Bhai sahab, There is nothing like the marginalisation that a few people like to point.
Buddhism hasn't vanished anywhere. It lives in harmony with everyone else here in India. The old colonial system didn't understand how to segregate us as an identifiable community. Don't believe me? Please do visit Bodh Gaya as a tourist. You will see it everywhere. Come to my state Sikkim. I welcome you to. Go to any of the mountainous states in India.
Go the centre of Andhra Pradesh and you will see it there.
Furthermore, you visit any southeast asian country and you will see both beautifully entwined, yet distinct just as it always has been.
The beauty of our faith is that we are syncretic.
No one wants to discriminate you, but your own so-called clerics that you see on the TV, by alienating you from everything that you are. Yes. No single monk or cleric has the right to decide anything; whether it is a Buddhist monk, Hindu pandit, Muslim maulvi or Christian padre or anyone else.
That tolerant system is here not because of secularism that the British left here; they only left the divisions that we are still fighting over. It is because of the tolerant system we have always had long before the Europeans came.
Which is why we have Parsis, Jews, Syrian Christians etc when Hindu kings in the western parts of India accepted them with open arms. That speaks a lot about the system our Hindu brothers have practised for millennia.
On the other hand, the Hindus, Sikhs and even we have been exterminated from everywhere wherever we were at the peak, be it Afghanistan, Pakistan or Bangladesh. And these were done under the radar. Which is why they and even we feel vulnerable.
Name me one of these countries which have retained the same amount or growing minorities of non-Muslim nature over all these years. None.
Now tell me, is the concern for demographic change not a little bit also relevant?
The right wing is a result of these events constantly repeating themselves throughout much of the history.
I wasn't even aware of communal tensions until I was exposed to these situations during my stay out of my native state.
It is nothing else.
You won't be happier anywhere else in the world than where you are.
Just don't forget that your traditions pre-date your adapted choice of faith.
Let both co-exist harmoniously.
No one is judging you.
