Local Agency in Global Movements: Negotiating Forms of Buddhist Cosmopolitanism in the Young Men’s Buddhist Associations of Darjeeling and Kalimpong
The Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA), founded in Ceylon in 1898, was one of many Buddhist socio-cultural organisations established between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that imagined Buddhism as a global religion, compatible with colonial modernity and its educational, recreational, and religious goals. However, the YMBA functioned differently in its different locations, and this article will focus on the history of two YMBA branches, established in the eastern Himalayan urban centres of Darjeeling and Kalimpong, to explore how local agents adapted this model of social organisation to fit their own contexts. The founders of these two branches, a rebel Sikkimese noble turned Theravadin monk and educator, and a British army officer turned Buddhist preacher, both represent ways that Buddhism was constructed during a period of transnational intellectual cosmopolitanism. Their activities suggest how the particular locations of Darjeeling and Kalimpong, perched as they were between empires, facilitated such forms of global affiliation.
Copyright (c) 2016 Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia
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Copyright (c) 2016 Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
