I don’t know anything about the gentleman in question, but there is a complex and problematic relation between modern Hindutva (i.e. right-wing nationalist Hindu fundamentalism) and Buddhism.
It is a virtually universal belief in India that the Buddha was an incarnation of Vishnu, and that Buddhism is therefore a branch of Hinduism. On the one hand, this is just a harmless, if foolish, bit of folk belief. But it is part of a pattern whose purpose is to undermine Buddhism in India.
Far more than any other country, Buddhism in India is a social reform movement, whose primary goal is the emancipation of the dalits. When dalits become Buddhists, virtually every social indicator improves: health, education, role of women, and so on. For upper-caste Hindus, this essentially means that they lose their slave caste, and this has huge social and economic implications.
When I was in Bodhgaya a few years ago, some Buddhist monks took the Kali image out of one of the nearby Buddhist shrines and trashed it. A few nights later, some Buddhist monks were beaten up in retaliation. I saw loud mobs running around the stupa at Bodhgaya, yelling (I think they were Buddhists). Meanwhile, the Hindus were planning to build a large stupa nearby to overshadow the Bodhgaya stupa. So the ugliness is not far below the surface.
According to what I heard while there, some years ago, one of the most reputable Buddhist studies centres in a western university was in need of funds. They were approached by Mrs Modi. Yes, the wife of that Modi. When she heard of the amount needed—a few million dollars—she said it wouldn’t be a problem. Only one thing: they had to say that the Buddha was a Hindu. Needless to say, the money wasn’t accepted.
So this is how it is. On the one hand, Hindus love the Buddha, and are proud of him as “India’s greatest son”. At the same time, his actual teachings, especially the social teachings, are highly subversive, even today. He can only be accepted if he becomes Hindu.
This is one of the reasons why the Goenka tradition divest their centres of any specifically “Buddhist” overtones, so they can get on with teaching meditation without getting caught up in the politics.
And yes, this has been an issue on Wikipedia. Some time ago, for example, it was common on Wikipedia to see Pali words transliterated in Devanagari. It was rightly objected that Devanagari, a modern Indian script, has never been used for writing Pali, and Roman script is the universal convention for international Pali. However the Buddhist editors had to struggle against Hindutva editors. I haven’t kept up with this debate, but I haven’t seen such problems recently, so perhaps the argument is over.
All this, of course, is just by way of general background. I have no idea whether the current issues with my edits have anything to do with this.
