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Ambedkars VisionTe Buddit revival in India ignited by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar mre tan

fty year ag a brugt millin te cuntry mt imveried and

marginalized ele t te Buddit at. Tere i muc we can learn

rm tem, ay Aa Sa.

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With justice on our side, I do not see how we can lose our

battle. The battle to me is a matter o joy For ours is a

battle not or wealth or or power. It is a battle or reedom.

It is a battle or the reclamation o the human personality.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar,

All-India Depressed Classes Conerence, 1942

Hidden in plain sigHt, a modern Buddhist revolution is

gaining ground in the homeland o Shakyamuni. Its being ledby Indian Buddhists rom the untouchable castes, the poorest

o the poor, who go by various names: neo-Buddhists, Dalit

Buddhists, Navayanists, Ambedkarites. But like so much in

their lives, these names carry a subtle odor o condescension

that suggests their kind o Buddhism is something less than

the real thing.

In the childrens hostels and schools o Nagpur or modest

viharas in Mumbais Bandra East slums and the impoverished

Dapodi neighborhood in Pune, one nds people singing simple

(Facing page) Dr. B.R. Ambedkar painted on a wall in Bangalore, India

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Pali chants, studying dharma,and meditatingwith an image

o the Buddha and a photo o

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar adorned

with garlands o resh low-

ers. During a two-week visit to

India, even in the grimmest o

circumstances I could eel their

joy in the dharma and their

hunger or deeper practice and

understanding. The Buddha

was clear: I teach about suering and the end o suering.For those who suer day ater day, year ater year, this mes-

sage is hope itsel.

The 2001 census puts Indias Buddhist population at eight

million, more than 90 percent rom the untouchable commu-

nities; some scholars suggest that the number o uncounted

or undeclared Buddhists is around thirty million. Buddhist

communities are scattered across the nation, with the largest

concentration in the state o Maharashtra.

Jai Bhim! is how Indian Buddhists greet each other. It

means Victory to Bhimthe ounder o their movement,

Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.

Ambedkar was born in 1891 to a poor but educated am-ily o Mahars, the largest untouchable caste in Maharashtra.

Untouchables were excluded rom many aspects o ordinary

Hindu lie, usually barred rom entering temples, going to

school, or even living within the boundaries o rural villages.

Today, the numerous Dalit communitiesdierentiated by

region, ethnicity, and subcasteremain largely conned to

occupations such as butchering, leatherwork, sweeping, and

the removal o rubbish, human waste or dead animals. These

jobs are seen as impure activities that are polluting to

higher castes, and that pol-lution is viewed as somehow

contagious.

Fortunately or the young

Ambedkar, his ather served

in the colonial Indian Army,

and he became one o the

rst untouchables to attend

an Indian university. By his

early thirties he had earned

doctorates rom Columbia

University and the London School o Economics, and a placeat the bar in Grays Inn, a cornerstone o the British legal estab-

lishment. The extreme prejudice that Ambedkar experienced

not only as boy, but later, despite his academic achievements,

is hard or many o us in the West to imagine, even in light

o our own history o racism. When he returned to India to

practice law in Baroda, he was one o the best-educated men

in the country, but, as an untouchable, he was unable to nd

housing and prohibited rom dining with his colleagues. Clerks

tossed les onto his desk or ear o his polluting touch.

Caste means hereditary bondage passed rom generation

to generation under a dominant Brahmanic society. Contrary

to the Buddhist meaning o these same words, in this Hindu

system karma means ate or the caste one is born into,

and dharma means the duty to live out ones lie within

When Ambedkar returned to India to practice law, he wasone o the best-educated men in the country, but, as an

untouchable, he was unable to fnd housing and prohibited

rom dining with his colleagues. Clerks tossed fles onto hisdesk or ear o his polluting touch.

Hozan alan Senauke is vic-bbt f

th Bry z Ctr d frmr xctiv

dirctr f th Bddhist Pc Fwship.

H is th thr f The Bodhisattvas Embrace:

Dispatches from Engaged Buddhisms

Front Lines.

Dalit children at a nursery school runby the Indian wing of Friends of the

Western Buddhist Order (now calledTriratna Buddhist Community)

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the connes o caste responsibilities. This duty includes strict

endogamy, or marriage only within ones caste.

It was Ambedkar who dubbed the untouchables Dalits

meaning people who are broken to pieces. Other names

have been suggested, each problematic, seen as demeaning

by one group or another: Scheduled Castes and Scheduled

Tribesaccounting or some 300 million people, or 25 per-

cent o Indias populationare the sanitized terms used in

the Indian constitution; untouchable is a legally proscribed

status; ex-untouchable is euphemism. Mahatma Gandhis

term harijan, which means children o god, is dismissed aspatronizing by adults who hardly eel themselves blessed by

any divine presence.

While Gandhi was orging a nonviolent anticolonial move-

ment, Ambedkarwho oten clashed with Gandhiworked

or human rights and the annihilation o caste as essential

to what many saw as an otherwise elite-driven nationalism.

Ater years o attempted collaboration with reormist Hin-

dus, including Gandhi, Ambedkar, a member o the Bombay

legislature and a leader o the Mahar conerence, organized a

1927 satyagraha (meaning, roughly, truth orce) o thou-

sands to draw water and drink rom the Chowdar Tank, a

reservoir closed to untouchables despite a 1923 resolution

o the Bombay Council. That same year, Ambedkar took the

radical symbolic step o publicly burning the Manusmrti, the

Brahmanic code o caste duty, which he and other Dalit lead-

ers saw as key to the social, economic, religious, and political

oppression o the untouchables.

Though untouchability was legally abolished under Indias

secular constitution in 1950, the reality is not much improvedtoday. Consider Hillary Maxwells report in a June 2003 edi-

tion o the online National Geographic News:

Indias untouchables are relegated to the lowest jobs, and

live in constant ear o being publicly humiliated, paraded

naked, beaten, and raped with impunity by upper-caste

Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking

through an upper-caste neighborhood is a lie-threatening

oence.

Human rights abuses against these people, known as

Dalits, are legion. A random sampling o headlines in main-

stream Indian newspapers tells their story: Dalit boy beatento death or plucking fowers; Dalit tortured by cops or

three days; Dalit witch paraded naked in Bihar; Dalit

killed in lock-up at Kurnool; 7 Dalits burnt alive in caste

clash; 5 Dalits lynched in Haryana; Dalit woman gang-

raped, paraded naked; Police egged on mob to lynch

Dalits.

By 1935, Ambedkar had concluded that the Brahmanic

caste system could not be reormed even with support rom

most liberal-minded Hindus. Caste oppression was not an

artiact o Brahmanism, but rather its essence. Ambedkar

urged the untouchables to give up the idea o attaining Hindureligious rights. He prepared to leave Hinduism and adopt

another religion. He saw caste as a system o graded inequal-

ity in which each subcaste measured itsel above some castes

and below others, creating an almost innite actionalism that

divided each exploited community against another and mak-

ing unity o social or political purpose almost impossible. I

was born a Hindu, Ambedkar said, but I solemnly assure

you that I will not die as a Hindu. He investigated Islam,

Christianity, and Sikhismand was courted by each o these

Walking Buddha statue, nearly sixty feet tall, at Nagarjuna Training Institute,also known as Nagaloka, in Nagpur



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groups, who were well aware that Ambedkars conversion

would bring along millions o untouchables and the promise

o wide political power.

In the late orties, he decided that Buddhismwhich was

indigenous to India and had been the dening religious tra-

dition or nearly 1,500 years

beore being virtually eradi-catedwas the logical home

or his people. The teach-

ings o Buddha are eternal,

but even then Buddha did

not proclaim them to be

inallible, Ambedkar wrote.

The religion o Buddha

has the capacity to change

according to times, a quality

which no other religion can

claim to have... Now whatis the basis o Buddhism? I

you study careully, you will

see that Buddhism is based

on reason. There is an ele-

ment o fexibility inherent in

it, which is not ound in any

other religion.

Ambedkars plans or conversion were postponed while he

served as Indias rst law minister and leader o the constitu-

tional drating committee. Then, in the early ties, setting aside

his political career, he plunged into the study o Buddhism and

its application to the shaping o a new Dalit identity. Aterlong consideration and consultation, and in ill health, eeling

the shadow o mortality, he converted in a public ceremony in

Nagpur on October 14, 1956, taking the three reuges o the

Buddha, dharma, and sangha, and receiving the pancasila, or

ve ethical precepts, rom the most senior Buddhist monk in

India, U Chandramani. He then did something unprecedented.

Turning to the 400,000 o his ollowers who were present,

he oered them the three reuges and his own twenty-two

vows, which included the ve precepts and the renunciation

o specic articles o Hindu practice and belie. This signaled a

momentous renewal o Buddhism in India. A number o mass

conversions ollowed within weeks.

Not quite two months later, Ambedkar was dead, elled by

complications rom diabetes and heart disease.

The New Buddhist Movement and TBMSG

The death o Ambedkar, or Babasaheb, as his devotees call

him, let the nascent Dalit spiritual and political movement

without unied leadership. It was not surprising to see the

rapid rise o actionalism, given the entrenched system o

graded inequality. No one else on the scene had the intellect

and strength o character with which to uniy the many out-

cast communities.

People looked at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar as a kind

o guide or guru or philosopher who would lead them ater

conversion, says Mangesh Dahiwale o the Manuski Center,an Ambedkarite hub in Pune. (Manuski is the Marathi word

Ambedkar used or humanity or humanness.)

Ambedkars book The Buddha and His Dhamma came out

a year ater his death. It became a source to which people

turned in order to understand Buddhism, Dahiwale says.

It was published in English rst, and soon translated into

From the start, Ambedkars Buddhism incorporated a vision o acompassionate society and social liberation, ar beyond the introspective

caricature that some have o Buddhism.

Mangesh Dahiwale, a young leader ofthe Manuski Project in Pune

Dalit woman and son outside a shop in Pune

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Marathi and Hindi. That book was a guide, and people began

to read it and study it in groups.

In Ambedkars day there were virtually no Buddhist teachers

in India, but people focked around the Sri Lankan and Bur-

mese Buddhistsanyone who could oer Buddhist teachings,

Dahiwale says. I they ound a bhikkhu, they would gather

around and try to understand what Buddhism is. In act some

o the people rom the Ambedkarite movement, in the 1950s,

became monks in India, ordained in a Sri Lankan tradition.

Still, the process that Ambedkar set in motion was incom-

plete. From 1956 until the early eighties, there was little con-

tinuing education or practice available to millions who hadconverted. But the right seeds had been planted.

Babasaheb Ambedkar had created the Bhartiya Bauddha

Mahasabha, or the Buddhist Society o India, in 1955, Dahi-

wale says. The rst mass conversions were held under their

auspices. But or the most part, these were local initiatives.

The start o this movement was grassroots and Indian-led.

There were no teachers or prominent leaders; ordinary people

took the initiative. Even though Dr. Ambedkar was not there,

his inspiration was there. People tried to do what they could.

Mainly they were very poor, acing discrimination, but they

tried to keep the fame alive.

This network o local viharas and practitioners, scattered

across Maharastra state and other parts o India, allowed the

young English monk Ven. Sangharakshita to connect with the

Dalit Buddhist movement. Sangharakshita met with Ambed-

kar several times, and when he happened to be in Nagpur on

the evening that Ambedkar died in Delhi, he was asked to be

a speaker at a meeting o condolence.

By the time I rose to speakstanding on the seat o a rick-

shaw, and with someone holding a microphone in ront o me

about 100,000 people had gathered, Sangharakshita says. Byrights, I should have been the last speaker, but as things turned

out I was the rst. In act, I was the only speaker. Not that there

werent others who wanted to pay tribute to the memory o the

departed leader. One by one, some ve or six o Ambedkars

most prominent local supporters attempted to speak, and one

by one they were orced to sit down again as, overcome by

emotion, they burst into tears ater uttering only a ew words.

From this moment, Sangharakshita says his sense o

personal responsibility was clear. During the decade that

Students attending a ten-month leadership program in basic Buddhism and social action at Nagaloka



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ollowed, I spent much o my time with the ex-untouchable

Buddhists o Nagpur, Bombay [Mumbai], Poona [Pune],

Jabalpur, and Ahmedabad, as well as with those who lived

in the small towns and villages o central and western India.

I learned to admire their cheerulness, their riendliness, their

intelligence, and their loyalty to the memory o their great

emancipator.

Returning to Britain, where he ounded the Friends o the

Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), now called the Triratna

Buddhist Community, Sangharakshita kept thinking about the

Dalit Buddhists and his riends in India. Heencouraged a young disciple, Dhammachari

Lokamitra, to visit India and work with the

Ambedkarite Buddhists.

Lokamitra is a tall, solid, and youthul-

looking Englishman with an easy laugh and a

quick mind. His energy at sixty-two hints at a

kind o wildness tempered by years o dharma

practice. He lives with his amily in a modest

house in the Ambedkar Colony settlement in

Pune. Since 1978, he has helped to build a movement, Trailokya

Bauddha Mahasangha Sahayaka Gana (TBMSG), the Indian

wing o FWBO, and a variety o related social organizations,

all o which aimed to develop a new Indian or Ambedkarite

Buddhism, using dharma practice and social action.

Lokamitra came to India in 1977 to study yoga with B.S.

Iyengar in Pune. He decided to break up the long train trip rom

Kolkata by stopping over in Nagpur, and arrived by chance on

the twenty-rst anniversary o the day Ambedkar led the Dalits

into Buddhism. As an FWBO angarika, wearing robes, he ound

himsel on a large stage acingthousands o devotees.

In the thirty-six hours we

spent in Nagpur, I entered a

new world, a world o millions

o the most oppressed people,

Dalit children in rural Kondhanpur, near the Pune-Bangalore highway

Dhammachari Lokamitra, a foundingteacher of TBMSG, at home in Pune


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all desperate to transorm their lives and their society through

Buddhism, but with little living teaching to guide them, Loka-

mitra recalls. I had stumbled blindly into a situation in which

the two-old transormation seemed a real possibility, and on

the most auspicious o days. I did not consciously decide to live

and work in India then but I have no doubt that my uture was

decided on that day.

Lokamitra moved to India the ollowing year, and with help

o local Indian Buddhists he organized retreats and meditation

groups. Our riends, he says, organized these where they

couldan abandoned disused railway carriage, the verandao an unnished police station, a small garage when its car

went to church on Sundays.

More than thirty years have passed since those rough and

ready days. TBMSG now includes more than ve hundred

ordained dharma teachersdharmacharis and dharmachari-

nisand many thousands o practitioners. With the support o

the Karuna Trust and other donors in Asia and the West, two

related organizationsJambudvipa Trust and Bahujan Hitay

(meaning or the welare o many)evolved to do outreach

and social work among the Dalits. As well, Maitreyanath

Dhammakirti, Mangesh Dahiwale, Priyadarshi Telang and

other TBMSG leaders established the Manuski Center (also

known as the Manuski Project) in Pune. The center is quiet

and cool, with a good library, meeting rooms, oces, basic but

comortable guest rooms, and a large meditation hall.

During my visit to India, I stayed at Manuski and gave

workshops on engaged Buddhism. I also met with students

at the Nagaloka education center, took part in a study retreat

in Kondhanpur, and oered dharma talks in Nagpur and

Mumbai. Each activity included melodic Pali chanting andmeditation.

The Dalit Buddhist meditation practices are straightorward

and amiliar to me: anapanasati, or mindulness o breathing,

and metta bhavana, or cultivation o loving-kindness. I sense

a quality o concentration and settledness. City sounds rise

within the silence o meditationchildrens shouts, panting

rickshaw drivers, barking dogs, the crack o a cricket bat, a

street vendors cry. The peace o meditation at once includes

all o this and goes beyond it. Hal a continued page 88

New Buddhist students attending class at Nagaloka

phoTos AlAn SenAuke

I was inspired by the students at Nagaloka. Despite having been involvedin engaged Buddhism or more than twenty years, nowhere elsehave I met young people with the kind o intuitive grasp o Buddhist practiceand social action arising together.

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world away rom Caliornia, I eel completely at home. The

ordinariness is amazing: sitting with riends in the middle o

an urban jungle.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

In 1991, when I came to work at Buddhist Peace Fellowship

in Berkeley, engaged Buddhism was outside the mainstream.

Twenty years later, countless centers and groups are involved

in prison work, chaplaincy, eeding the poor, and organizing

against war. We have come to see this as a responsibility that

fows rom the bodhisattva vow to save all beings. But rom

the start, Ambedkars Buddhism incorporated a vision o a

compassionate society and social liberation, ar beyond the

introspective caricature that some have o Buddhism. So it

is natural that an Indian Buddhist movement, rooted in the

most oppressed segment o society, would see the oneness o

personal development and social transormation.In an All-India Radio broadcast two years beore his con-

version, Ambedkar said: Positively, my social philosophy may

be said to be enshrined in three words: liberty, equality, and

raternity. Let no one, however, say that I have borrowed my

philosophy rom the French Revolution. I have not. My philos-

ophy has its roots in religion and not in political science. I have

derived them rom the teachings o my master, the Buddha.

Fraternity is the cutting edge o Ambedkars Buddhism

and the new Buddhist movement. Fraternity is sangha, the

community o practitioners, and the wider community o all

beings, and as such, it is linked to equality. However, rater-nity is a challenge or the Dalit community. It challenges them

just like race, class, and diversity challenge Western Buddhists.

The social realities o India draw clear lines between all the

religionsHindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, and Buddhist;

between caste and noncaste; and, most critically, between the

many Dalit groups themselves within the system o graded

inequality, each group scrambling or the tiniest privileges

o social position, economic opportunity, and political power.

Fraternity is what connects us. And we know this is hard work.

The Manuski Project is action central or Dalit social

work. Its mission has our main aspects: transcending caste

barriers; ighting social discrimination; developing Dalitwomen leadership; and building solidarity. A network o

related organizations has developed in Maharashtra, Andhra

Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujurat, and Tamil Nadu. Projects

include education or both children and adults, civil rights

work, and earthquake and tsunami relie.

Free inquiry and gender equality are points that Ambed-

kar identied as the essence o BuddhismI measure the

progress o a community, he said, by the degree o progress

which women have achievedand women now lead many

o the social projects. In slums and poor villages, Ambedkarite

continued from page 69

Buddhist women are leading schools, hostels, social work, and

dharma communities as teachers or dharmacharinis in their

own right. There are more than ninety women teachers in

TBMSG. But the movement still needs to have more women in

visible leadership, which means participating equally in public

events and internal organizational structures.

Nagaloka, or the Nagarjuna Training Institute, is TBMSGs

fagship educational project, the largest o its centers. The

institute has a teen-acre campus on the outskirts o Nagpur.

At night, rom a distance, one can see the tall golden image o

a walking Buddha that smiles down on the students.

The institute oers a ten-month leadership training pro-

gram in basic Buddhism and social action or young Dalits

rom all religious communities. About ve hundred young

people rom twenty Indian states have graduated rom the

program over the last eight years. Most o these students have

gone back to their villages to work on campaigns against

social oppression, oer dharma teachings, and support otheryoung people so that they too can live and train in Nagaloka.

These students come rom caste-based villages where lie is still

marked by discrimination and violence. Even as I write, CNN

reports the murder o an Indian politician in Uttar Pradesh,

shot as he attended a ceremony marking Ambedkars birth.

For many o these students, leaving home or the rst time

is unsettling and dicult. Each one arrives with a common

yearning to see the world and to be o use, but growing up

within oppressive traditional cultures leaves them unprepared

or the cultural shock o a new lie at Nagaloka. Some o them

are overwhelmed, but most nd their way into student lie,buoyed by new riends and teachers and practicing dharma.

One young student recounted: In my childhood I observed

this caste system all the time. My grandmother had to take

water rom the village well. But when she put her bucket in,

other community people saw that and would not take water

until the well was puried by rituals. I someone asked you to

their home or ood, i you were Dalit, you had to wash your

own plate. My ather oten used to do that. Once I was invited

or dinner, but I reused to wash my plate. They asked why I

wouldnt wash it. I said, i you invite me to eat with you, it is

not right to orce me to wash my own plate. In that case, I can

give up your ood and go. So I just let.

A woman o twenty said: I am rom Orissa. Where I live

there is still a very strong caste system. They dont allow Dalit

children to get any kind o education. I a girl tries to get an

education, their parents become araid and get them married

quickly. Neighborhood people will not allow the girls to learn

as they wish to. We are here at Nagaloka now, but my amily

doesnt know we are learning Buddhism. When we go back

to the village we will share with them what we have learned

about the dharma. We came with the help o ormer students,

and when we go back we will help nd other students. I really

buddhadharma: the practitioners quarterly Spring 2011 88


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believe that our training at Nagaloka

will benet our community.

The school explains its mission this

way: The dierent Scheduled Caste

communities in India do not usually

cooperate with each other, even ater

they have become Buddhists. At the

Nagarjuna Training Institute, they

relate to each other just as Buddhists

and not in terms o the caste they have

come rom. This in itsel is an enormous

contribution to a truly democratic soci-

ety. The intensive practice or a year

with other Buddhists rom all over

India means they cease to identiy with

the old untouchable caste but just as

Buddhists.

I was inspired by the students atNagaloka. Meeting them over several

days, their stories touched me. Their

way-seeking minds glow with the spirit

o inquiry. Despite having been involved

with engaged Buddhism or twenty

years, nowhere else have I met young

people with their kind o intuitive grasp

o Buddhist practice and social action

arising together. Nowhere else have I

had deeper discussion that never slipped

into abstraction, but ocused on theconditions o oppression these students

know only too well. Nowhere else have

I encountered anything like their deter-

mination to remake the world in peace.

My heart is with them.

There is much in this new Indian

Buddhism that we share in the West.

On both sides we have turned to the

dharma in response to the Buddhas

central message about suering and

the end o suering. Knowingly or not,

many o us in the West come to Bud-

dhism to deal with suering, oten

alienated rom the religious traditions

we were born into. For Dalits, whose

material circumstances may be so di-

erent rom ours, the motivation is the

same: to learn about suering and to

reach its end, in each persons lie and

in society. As well, what I call the three

marks o Western Buddhisma largely

lay movement, eminization, and social

actionare shared by Ambedkarites.

With all that we have in common, it is

painul that Indian Buddhism is almost

invisible to other Buddhists around the

world. The time has come or us to see

that a vast engaged movement in India

promises to change the way Buddhism

is seen by all the worlds religions.

89 Spring 2011 buddhadharma: the practitioners quarterly

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