Monks and Minority Politics in Arunachal Pradesh

Swargajyoti Gohain. 2022. "Monks and Minority Politics in Arunachal Pradesh" In Vernacular Politics in Northeast India, pp, 142-167. Edited by Jelle J.P. Wouters. Oxford University Press 5 Monks and Minority Politics in Arunachal Pradesh Swargajyoti Gohain Monks in Politics When elections to the sixty assembly constituencies and two Lok Sabha seats in Arunachal Pradesh in Northeast India were held concurrently on 11 April 2019, three monks filed nominations to contest the elections from the predominantly Buddhist district of Tawang. Lama Lobsang Gyatso was given a Janata Dal (secular) ticket to fight against Pema Khandu, the incumbent chief minister from the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Mukto constituency; he later withdrew his candidature to give way to Geshe Thupten Kunphen fielded by the Indian National Congress (INC). In Lumla, another constituency, National People’s Party (NPP) candidate Lama Jampa Thrinley Kunkhap, fought against and subsequently, lost to BJP’s Jambey Tashi. The electoral foray of the three monks drew much media attention, but they were only the latest in a long line of monkpoliticians, as I term monks who choose politics as their vocation. Across the world, monks joining parliamentary politics is becoming increasingly normalized; however, there is a wide variation from country to country in the degree of monastic participation in politics. At one extreme is Thailand, where the Buddhist monastic order (Sanskrit. sangha) is enveloped by the state, curtailing the freedom of monks to join politics. Bhutan, where the monk body is disenfranchised, presents a similar case, although monks have greater political and civic authority here (Mathou, 2000). The other extreme is Sri Lanka, where monks justify and institutionalize their role in politics, and many monks have served as members of the parliament. Myanmar is a middle case where monks cannot run or vote in elections but have served often as critical voices to the state or exerted pressure on the state to approve or discard particular policies. A fourth case, in my view, is presented by monks in Buddhist minority areas in India such as Ladakh or Tawang in west Arunachal Pradesh,1 which has not received adequate attention so far. I believe the case of Buddhist-majority countries like Myamar and Sri Lanka cannot completely address the issue of political activism among monks in Tawang or Ladakh, where Buddhism is a majority in the particular region but a minority religion in the country. In the former, monks have a high degree of moral authority which places their political arguments above general criticism. In a Buddhist-minority region, monks have a say in the local area but significantly less representation and influence in the state and in matters of the nation as a whole. By focusing on the ‘vernacular politics’ (Wouters, Introduction, this volume) of Monyul, the collective name for Tawang and West Kameng districts in Arunachal Pradesh, I explore how the politics of monks in this region compare with that of other societies where monks have traditionally played active political roles. Given the relatively recent emergence of monk-politicians in Monyul and their intervention in the politics of a region with a protracted history of border conflict with China, what can the actions and motivations of these monk-politicians tell us? I examine how understanding the politics of these monks—both those who formally join electoral politics as well as those who participate informally by campaigning for or espousing particular party candidates and party policies—can give us fresh insights into the more general phenomenon of monks in politics. The specific ambitions and political practices of monk-politicians in Buddhist-majority countries differ from those in Buddhist-minority areas of India, such as Monyul and Ladakh. Yet, as I submit in this chapter, despite the difference in context, everywhere monks justify their participation in formal political processes, whether in elections or other political processes, in terms of a need for cultural preservation and as a necessary step they must take to save their religious cultural identity. In all such cases, the threat to cultural identity is articulated vis-à-vis another community or group, where the latter is defined in terms of religious identity. In Ladakh and Tawang, we see monks leading agendas for preserving Tibetan Buddhist cultural traditions in their region by invoking special policies and provisions reserved for minorities in India. In Buddhist-majority countries, we find some monks favouring policies and legislation that discriminate against religious minorities. Following from this, I examine the role of religious leaders in a secular democracy like India and its implications for secularism as both a political goal and social/moral ideal. By religious leaders, I mean persons who control important religious offices, such as high-ranking monks. All over India, the phenomenon of religious leaders of different faiths winning electoral mandate is becoming increasingly visible. These leaders wield great influence since they combine political and religious or spiritual power. Given this context, what are the challenges that may arise? The very use of religion as a platform may diminish the ideas of equality and liberty so essential to secular democracy or normative secularism (Van Beek, 2012). Can a political leader who is also a religious leader maintain an effective balance between his/her religious interests and his/her commitment to the ideals of secular democracy? Rajeev Bhargava (2006) proposes that Indian secularism is distinct from its Western variants by the attitude of principled distance it maintains, which means that more than simple separation of religion and the state, the Indian version of secularism stresses on contextual secularism. That means, instead of a complete depoliticization of religion, Indian secularism allows for a contextual politicization of religion when it serves the ideas of equality and freedom. From this standpoint, monk-politicians in India need not be anomalous and incompatible with secularism if the ends or values they espouse do not contradict the premise of the latter. In the concluding section of this chapter, I argue that it is possible to delineate strands within monks’ political roles that may be put at the service of democratic ideals, drawing on H.L. Seneviratne’s (2001) distinction between ideological monks and pragmatic or progressive monks as a conceptual resource. Monks have traditionally been held in high regard in Monyul, which was inducted into the Buddhist fold as early as the twelfth century and came under the temporal authority of the Tibetan state in the seventeenth century during the period of the Gelug sect’s ascendance. Although Monyul is home to a number of ethnic groups, the Monpas are the predominant group. Monpa, originally a Tibetan term for all the communities who live in the outlying areas of the Tibetan plateau, means lowlander, and it included many territorial groups across the eastern Himalayan region. Bhutan, for instance, was called Lho-Mon, meaning southern lowland. In the postcolonial Indian state, the category of Monpa subsumes the different ethnic communities living in Tawang and West Kameng districts, who speak different dialects but largely adhere to Tibetan Buddhism and are united by the common history of being tax-paying subjects of the Tibetan state for nearly 300 years until 1951, when the postcolonial Indian administration put an end to Tibetan rule. Monyul, which was part of the Tibetan system of monastic governance, was characterized by an intense ‘monastic geographicity’ (Chatterjee, 2013) where all aspects of public life were subsumed by the monastic system. While monks have traditionally commanded influence among the local Monpa communities, their presence in electoral politics began with the formal entry of Tsona Gontse Rinpoche, a reincarnated monk and an active and influential public figure, in the electoral field, and his succeeding victories and representation in the Arunachal Pradesh state assembly. T.G. Rinpoche, as he was popularly known, exited formal politics in 2012 but continued to hold important government positions until his death in 2014. Monks have influenced the electoral arena in indirect ways as well. Many lay electoral candidates rely on the leadership and guidance of monks to gain success in state elections, and monks have also successfully contested elections to assume political leadership. The three monks from Tawang who filed their nominations to contest the elections in April 2019 – although one of them later withdrew – had many supporters. According to my local informants, apart from Lobsang Gyatso, the other two monks did not want to run in the elections but did so under popular pressure. The bulk of my information for this chapter comes from interviews and conversations I conducted over the course of many years with monks from Monyul who have formally contested elections or are in active party politics. My point of entry was Tsona Gontse Rinpoche, who combined political and spiritual authority in his politics. I interviewed Lama Lobsang Gyatso, who had filed his nomination against the current BJP chief minister with a Janata Dal (secular) ticket but later withdrew his candidature. I also interviewed monks who have supported particular candidates in elections but have not joined party politics themselves. I supplement my ethnographic data from Monyul with secondary material about Ladakh, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar, all of which have seen Buddhist monks in politics. Politics as Vocation: Social Work or Social Mobility? I distinguish the phenomenon of monks in monastic power struggles and monks involved in political contest outside the monastic sphere. During the ascendancy of the Tibetan state in the seventeenth century, monks participated in political intrigues in order to maintain individual supremacy or to perpetuate the influence of monastic sections over other secular organizations such as the military (Goldstein, 1989). This is different from my focus in this chapter, which is on monks’ involvement in extra monastic political processes in contemporary societies. Many contemporary Buddhist societies have witnessed militant movements led by members of the Buddhist order, with violence often being the end result. This has prompted much scholarly discussion on what motivates followers of a faith that advocates other-worldly values, even world renunciation, to participate in worldly and secular activities such as politics. Politics is no longer isolated incidents or accidental to the career of monks today. One comes across two kinds of explanations about what motivates monks to participate in political life, although both elements may co-exist: the first is that politics provides an avenue for social mobility and second, that politics serves as social work. In his book World Conqueror and World Renouncer (1976), a study of Buddhist monks in Thailand, Stanley Tambiah notes that many monks who received education in monastic studies chose to disrobe and join the government, administrative, and military services, while some of those who continued in the monastic vocation rose to become ecclesiastical position holders. What is important to note here is that the avenues of secular social mobility were open only to those who left monkhood. Monastery initiates acquired the education made available to them in the monasteries in order to improve their life chances but eventually relinquished the renunciate life in order to rise in the secular social hierarchy. That is, they had to give up their monastery life in order to move upward in secular social life. Anthropologist Alpa Shah (2014) offers an alternative perspective on renunciation by arguing that the persistence of the Maoist insurrectionary movement in India is rooted in the ideological significance of the figure of the Hindu renouncers. Shah shows that some revolutionary leaders were once on the Hindu path to renunciation and argues that renouncers make committed political subjects. World renouncers leave home to go out and build a parallel, alternative world, which is just and egalitarian. This conforms to the goal of communism, an ideology that is further sustained by a particular politico-economy which has severely marginalized Adivasis, who form the bulk of support for the Maoist rebellion. Though Shah brings an interesting perspective to reconcile the opposite goals of world renunciation and worldly political activism, my studies show that this does not apply to the Buddhist monks who join politics. While social mobility or putting one’s monastic education to use in the pursuit of one’s political ambition has been the course of action for some monks, many others typically justify their time and work in politics as social work. How can we understand this in connection to what sociologist Max Weber had to say about politics as being a vocation or internal calling? Weber in his essay ‘Politics as vocation’ (1958) discusses vocation as an ethical attachment to one’s work. Whether one lives ‘for’ politics, in the sense of regarding it as calling or duty, or ‘off’ politics in the sense of considering it one’s profession, one should approach it with passion, perspective, and responsibility. Traditionally, monks have not approached politics as their vocation or calling. Rather, the monastic vocation has involved allegiance to one’s religious calling. Therefore, when monks participate in political life, it requires a reconception of the nature of the monastic vocation. In other words, how do monks reconceptualize their calling in order to accommodate electoral politics among their activities? Let us turn to examples from South and South East Asia to see how the monk’s traditional conduct was discursively reconstituted by both historical developments and the individual leadership of a few monks. In Sri Lanka, Anagarika Dharmapala, founder of the Mahabodhi Society (Kemper, 2015; Tambiah, 1992) was the first to reconceptualize monks’ roles to include political activities; following him, Walpola Rahula, the principal of Vidyalankara monastic college outside Colombo argued in The Heritage of the Bhikkhu that monks should be allowed to participate in politics instead of limiting their activities to otherworldly, spiritual affairs. Soon, this became a manual for a new generation of monks wishing to join politics. By identifying Sinhalese social service with service by monks in his writings, Rahula conflated the Sinhalese nation with Buddhism and laid the foundation for a discourse of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism (Tambiah, 1992: 22–41). In Myanmar, another Buddhist-majority country, politics is not allowed as a monastic vocation and even the most politically active monks would combine his political discourse with other ritual and social activities (see Walton, 2015). The Burmese word Nain Ngan Ye, refers to party/electoral politics. But even those monks who proudly do politics avoid using the term Nain Ngan Ye because party politics is not the kind of politics monks in Myanmar ought to be doing (Walton, 2015: 512). Monks in Myanmar in general are opposed to the idea of monastic political parties (they criticize the role of monks in elections in Sri Lanka) and feel that forming a party of monks would contribute to lawba (Burmese. greed), one of the main obstacles to spiritual progress. But in Myanmar, as in other Buddhist countries, monks can get involved in lay matters, when the religion (Sanskrit. sasana) is seen to be under threat.2 Monks in Tawang too justify their time in politics as social service— work to improve the lot of people—so as to fold it into their monastic life. But many monks in Tawang additionally justify their entry in politics by saying that monks have no authority in the changed context of democracy. They contend that without political power they cannot bring about change. This is an important point that needs dwelling upon. While there has not been a systematic articulation of the contemporary role of monks in Tawang as was the case in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, most of the monks I interviewed decried the challenges of monastic vows and rules in the changed social and political context. The usual career graph of any monk recruit is straightforward. A new recruit in the monastery is first taken to the abbot who gives him monk robes. He studies for two to three years, and after that, progresses to the rank of getsul (Tibetan for novice monk) after taking the thirty-six vows. There are four cardinal vows that a getsul has to follow or otherwise disrobe—abstinence from sex, lying about one’s tantric powers, stealing to an extreme, and killing. One is getsul till the age of twenty years after which he may choose to become gelong (Tibetan for fully ordained monk), for which 253 ordinances/vows are required (Interview with Sangey Leda, 22 March 2010; see Gyatso, 2003). However, despite the arduous training and discipline that are the lot of monks, they do not have the same exalted status among the laity as they used to earlier. Monks are often criticized for their duplicitous behaviour. During fieldwork, I saw people gossip about how many monks owned expensive cars, gadgets, and houses, and how once they journey out of Tawang to more anonymous locations, they would immediately discard their yellow or maroon robes for more fashionable wear. Usually, the highranking monks, revered as spiritual leaders, were exempted from such critical tales that the laity spun about the monks. Monks, in turn, are aware of this general loss of faith among the laity and respond vigorously and defensively to the allegations. According to Gelong Sangey Leda, a monk in Tawang monastery, people should learn more about Buddhism and acquire in-depth knowledge of Buddhism. Only then will they be able to understand and empathize with lamas. When I asked him whether the plight of monks is exacerbated by the conditions of modern life, he immediately agreed, saying that it is very difficult to maintain all 253 vows of gelong all the time because of the contingencies of modern living (Interview 22 March 2010). The strained monk-laity relations have resulted in a perception of marginalization among monks. Monks from the Buddhist districts of Arunachal Pradesh have a further sense of marginalization within the regional circuits, given that Buddhism here is a minority religion vis-à-vis the Christian majority in the state or the Hindu majority population in the country. The representation of Buddhist Monpas in bureaucratic and administrative positions is far less compared to other groups, such as the Adis, Apatanis, and Nishis, concentrated in the central part of Arunachal Pradesh.3 While many parts of central and eastern Arunachal Pradesh were integrated within the political-economic and educational networks of postcolonial India, largely due to the role of the Christian missions, Monyul lagged behind in terms of infrastructure and development despite its geopolitically strategic location. Monpas also had delayed access to modern education compared to the other groups, who had the advantage of missionary education before government schools and colleges were started in Arunachal Pradesh. The difference with Buddhist-majority countries then is that in the politics of monks in minority areas, we find a discourse of minority rights. The late T.G. Rinpoche articulated his politics through the framework of minorityhood. He once told me that in Arunachal Pradesh, which has 90% non-Buddhist populations, the Buddhist Monpas are a minority. This is revealing of how monk leaders in such areas perceive their status, unlike in Buddhist-majority countries where monks have the power to define minority rights instead of being at the receiving end. Most of the Tibetan Buddhist communities living on the Indo-Tibetan borderlands of India are culturally peripheral within the regional milieu. The Ladakhis Buddhists, who were part of the Jammu and Kashmir state until 2019, the Buddhists of Lahaul, Spiti, and Kinnaur valleys in Himachal Pradesh, or the Tibetan Buddhists of Bengal present comparable situations of regional marginality. These border communities have also borne the brunt of the impact of the India-China border dispute. Inhabiting disputed border territories between India and China and pulled into the limelight every time there is tension at the borders, these communities lead tenuous lives and livelihoods. The intense militarization in these areas have affected the local ecology and environment, as well as trade and commerce.4 Grazing pastures are heavily overrun by military camps and firing ranges, roads are under constant military supervision and control, and tourism, the mainstay of the economy in these areas, suffers during news of border incursions. In Monyul, which was temporarily occupied by Chinese troops during the 1962 border war, people often face questions about their national allegiance. People from other parts of India often wonder aloud whether the Monpas would ever prefer to become part of China, given that China claims this region as an extension of Tibet. Given this background, we can read attempts by the Monpa Buddhist clergy to engage with the state process of elections as produced by what Van Schendel (2005: 21) terms the ‘border effect’. A border effect is a response to the reification of the border caused through state actions of militarization and surveillance. It leads to border strategies of either ‘accommodation’ or ‘defiance’ (Van Schendel, 2005), where accommodation requires compromise and reconciliation with statesanctioned rules concerning the border, while defiance is characterized by transgression of boundary rules and may include strategies such as unauthorized border crossing. Pachuau (Chapter 6, this volume) comments on how it is important for the Mizo National Front (MNF), which emerged as the single largest party in the 2018 Mizoram state assembly elections, to maintain a working relationship with the centre for funds. Many political parties in Northeast India maintain this accommodative stance toward the ruling party at the centre for similar reasons. In a previous work (see Gohain, 2017a), I have argued that in Tawang, monks come out of monastic spaces and engage with state institutions such as elections in order to ameliorate their progressive marginalization. Sharma (Chapter 4, this volume) shows how voting and participating in election rallies provide a means for otherwise marginalized sections of citizens to perform citizenship in the BTAD of Assam. For the monks of Monyul, accommodating formal procedures of democratic politics in a monastic career is a means to an end, the end being to preserve their gradually shrinking hold in the wider society. In this sense, one might say that electoral politics is a chance to regain a declining social standing in society. I have mentioned above some of the differences between the motivations of monk-politicians in Buddhist-minority regions and Buddhist-majority countries. In the former, joining politics is justified not only as social service but also as the route to reclaim loss of authority. In the following section, I offer brief career sketches of two monk-politicians from Monyul in order to substantiate this observation. Tsona Gontse Rinpoche and Lama Lobsang Gyatso My entry into the society of monks in Monyul was facilitated to a large extent by the good offices of Tsona Gontse Rinpoche, and I was fortunate to have met and interviewed him several times before his sudden death in 2014. T.G. Rinpoche was a powerful monk as well as influential public leader and elected politician. Head of the Gaden Rabge Ling (GRL) monastery (also known as Upper Gonpa) in Bomdila, West Kameng, T.G. Rinpoche was born in Lumla of Tawang district in 1967. Recognized as the thirteenth reincarnation of Tsona Gontse Rinpoche in 1971 by the Dalai Lama, he went to the Drepung Loseling monastery in South India for his monastic studies in 1974, graduating with the highest monastic degree of Geshe Lharampa in 1996. In 1987, he was selected unanimously as the national chairman of the Himalayan Buddhist Cultural Association, which has its headquarters in Delhi, and he also established the Buddhist Culture Preservation Society (BCPS), a cultural organization based in Bomdila on 7 May 1987 and served as its president. The story goes that he was apparently very dissatisfied with the state of Buddhism in Tawang when he returned to his home state after completing his monastic studies. In one of our meetings, T.G. Rinpoche told me that he decided to contest elections when he realized that only through political power could he bring about social and cultural reform in Monyul. He was elected as Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Lumla assembly constituency of Arunachal Pradesh for three consecutive terms from March 1995 to October 2009. During these three terms, he held various portfolios as the Minister of State, Industry, Textile and Handicrafts, Cabinet Minister of Tourism, and Chairman of Advisory Council for Tourism Development (ACTD) with the government of Arunachal Pradesh. In 2016, he retired from active politics and took the position of Chairman, Department of Karmik & Adhyatmik Affairs, Government of Arunachal Pradesh, whose main agenda is the preservation of Tibetan Buddhist traditions in Tawang and West Kameng.5 In 2003, he started a demand for a Mon Autonomous Region comprising of the two Buddhist districts of Tawang and West Kameng, whose main agenda is Tibetan Buddhist cultural preservation. During the heyday of the movement, the grounds of the Tawang Monastery would see huge gatherings of 10,000-20,000 people who came to hear politicians and public figures speak about autonomy. After Rinpoche’s death in 2014, the movement has considerably waned but not completely disappeared from public discourse. Even now people tell me that the movement can only be revived if someone like firebrand T.G. Rinpoche is born again. T.G. Rinpoche referred to his years in politics as a temporary period in life when he devoted himself to social work. According to him, the traditional role of monks as spiritual teachers was eroded when they were integrated as part of Arunachal Pradesh into the Indian republic with its democratic values and procedures. This, he felt, has had adverse consequences for Monpa society as a whole. In order to preserve the moral fabric of the present Monyul society, monks had to re-acquire leadership positions once again but in the new role of ‘friend’ instead of ‘teacher’. Therefore, he decided to become a friend of the people, as an elected people’s representative (Interviews, 16 August 2009; 27 November 2009). The second monk-politician with a notable political presence in Tawang society is Lama Lobsang Gyatso, who filed his nomination with a JD(S) ticket in April 2019. I interviewed him in Delhi after the elections. He told me that he had wanted to be a monk since childhood and went to study in Sera Je monastery school in Mysore in 1988 (Interview, 20 July 2019). After studying Buddhist philosophy for five years, he was sent to Tawang to start a branch of Sera Je monastery called Jamyang Choekhar Ling, which the Dalai Lama inaugurated in 1999. Lama Lobsang served as the administrative secretary of Jamyang monastery from 2005 to 2011. Lama Lobsang had always concerned himself with social problems and tried to promote different kinds of social reform measures. He was very active in the all-India anti-corruption protests—popularly known as Anna Hazare’s movement—that rocked India in 2012. In 2011, when a helicopter crashed in Tawang, he was part of the rescue mission and rescued three persons. He was interviewed by All India Radio, where he accused the government of corruption, and consequently, the then civil aviation minister allegedly called him up and threatened him. In the same year, an underconstruction wire rope suspension bridge over Tawang Chu river collapsed killing six people, and he protested against the government then too and earned the latter’s ire. Disillusioned by the personal attacks that followed, he had almost decided to leave India and go abroad, but on a trip to Bodh Gaya, some monks approached him about participating in anti-dam protests, and so he returned to Tawang and led the anti-dam charge till 2017. In another article, I had written about the monk activists fighting against hydropower projects in Tawang and the role of the Save Mon Region Federation (SMRF), a local organization acting in concert with monks based in Karnataka. I had highlighted there how the protesting monks were spurred not only by their concerns about conserving the flora and fauna but also by the threat posed by dams to the many Buddhist pilgrimage sites in the region (Gohain, 2017b). In April and May 2012, Lama Lobsang was arrested by the police several times; on 2nd May, the police opened fire on the protestors and killed two persons and seriously injured two more.6 Despite state crackdown and the blocking of all coverage of the rallies, Lama Lobsang told me that he spent six lakhs (approximately 8,450 USD) from his own pocket to telecast the rally on Frontier TV channel. However, he later fell out with the SMRF and contested the elections with a JD(S) ticket. At our meeting, he offered the view that politics requires time and planning, and no such plans were present in SMRF. When SMRF decided to support Geshe Kuphen, the Indian National Congress (INC) candidate in his electoral campaign, Lama Lobsang withdrew his candidature. Like T.G. Rinpoche, Lama Lobsang also made a similar statement about the challenges to monks in a democracy. He said that in a democratic country like India, all powers are vested in lawmakers, whether in legislative assembly or parliament. ‘In a democracy if you want to do something for public welfare, then it is very difficult to do so without political representation’, he told me. For both these monks, elections were the means for monks to counter their minority status in the region. Majoritarian Practices and Minority Rights While the previous section highlights the difference between monkpoliticians in Buddhist-minority and Buddhist-majority countries, this section shows where the two overlap. I argue that both have a similar approach towards what they see as the threat to Buddhist traditions from non-Buddhist others. Monk-politicians in all these different geographical regions have a common agenda in their politics, which is to protect or preserve the Buddhist way of life by institutionalizing policies and practices that claim to do so. The common justification for such policies is that these are a necessary protection against the proselytizing tendencies of other religions or a means to ward off the influence of more powerful cultural forces. In Sri Lanka, where 70% of the population practice Buddhism, monks spearheaded the anti-colonial struggle and supported the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology espoused by right-wing parties such as the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress and the Sinhala Mahasabha (Tambiah, 1992). Scholars have noted that Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, which conflates race (Aryan), religion (Buddhism), and territory (Sri Lanka), is anchored in the belief that Sri Lanka is a preserve only of Sinhala Buddhists, and minorities live there because of the Buddhists’ sufferance (Tambiah, 1992; Theiventhran, 2018). This ideology served to deprive Tamils and other minorities of equal citizenship and led to the emergence of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) whose main agenda was to fight for an independent Tamil state. The LTTE was defeated by the Sri Lankan military in 2009, during the reign of President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Since then, Sri Lanka on all counts seems to have reverted to Sinhalese majoritarian politics. Contemporary writings about violence against Muslims in Sri Lanka perpetrated by Sinhalese Buddhists, bring to the fore the role of hardliner monks in majoritarian politics against the Muslim minorities. The Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) (National Sinhala Heritage Party), an exclusively Buddhist monk-led political party, formed in February 2004, fielded over 200 Buddhist monk candidates for the parliamentary election held on 2 April 2004, out of which nine were elected as parliamentarians (Deegalle, 2004). The JHU’s elected monks argued that their goal was to create a block in the parliament to protect and propagate Buddhist interests. This party’s stand was that Buddhism, even though it is the state religion, is under threat from other religious communities.7 The anti-conversion bill proposed by JHU to stop ‘unethical conversions’ among the Buddhists and Hindus has come under global scrutiny and produced severe protests from Christian churches around the world. The eventual aim of the JHU is to establish a Bauddha rajya or Buddhist state (Deegalle, 2004; Theiventhran, 2018). In 2012, two monks, Kirama Wimalajothi and Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara established the Buddhist Power Force, known by its Sri Lankan initials BBS (Bodu Bala Sena), in order to protect Sri Lankan Buddhism from external influence and to uphold the Buddhist way of life. In June 2014, the BBS organized a rally which led to arson and violence in Muslim villages and the destruction of Muslim business establishments. It must be noted though that not all monks in Sri Lanka support an anti-Muslim position, and some monks have organized rallies to protest the increased presence of Buddhist monks in politics. Similarly, in Myanmar, religious nationalism has been on the rise since 2012. Many Buddhist nationalist networks and organizations now openly espouse Buddhism and have monks as spokespersons. For example, nationalist monk U. Wiratha encouraged Buddhists to economically boycott Muslim businesses in 2012. Some monks participated in the anti-Rohingya Muslim refugee rallies in 2012. Quite a few monks believed that monks are justified in participating in political activities to the extent that they shape government policies by exerting pressure or influencing electoral outcomes by supporting particular candidates or policies. For example, when in June 2013, the government first drafted the inter-faith marriage law, a leading monk of the sangha issued a warning. In contrast, in Buddhist-minority regions in India, the struggle for official establishment of Buddhism has taken a different form. Rather than outright force through majoritarian might, the move has been to secure protection for Buddhism through the rhetoric of minority rights. The argument here is that Buddhism being a minority religion in the regional and national context, it should be given its due constitutional protection. This has meant that Buddhism has been at the forefront of regional identity politics in the case of both Monyul and Ladakh. Religious leaders such as Kushok Bakula Rinpoche led the Ladakhis in their demands for greater political representation and economic development (Van Beek, 2012). The Ladakhi demand for autonomy, which led to the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) in 1995, rested on claims of uniqueness of the Ladakhi people, vis-à-vis the Muslim majority Jammu and Kashmir state (Van Beek, 2004). The first demands for Ladakh’s regional autonomy was made in July 1949, during Jawaharlal Nehru’s first visit to the region. In their submission to Nehru, the Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA) argued that Ladakh should be separated from Jammu and Kashmir and directly merged with India, although they did not press for a Union Territory status then. A second delegation led by Kushok Bakula Rinpoche, head of the Gelug branch of Tibetan Buddhism in Ladakh, also met Nehru in May 1949 and stressed the unique position of Ladakh vis-à-vis Jammu and Kashmir. While Bakula was part of the Sheikh Abdullah government in Kashmir, he raised his voice on several occasions, protesting the state government’s treatment of Ladakh but stopped short of radical demands of Ladakh’s independence from Jammu and Kashmir. His interventions in the Kashmir assembly led to the creation of a special office for Ladakh Affairs, where Bakula and his associates regularly held ministerial berths at the state level over the next decades (Van Beek, 1998, 1999: 438). Soon, however, sections of the Buddhist establishment, led by Thikse monastery’s Khanpo Rinpoche, came out in open opposition against Bakula Rinpoche. In 1989, the LBA launched a movement called the Ladakh People’s Movement for Union Territory Status alleging discrimination by the Kashmiri Sunni Muslims. In October 1989, at a tripartite meeting between the supporters of autonomy, the state government, and the central government, the LBA dropped its demand for Union Territory and the government conceded to an autonomous council administration for Ladakh; in September 1995, the LAHDC was formed (Van Beek, 2004). When Ladakh became a Union Territory in 2019, the LBA organized celebrations welcoming the move. 8 Monks have played a leading role in the discourse of Ladakhi uniqueness, resting on distinctly Buddhist characteristics. In Monyul, T.G. Rinpoche led the movement for autonomy and was supported by sections of monks, politicians, and educated youth and professionals. The demand is not for secession from the state but for a separate Mon Autonomous Region to be governed by its own council within Arunachal Pradesh. Proponents of autonomy argue that if Monyul became autonomous, it could develop economically and culturally, since the centre would then disburse funds directly to the autonomous council. Like Ladakh, the movement for Mon autonomy is underlain by a discourse of Buddhist cultural identity and an agenda for cultural preservation through political autonomy; and it invokes the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which provides for autonomy to marginalized people in India. T.G. Rinpoche often lamented the fact that the Buddhist Monpa communities of Monyul had forgotten their traditions and seemed more familiar with Christian and Hindu customs brought by migrants from other parts of the state and the country. With the active intervention of T.G. Rinpoche, a number of measures were taken to restore Tibetan Buddhist practices in Monyul. For example, it was made mandatory to teach Bhoti—the Tibetan language, which is the nearest written language approximating the various spoken languages of the Monpa communities—in schools and colleges. The traditional Tibetan medicine system also gained official recognition from the Government of India around the same period. The BCPS started by the Rinpoche took the lead in renovating and restoring old Buddhist sites, monuments, and monasteries. During the lifetime of T.G. Rinpoche, several rallies and meetings were conducted both to mobilize local people in support of the demand as well as to spread awareness about it in New Delhi. His untimely death in 2014 brought many shifts in the autonomy movement, most notably a change in the leadership, with lay political leaders sporadically raising the issue in New Delhi. However, in the April 2019 elections, Buddhist cultural preservation returned as one of the main issues on the electoral agenda of the monk candidates. The Mon Autonomous Region demand figured prominently in the manifesto and statements of the monks. It is noteworthy that all the monk candidates were drawn not from BJP, the ruling party both at the centre and the state at the time of elections, but from the opposition Congress. This is interesting in the context of minority Buddhist politics that I talk about, for many of the monk candidates felt that they could represent the local people’s interests better. The second electoral issue was environmental as the popular resistance against hydro-power projects was led by monks. But as I have already mentioned, culture and environment are linked as monk champions of anti-dam resistance argue that many sacred pilgrimage sites will be submerged by dam water. The imagination of Monyul as a Tibetan Buddhist space underlies both the demand for autonomy as well as the local environmental struggles. Although all the monks lost in the elections, the issues they raised and the popular support they won show that the same issues—of Mon autonomy and Tibetan Buddhist cultural preservation—may very well reappear in the future politics of the region. The narrative of cultural preservation is where the politics of monks in Buddhist-minority regions find common ground with that of the Buddhistmajority regions. Conversion to other religions is significantly low in Monyul given the influence of Buddhism. Yet, there is a fear of being outnumbered by other religious communities, resulting in hostilities towards and a subtle othering of non-Buddhist communities. A lay office- bearer of the Mon autonomy demand, who ran a business in Bomdila, once told me, ‘The moment one enters Bhalukpong [the Assam-Monyul interstate border], everything should look different. People should experience a different, “new world” ’ (name withheld, Interview 7 November 2009). The new world that this informant refers to is based quite obviously on cultural features derived from Buddhism. This overtly religious-cultural character of the Mon autonomy movement has made many non-Monpa or non-Buddhist residents of Monyul uncomfortable; they worry that this might lead to the eventual hegemonic presence of Tibetan Buddhism in the region. This concern underlines one of the criticisms of the politics of cultural identity— the politics of identity rests on achieving an internal cohesion by silencing internal differences (Hall, 1996) in order to present the identity as a homogenous construct, and by constructing an other in order to maintain its external boundaries (Barth, 1969).The projection of Monyul as a Buddhist place thus requires imagining it through essentially Buddhist characteristics as well as identifying its non-Buddhist other. One more important point to note is that the local politics of monks in Tawang cannot be separated from their monastic networks and the ideologies that they encounter in their travels or stints outside the state. Almost all the monks who participate in politics in Monyul, directly or indirectly, are monk returnees. By monk returnee, I mean monks from mostly rural areas of Tawang who travel to the monasteries in Karnataka in South India or Dharamshala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, or outside India, and return to their native place after completing their monastic studies. In this respect, the activities of the returnee monks of Monyul cannot be seen in isolation from political action by monks elsewhere as they are ideologically connected with their counterparts through associational and institutional ties. Returnee monks who join politics play an important role in disseminating ideologies and discourses that reshape the local public sphere. Seneviratne (2001), in his analysis of Sinhalese Buddhist monks, shows how monastic institutes produce educated monks, who think beyond the monastery boundaries. In the early twentieth century, the two main monastic universities around Colombo, Vidyodaya, and Vidyalankara produced a substantial body of young monks educated in secular subjects who were employable as salaried workers or who could otherwise seek profit in a modern economy. These changes have generated the new doctrine that the monk/lay relation is not only a hierarchical exchange of economic goods for ritual services but also, where appropriate, an egalitarian exchange of goods, services, and social favours. According to Seneviratne (2001: 16), the universities which imparted modern education in Sri Lanka contributed largely to the secularization of monks’ role. A monk educated in this fashion does not feel obliged to offer any religious or ritual service to the laity, although he might perform some such function as a personal favour. The effect of this secularization of the sangha has contributed to the movement of educated monks to secular realms like politics. All the monk candidates in the Tawang elections had completed their studies outside the state. Many students at the monastery schools situated locally in Tawang go for higher studies in monasteries in South India or in the Tibetan Buddhist learning institutes elsewhere, such as Sarnath. Quite a few of them return to Monyul and become active in promoting Tibetan Buddhist traditions either through non-governmental work or by joining politics. In the course of fieldwork in Tawang and West Kameng, I met many monks working with various NGOs. There were monks drawing salaries as teachers of Bhoti or Tibetan language in schools and colleges. Some high-ranking monks were also in the hospitality business, owning hotels and monastery guesthouses. There were, conversely, a few cases of monks who could not complete their monastic education, decided to disrobe and became taxi owners. But monks have found themselves in a variety of secular professions after acquiring modern monastic education outside the state. One can concur with Seneviratne that the monastic universities with modern education curriculum nurture future monk-politicians. These universities also facilitate networks through the circulation of monk personnel. The networks acquired in the course of monastic education and exposure to different interests and ideologies influenced the politics of Tawang monks. The anti-dam protests, for instance, showed up the links between South India and Tawang, as the SMRF organization was started at the behest of Sera monastery monks who were worried about the environment. The international flow of funds for monastery construction in Tawang and West Kameng, the visits by Dalai Lama who is an international figure, and the rejuvenation of Tibetan Buddhism in the region mirror global processes and have contibuted to the rise of a Buddhist cultural politics in Monyul. Conclusion Mathew Walton’s (2015) study of the monk-politicians of Myanmar provides an interesting perspective on the dilemma of monks in politics, which he believes to be an unresolved one. Walton suggests that monks are increasingly carving out a space for themselves in the political sphere, either as an indirect pressure group on political outcomes or through their spiritual guidance. He concludes that monks will continue to navigate the ideal of monastic detachment and the call to engage with the world for the Buddhist cause, whether in ways that support democratic reforms or contribute to the marginalization of non-Buddhists. I agree that the phenomenon of monk-politicians is one that is finding its own resolution—when monks are increasingly visible in not simply political matters and public spaces but also in electoral spaces, they are carving a space for themselves and a new code of monastic conduct. But I disagree with Walton’s notion that the norms of monastic conduct might be changing, ‘not necessarily to allow more political engagement by monks but to create room for a different way of monastic engagement with worldly affairs more generally’ (Walton, 2015: 510). I believe that practical or worldly action cannot but take the form of political action when it involves (as it does) negotiations with other groups or institutions for particular objectives. Classical thinker Max Weber’s definition of party, as opposed to status and class, highlights precisely this particular link between power and political action. For Weber, unlike class and status, which are related to one’s market situation and ascribed social rank, respectively, party-oriented social action involves association, for it is always directed to goals, which could be social or political, and unlike class and status groups, which can be traditional, parties are always modern constructs and reside in the realm of power, influencing social action. Monks in politics is, therefore, a distinctively modern phenomenon for earlier too, they might have mobilized to save their religion, but the kind of organization and method they adopt to reach that goal today are very modern, that is, rational in a Weberian sense, involving a struggle for power. What happens when politics become a monks’ vocation? When monks join elections, politics become their full-time profession, their vocation, as Weber puts in. When politics becomes the monk’s vocation, ideally, it would combine the obligations and commitment towards both spheres— religious and formal political. A question here is, is it possible to divorce one’s religious interests and political obligations? The examples from Sri Lanka and on a smaller scale, Tawang, show us that religious leaders join politics mainly when they find it necessary to uphold the sasana or Buddhist traditions. This raises the question of whether religious leaders in formal politics is compatible with the ideals and practice of secularism. This is particularly pertinent in the case of Indian secularism.9 While secularism as a concept has historical origins in post-Renaissance Europe, Indian secularism is different from that of Europe or North America.10 The experience of communal riots during the country’s partition made Constitution makers aware that religion could be a way of mobilizing community as well as silencing dissent and resisting claims of others. While they accepted the rights of religious communities to set up communitybased educational institutes and trusts (the Indian government can also provide funds to schools and for social welfare work run by religious organizations), they did not accept separate representation on the basis of religion (Mahajan and Jodhka, 2010: 13). The Indian model of secularism thus allows the state to both censor and promote the many religions of the land, as long as it does not play favourites. These features of the Indian Constitution depart from the stereotypical western model in two ways. First, unlike the strict separation view that renders the state powerless in religious matters, in India, the state is enjoined to interfere in religion. Second, and relatedly, the state does not maintain strict neutrality or equidistance but can intervene if it serves the larger goals of equality of citizenship. Secularism in India is therefore tied to the citizenship rights of individuals. It implies equal religious rights for all communities and assurance that religious rights of some do not become a source of discrimination for others. This further implies that the state is equally answerable when it comes to protecting the rights of communities to practice their religious beliefs and customs and to intervene when the rights of some religious communities are violated by other religious communities. According to Rajeev Bhargava, a true secular state must go beyond the state-church separation formula. Bhargava breaks down the idea of separation into three aspects: A state may be disconnected from religion at the level of ends (first level), at the level of institutions (second level), and the level of law and public policy (third level). At the first level, a secular state has free standing ends, which are disconnected from the ends of religion. At the second level, secular states maintain institutional disconnection, that is, there is no overlap of personnel, roles, and functions. At the third level, secular states maintain strict separation of policy with respect to religion. Hence, Bhargava brings in the idea of principled distance to unpack the metaphor of separation. It accepts a disconnection between state and religion at the level of ends and institutions but does not make a fetish of it at the third level of policy and law. The ends to which a secular state is committed are to end hegemonic oppression. Principled distance does not mean that state should be neutral but that it should allow for critical respect of religions. Principled distance is premised, therefore, on the idea that a state that has secular ends and that is institutionally separated from the church or some church-like entity, must engage with religion at the level of law and social policy. This engagement must be governed by principles undergirding a secular state, that is, principles that flow from a commitment to the values mentioned above. It is the second order disconnection—institutional disconnection, that my chapter addresses. Of course, this involves the first and second levels too. A secular state follows what can be called principle of non-establishment, which means that the state is separated not merely from one but from all religions. No religious community in such a state can say that the state belongs exclusively to them alone. Now, let us to go back to our question as to what happens when religious leaders participate in party politics in a secular democracy like India. Can we use the notion of principled distance to argue that even if there is institutional overlap between religion and state, that is, personnel exchange seen in the case of clergy and monks contesting a state process such as election, we can hope for a separation of ends? That is, monks might contest elections but can still be committed to ideals of social reform and justice instead of focusing on the preservation of narrow communitarian interests. When spiritual and religious leaders who enjoy immense popularity make comments and condone practices that are divisive in nature, it hurts the secular fabric of society. The instances of monks opposing inter-faith marriage in both Myanmar and Sri Lanka seem mostly targeted against nonBuddhists. They prove that Buddhist monk-politicians often uphold their own communitarian and religious interests after being elected or acquiring positions of political power. In many aspects, this is true for the monkpoliticians of Buddhist-minority regions like Tawang and Ladakh too. When we recall how the Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka started as champions of anti-colonial nationalist struggles and later the politics of some of them degenerated into ethnic chauvinism, we can question, how far is it possible to assume that political activism in support of one particular religion can remain fair? Often, chauvinism and marginalization can be two sides of the same coin, when a formerly marginalized group becomes hegemonic towards other minorities. Although the struggles of the Monpas and Ladakhis are the struggles of minorities against dominant majorities, they also have the potential to morph into exclusivist forms in the future. Indeed, many Muslim political leaders in Kargil, the other district of Ladakh, expressed a fear of Buddhist dominance when Ladakh was separated from Jammu and Kashmir and made into a Union Territory in August 2019.11 Some scholars have further noted a concerning trend of alliance between Hindu right-wing groups and Ladakhi Buddhist groups, which has led to a very narrow definition of community in Ladakh (Aggarwal, 2004; Van Beek, 2004). In Monyul, that kind of association is not highly visible yet. But the cultural association between the Hindu right and Buddhists of Tawang is not entirely missing. Scholars have already noted the presence of the Hindu right sponsored schools such as Saraswati Shishu Mandir, Sankardev Shishu Niketan, and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram in Northeast India, which aim to inculcate a Hindu nationalist ideology among school children (Dutta, 2019). The Vivekananda Kendra schools in Arunachal Pradesh fulfil a similar purpose. The question still remains, however, whether it is possible to divorce one’s religious interests and political obligations? I believe that religious authority, harnessed profitably, may be beneficial as long as it upholds the tenets of a secular state, which includes the protection of minorities. For Akeel Bilgrami, secularism should be rooted in a secular ethic—in substantive values, or internal reason based in the value and moral psychology of the individuals and groups (Bilgrami, 2012; Nanda, 2007). For Bilgrami too, thus, secularism and monks are perfectly compatible as long as the latter sustain an ethic of secularism. Religious authority, harnessed profitably, may be beneficial if it upholds the tenets of secularism, which includes the protection of minorities. Interestingly, the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of the Tibetan Buddhist world, has a word to describe a system of morality or ethics that is removed from religion—‘secular ethics’ (The Great Fourteenth, 2020, Documentary). A believer in religious harmony and co-existence of all faiths, including non-faith of non-believers, Dalai Lama believes that secular ethics can be useful in a polarized world for it is drawn from compassion and common sense rather than from the tenets of any organized religion, and in my view, such a secular ethics would contribute towards democratic sensibility in monks in politics. Although the influence commanded by the ownership of religious authority can create polarization between majority and minority populations, especially in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society like India, it may also be usefully leveraged to mobilize public opinion and support for democratic causes. While I understand that monks mostly engage in worldly matters when it directly affects some ideal or practice linked to religious community, they can also play a major role in democratic politics. Monk politicians can truly represent local concerns given the authority they wield locally. Seneviratne (2001) proposes the category of progressive monks—monks who join politics to fight for the ideals of democracy and ally with the laity. This is the section of monks who have tried to bring a vision of peace to Sri Lankan politics. We may also give the example of Swami Agnivesh in India, born into caste and class privilege, who gave up his career as a lawyer and became a renunciate. Having been an elected member of the Haryana state assembly, he is better known across for his campaigns against bonded labour and is the founder-chairperson of the Bandhua Mukti Morcha (Bonded Labor Liberation Front). Clad in saffron, the colour of the Hindu right, he however says, saffron, ‘is my uniform for socio-spiritual action, a call to battle on behalf of the oppressed.’ His followers claim that he bridges religion and politics through social justice.12 Seneviratne (2001) suggests that monastic activism need not always be conservative but can usher in a more democratic order. Lay-monastic collaborative initiatives can restore peace. The Yellow Ribbon Protest and the Golden Postcards Protest in Sri Lanka, which were a response to authoritarian rule and a demand to bring equal citizenship and civilized government, were movements in which both lay and monk populations participated. We see how the presence of monks in political action can also serve the ends of secular democracy if channelized in the right direction. 1 Sikkim, which was merged with the Indian state in 1975, is a predominantly Buddhist state and has a special provision under article 371 (F) of the Indian Constitution, which allows one seat in the thirty-two-member assembly to be reserved only for members of the sangha. It means that it provides a separate electorate for the monks, mostly belonging to the Nyingma or Kagyu sect of Buddhism in the fifty-one registered monasteries (Van Beek, 2012: 154-155). See also, https://www.deccanherald.com/content/397141/monks-fight-polls-protect-their.html. Accessed 2 June 2019. 2 Sasana narrowly translates as the Buddhist religion but can be broadly interpreted to mean the Buddhist tradition. Sasana includes the entire Buddhist community and the sacred scriptures etc. (Streicher and Hermann, 2019). 3 The current chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, and before him, his father, also chief minister, are both Monpas from Tawang. But these political leaders are seen as exceptions rather than evidence of Monpas’ political representation in governance. 4 https://theprint.in/statedraft/why-the-serene-pangong-lake-lies-at-the-heart-of-india-chinaborder-dispute-in-ladakh/441537/ (Accessed 1 April 2019) 5 ‘Biography of the 13th Tsona Gontse Rinpoche’, Buddhist Culture preservation Society, Bomdila, West Kameng, Arunachal Pradesh, n.d. 6 http://www.ejolt.org/2016/05/buddhist-monk-killed-resistance-dam-project-india/. 7 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3523125.stm. 8 Ladakh was formally bifurcated from the state of Jammu and Kashmir on 31 October 2019 into the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, respectively, with the latter’s headquarters in Leh. Many political leaders of Ladakh expressed happiness about the status change. (See, https://youtu.be/_IqlnAFBTc8) Many of those who supported the bifurcation were members and allies of the ruling BJP party. For example, Jamyang Tsering, BJP MP from Ladakh gave a rousing speech in the Upper House of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, on 6 August 2020 (https://www.firstpost.com/politics/jamyang-tsering-namgyals-speech-in-ls-ladakh-mp-saysrevoking-article-370-will-only-impact-two-families-livelihood-draws-praise-from-modi7119561.html). 9 In Sri Lanka, the relation between state and religion as outlined by the country’s constitution differs significantly. In a speech delivered in the International Buddhist Festival in Maharashtra on 30 October 2017, former president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa outlined how Sri Lanka and India differ in their approach to secularism. ‘When India and Sri Lanka started out as independent nations in the latter half of the 1940s, our constitutions were silent on the question of a secular versus a religious state. Our countries moved in opposite directions in the 1970s. In 1972, Sri Lanka included in its new republican constitution of that year a provision according the foremost place to Buddhism and making it the duty of the state to protect and foster Buddhism while assuring followers of other faiths the right to freely practice their religions. This same provision has been included in Sri Lanka’s present constitution as well. …’ In 1976, the forty-second amendment to the Indian Constitution declared India to be a ‘Sovereign, Socialist, Secular Democratic Republic’ (https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/the-question-of-asecular-versus-a-religious-state-buddhism-india-and-sri-lanka-full-text-of-mahindarajapaksas-speech-in-maharashtra/). What is important to note here is that Rajapaksa implies that while Sri Lanka does accord primacy to one religion, that is, Buddhism, India does not, in its constitutional content. In that sense, India is not simply a democracy, like Sri Lanka, but it is a secular democracy. Constitutionally, it does not uphold any one religion as the state religion. 10 When secularism in Europe, because of its stance of neutrality and strict separation between state and religion, could not cope up with challenges of minority conflict, immigrant issues etc., it had to come up with a new policy, which became the political doctrine of multiculturism, which is about protecting minority interests. Akeel Bilgrami, ‘Secularism in India.’ Special Lecture. Centre for Policy Analysis, 14 January, 2020, Delhi, India. 11 https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/kargil-asgar-karbalai-leh-ladakh-union-territory-370. Accessed January 2020. 12 http://www.swamiagnivesh.com/about-swamiji.php. Some might even say that Swami Vivekananda, whom the Hindu right in India attempt to appropriate, was also a secular monk, in that he gave all religions equal position, and followed the credo, sarva dharma sama bhava (all religions lead to the same goal). However, for the purposes of my chapter, I do not consider Swami Vivekananda, because first, he is a pre-independence figure, and second, he does not conform to the figure of the monk-politician who fight electoral politics. Moreover, as Rajeev Bhargava argues, Indian secularism is not simply about sarva dharma sama bhava but also the necessity to maintain the modern goal of equal citizenship, which might require active intervention of the state in matters of religion, instead of an abstract neutrality.