NCERT ignores Odisha’s Buddhist heritage sites

Despite the Odisha Government’s efforts over the last decade, there is limited awareness about the Buddhist sites of the Ratnagiri-Lalitagiri-Udaygiri belt not only in India and abroad but even in the State.

A main reason for this is that while other major Buddhist sites in India such as Bodh Gaya, Sanchi and Nalanda are mentioned in school textbooks across the country, the important NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) books, which are used by the CBSE and by people taking various competitive examinations including the civil services do not mention the Buddhist sites of Odisha, laments leading non-resident Odia (NRO) Chitta Baral.

In particular, there is a map of major Buddhists sites in India in the NCERT 12th grade history book available at http://ncert.nic.in/ncerts/l/lehs1dd.zip. There is no site from Odisha in this map, not even Ratnagiri-Lalitagiri-Udayagiri.

But Ratnagiri-Lalitagiri-Udaygiri is more than a major Buddhist site in India, and many scholars and researchers of India and abroad have compared Ratnagiri with Nalanda, which is considered one of the first proto-university of the world.

The organisers of the first symposium on Buddhist heritage of Odisha have compiled various quotes from research papers and books on this, and the compilation is available at http://bit.ly/ratnagiri. “Readers are requested to explore this link to get a sense of what we have in Ratnagiri-Lalitagiri-Udaygiri, Odisha, and what researchers around the world think about it,” says Prof Baral.

“The goal of our first symposium on the Buddhist heritage of Odisha to be held on July 5 in Seattle as part of the annual OSA (Odisha Society of Americas) convention is to address the above anomaly and strategise to have Ratnagiri mentioned in the NCERT and other text books and lay the groundwork for establishment of a Ratnagiri-Puspagiri international university as a revival of Ratnagiri and Puspagiri Mahaviharas, similar to the recent establishment of the Nalanda International University in Bihar.

In the symposium, USA-based researchers (some non-Indians) will discuss the issue and lend their support. The tentative agenda of the symposium and its goals are in the web pages given above.

The plan is to follow up this event with a larger symposium in Bhubaneswar where textbook writers from the NCERT, CBSE, ICSE and other boards can be invited and told about Odisha's Buddhist heritage, especially about Ratnagiri-Lalitagiri-Udaygiri, and taken to those sites and encouraged to include them in their textbooks.

The organisers think that having Ratnagiri-Lalitagiri-Udaygiri mentioned in textbooks that are read by tens of millions of children of India in their formative years will be more effective and long-lasting than any ad campaign, even the ones costing hundreds of crores.

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