Driven by conviction, scores in Telangana have started walking along the eight-fold path or Ashtanga Marg to pursue the Buddhist way of life.
The path which stresses on pursuit of the right view, intension, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration, has found a record number of 750 followers distributed across the 20 Buddha Viharas in Hyderabad, only the previous year.
And 300 of those who adopted the religion did so at a Buddha Sammelan, a massive gathering organised by the Buddhist society of India held at Nagarjunasagar of Nalgonda district in 2014.
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Increasing enrolment in Ambedkarite organisations that follow Buddhism as a world view has directly contributed to improvement in the number of Buddhists. A sizeable population of those adopting Buddhism in Telangana are Ambedkarites who follow the ideology, life and teaching of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. “Following Dr. Ambedkar’s teaching I set aside 25 per cent of my monthly salary to aid the propagation of Buddhism and also education among Dalits in the community,” said M.B. Sudhakar, a Buddhist and deputy engineer at South Central Railway who started following Buddhism as early as in 1997.
A look at growth in devotee figures in just one vihara tells it all. While, in 2005 the number of devotees in Siddhartha Buddha vihara which has seven resident monks was 530, currently the number is over 1,100.
“Other than Ambedkarities there are people who become devotees to learn Buddha’s teachings and his way of life. A lot of them are young professionals who work in Hyderabad,” said a ‘banteji’ or monk, Khema Chara who resides at Siddhartha Buddha Vihar in Bowenpally.
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Apart from the Telugu-speaking population, those following the religion in Telangana include settlers from Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, said Hyderabad monks.
Telugu-speakingmonks in demand In fact, the number of registered devotees is far less when compared to those following the tenets of Buddhism even as they do not officially converting to the religion, monks said. In Hyderabad alone, their combined count could be close to 10,000.
“Many of those who follow the tenets for a few years later go for an official change in religion,” Kema Chara banteji said. The biggest Buddhist vihara in Hyderabad which belongs to Mahabodhi society, Mahindra Hills, has around 45 monks.
Most monks residing in Hyderabad are from Tripura, Bengaluru and Maharashtra even as Buddhists in the city are in search of Telugu-speaking monks.
As per population census, the number of Buddhists in both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana has grown from 32,037 in 2001 to 36,692 in 2011.