Tracing Ambedkar’s journey to Buddhism

Why do you remain in a religion which prohibits you from entering temples? Why do you remain in a religion which prohibits you from securing drinking water from the public well?

These searing words by BR Ambedkar in 1936 capture his critique of the caste system and his vision for the future of marginalised communities. At the time of delivering this speech during a meeting of the Mumbai Mahar Parishad, he was certain that class mobility and cosmetic changes such as changing surnames or inter-dining were not long-term remedies to eradicate caste. Instead, he was increasingly moving to examining faith itself. He had a difficult task at hand — after all, raising the consciousness of those robbed of their histories, and left humiliated, stigmatised and boycotted, wasn’t easy. The Hindu fold, with its deep roots in India’s past, was not a blanket that could be discarded overnight. Several social reformers, orthodox members of the faith and those opposed to conversion were also working overtime to either reform, discourage or dissuade untouchable communities from pursuing conversion.

Ambedkar understood that the subject of conversion was not to be taken lightly. In his response, he decentred the impediments to conversion and focussed on spiritual and material growth in the lives of converts, telling his followers that conversion was a form of social rebirth for them. “You must bear in mind that your today’s decision will carve out a path for posterity, for future generations,” he said. Two decades later, on October 14, 15 and 16 in 1956, Ambedkar led tens of thousands of his followers into Buddhism in Nagpur and Chandrapur. Of course, this was not the first such event — in the dying years of the 19th century, Tamil reformer Iyothee Thass had famously converted to Buddhism in then Ceylon, and later set up a Buddhist society.

Ambedkar left the Hindu fold not under any influence or because of vendetta, revenge and impulsiveness. Instead, his Dhammaantar (conversion to Dhamma) was the final step in addressing his “ethical loneliness” shared with caste-oppressed people. Several Hindu reformers wished to amend and address untouchability without the destruction of the social order — prominent among them were Mahatma Gandhi and VD Savarkar who organised inter-dining efforts and supported Ambedkar’s temple entry movement.

Savarkar, in fact, invited Ambedkar to inaugurate a temple at Ratnagiri. Ambedkar communicated his inability to accept the invitation due to “previous engagements”; and appreciated Savarkar’s efforts. But he reminded Savarkar, that “the problem of untouchables is intimately bound up with the question of the reorganisation of Hindu society.”

Ambedkar believed that without religious conversion, the problem of untouchability would remain unresolved. Yet, he was aware that caste could spread to any religion, and acknowledged it in a paper during his stint at Columbia University as early as 1916. He sought an egalitarian, moral, and rational religion and saw Buddha’s Dhamma as a path with many possibilities of emancipation.

His dream of Prabuddha Bharat —an enlightened India that is ethical, egalitarian, liberal, and compassionate — remains unfinished. Yet, despite recent political controversies around conversion, the Buddhist faith continues to be embraced by caste-marginalised people with new research showing higher socioeconomic and health, education metrics associated with the neo-Buddhist communities in Maharashtra. In the endurance of his ideals is a lesson for society.

Varsha Ayyar