The Dalai Lama offers prayers during the Kalchakra Puja in Bodhgaya on Monday. Picture by Suman

Bodhgaya, Jan. 2: Irony is the apt word to describe the landscape on the banks of river Niranjana where Gautam Buddha attained enlightenment and emerged, probably, the first apostle of peace. The 14th Dalai Lama, too, chose the same place to give the message of harmony to the world during the ongoing Kalchakra Puja.

Hollywood star Richard Gere described Bodhgaya as the “ultimate destination” of peace yesterday. But arguably Buddha’s land of enlightenment has also been one of the most violent regions in the state for decades.

It was Dalelchak-Baghaura — barely 30km from Bodhgaya — in the same geographical and topographic region that witnessed the first big carnage sponsored by the Maoists in Bihar.

People’s Guerrilla Army of the Maoist Communist Centre had slaughtered 54 people on May 29, 1987, at the twin village, doing exactly opposite to what Buddha preached and the Dalai Lama is preaching.

While Buddha’s message of non-violence attracted Tibet, China, Japan, Laos, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and several other nations, the place where the prince from Lumbini had unearthed the path to peace, slipped into the vortex of violence.

The region witnessed a series of human carnage in the ’80 s and ’90s. Barely five years after the Dalelchak-Baghaura incident, the Maoists repeated the act killing 40 landowners at Gaya’s Bara village in May 1992. They killed 35 landowners in 1997 at Senari near Arwal, now a district.

In between, the Ranvir Sena — landlords’ armed outfit — killed hundreds of Dalits at Laxmanpur-Bathe, Narayanpur, Shankarbigha and other villages. The region remained synonymous with bloodshed as the Maoists and the Sena stayed locked in the sanguinary clashes.

The massacres have ebbed of late. But Gurua, Barachatti and other hinterlands around Bodhgaya dotted with rough hills and nestled around rivers Niranjana and Falgu are known as “red corridor” in the security forces’ lexicon.

Most of the areas around Bodhgaya are still under the tentacles of the Maoists, suggesting that the climate here is still salubrious to breed extremism and violence.

“It is hard to figure out why the place which witnessed Lord Buddha emerging as the biggest apostle of peace and that still attracts people seeking solace from across the world has been in the vortex of violence. It is sad and hurting,” said Tenzin Woebum, an environment activist from Tibet.

Even senior police and administrative officials, who have worked in the region for long, are clueless in explaining the contradictory phenomena.

“I don’t think there is any readymade explanation to the contradiction. The only thing I can say is Lord Buddha and the Dalai Lama have made sacrifices to make the world better. Whatever bad is there it is because of the wicked people who disturb peace,” said an inspector-general-rank officer.

The sharp contrast does not end at rebellious killings.

B.R. Ambedkar and Rahul Sankrityayan adopted Buddhism, discovering in it the “ultimate tool” to end exploitation and social-economic discrimination, but the fact remains that hoteliers and traders are busy exploiting the pilgrims and the tourists.

The minimum charge in the most ordinary hotel here is Rs 5,000 for a night. “They are fleecing us. I am paying Rs 5,000 for a night in a dingy room which does not even have a geyser,” said Aure Benet from France.

The Ambedkars and the Sankrityayans — the crusaders against poverty and exploitation — found Buddhism as an effective weapon for their struggle. But the poor can ill afford to set their feet in Bodhgaya, particularly when the Dalai Lama has been tea-ching peace and non-violence.