{"id":6725,"date":"2008-03-31T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-31T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/03\/31\/buddhists-seek-control-over-mahabodhi-temple-management\/"},"modified":"2008-03-31T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-31T12:00:00","slug":"buddhists-seek-control-over-mahabodhi-temple-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2008\/03\/31\/buddhists-seek-control-over-mahabodhi-temple-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Buddhists seek control over Mahabodhi temple management"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.thaindian.com\/newsportal\/uncategorized\/buddhists-seek-control-over-mahabodhi-temple-management_10032067.html\">www.thaindian.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">PATNA, INDIA, March 28, 2008: Buddhist monks are upset with the Bihar government for &#8220;deliberately&#8221; delaying the formation of a panel for running the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya, Buddhism&#8217;s holiest shrine, and want control to be vested with Buddhists. The Bodh Gaya Temple Management Committee (BGTMC) has been without a head for more than six months. Monks say this is hampering the day-to-day functioning of the 1,500-year-old temple at Bodh Gaya, located about 110 km from here where the Buddha attained enlightenment 2,550 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Bhadant Anand, president of the Bodhgaya Mahabodhi Vihar All-India Action Committee, says the delay is a &#8220;conspiracy&#8221; by the government to keep the management under the control of non-Buddhists. &#8220;We fail to understand why non-Buddhists have the control over the holiest shrine of Buddhists. We have decided to take up the issue by lobbying support to demand Buddhist control over the management,&#8221; Anand told IANS. Anand has been leading a pressure group of Buddhist monks for over a decade and a half favoring an amendment to the Mahabodhi Temple Management Act 1949 so that management can be handed over to Buddhists.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Mahabodhi Temple Management Act 1949, the panel should comprise four Buddhists and the same number of Hindu members for a three-year period with the Gaya district magistrate as its ex-officio chairman and the Mahanth (presiding priest) of Sankaracharya Math (Saivite monastery, Bodh Gaya) as ex-officio Hindu member. The state government nominates a Hindu as chairman for the period when the district magistrate is a non-Hindu.<\/p>\n<p>The BTMC has over 75 staff, including 35 daily wagers, who clean and look after the temple. The Mahabodhi Temple, declared a World Heritage Site in 2002 by Unesco, is visited annually by thousands of tourists, especially from Buddhist countries.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.thaindian.com PATNA, INDIA, March 28, 2008: Buddhist monks are upset with the Bihar government for &#8220;deliberately&#8221; delaying the formation of,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}