding the Faxiang school (法相宗), thereby creating a pinnacle in the history of Sino-Indian Buddhist cultural exchange. Even during his time, Buddhism in China, due to its “foreign” character, was perceived as a potential challenge to Confucian ethical principles and the “Great Unity” (大一統) political order, thus undergoing a prolonged and complex process of localization. In contrast, the fundamental driving force behind Raghu Vira’s search for and study of Buddhism stemmed from his Indian cultural nationalism: domestically, to find a common “Hindu–-Buddhist” foundation for independent nation-building and externally, to consolidate civilizational frontiers through Hindu ideology and secure discursive hegemony within the perceived “Hindu–-Buddhist” civilizational sphere. In this sense, Raghu Vira was by no means a 20th-century “Indian Xuanzang.”

When re-examining Raghu Vira’s cultural project within India’s historical and cultural context, it becomes evident that Buddhism occupies an ambiguous position in modern Indian nation-building: while serving as a proud historical legacy when India faces outward, it simultaneously represents a potentially dangerous choice when India turns inward. This paradoxical status reflects the complex interplay between religious heritage and nationalist agendas in colonial and postcolonial India.