GetInNepal

Christian Science Monitor is a great newspaper that I read online almost everyday (Unlike the tone on its name, it does not promote the doctrine of its patron church). On a daily course of surfing through news on the site today, I found this interesting quiz, Think You Know Asia?. Being a Nepali, I was pumped up to test my skills, so I entered in and started answering the questions.

While there were few questions that I had no clue about, there were some that were directly related to Nepal and I was confidently going through them. This particular one must have been the easiest for me. ‘Which religious tradition does not trace its roots back to India?’ I saw ‘Buddhism’ as one of the four options and proudly clicked on it without even thinking about the other options.

Alas! it told me I was wrong.

Siddhartha Gautam, popularly known as Gautam Buddha and the founder of Buddhism, was born in Lumbini (in Nepal) around 500 BCE. He was a prince to King Suddhodana of Kapilvastu. At the age of 29, he left his family, his palace and material wealth in search of the ultimate peace and happiness. He did, however spend time in India during his search for enlightenment but I cannot reasonably associate that with having the roots of Buddhism.

This issue has been brought up several times before. Newsweek editor and CNN host Fareed Zakaria sparked controversy from similar statements in his book. Even Google Maps once put Lumbini within Indian borders. This is a sensitive issue and deserves due attention.

The roots of Buddhism are peace and non-violence; and the original mission of  the Christian Science Monitor was “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind”. Buddhism is an identity of Nepali people and to be depicted incorrectly by an entity that shares such a similar ideology is very un-fateful.

We sincerely request Christian Science Monitor to either fix the quiz or remove it to avoid controversy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 at 12:21 pm and is filed under buddha, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.