Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 8 – Despite the
opposition of some, there will soon be two Buddhist shrines in the Russian
capital, one a memorial site with a museum on Poklonnaya Hill, the cornerstone
for which was laid this week, and another in the Otradnoye district which is slated
to open in 2017 (gazeta.ru/social/2014/10/31/6284705.shtml).
These are the first Buddhist shrines
in the Russian capital, a remarkable fact given that Buddhism is, according to
Russian official thinking, one of the four “traditional” religions of the
country – three republics, Buryatia, Kalmykia, and Tuva have predominantly
Buddhist population – and that the number of Buddhists in Moscow, while small,
has been rising.
But the delays in erecting these two
reflect both the sensitivities of Muscovites and those of China. Some of the former argue Buddhist shrines are
incompatible with the city’s Russianness and provoke inter-ethnic tensions. And
Beijing is never happy with anything involving the Dalai Lama. (The exiled
Tibetan leader has approved the plans of both temples.)
Moscow’s Buddhists have been
pressing for their own facility since 1995, and in 2006, they organized a
Moscow Buddhist Center to give a bigger impulse to this effort. Officials have
not indicated why they allowed things to go forward this year, but one
possibility is that they did so because 2014 is the centenary of Tuva’s
subordination to Russia.
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