Critics say that Dr Ambedkar’s conversion was not spiritual but political. But to Harvard University’s Christopher Queen it was an amalgam of both and that he did it for valid reason.
The father of the Indian Constitution and the unquestioned leader of the downtrodden Dalit community, converted to Buddhism along with 500,000 of his followers at a massive ceremony in the Indian city of Nagpur in 1956. To date, that event has remained unrivalled in the realm of protest movements, whether Dalit or non-Dalit.
Mobilise Dalit votes
Christopher Quee
Ananya Vajpey
Be that as it may, Ambedkar’s decision to formally leave the Hindu fold and convert to Buddhism has been controversial right through. Earlier on, upper caste Hindus charged that his advocacy of Buddhism was a “gimmick to lobby for political reform.” Some had deprecated the mass conversion as a means to mobilise Dalit votes, and that there was nothing spiritual in Ambedkar’s dalliance with Buddhism.
It was after his political party, the All India Scheduled Caste Federation and he himself failed in the 1952 and 1954 elections, that Ambedkar organised the conversion extravaganza of 1956. It was an act of political desperation. There was nothing religious or spiritual about it, critics said.
Social and political perspective
Historian Ananya Vajpeyi said that Ambedkar cared little for the spiritual aspects of Buddhism and was viewing it purely from a social and political perspective, with an intention to use it as a tool in his campaign against caste discrimination and Dalit liberation from upper caste bigotry. She also ascribed psychological reasons for his conversion.
Vajpeyi is especially critical about Ambedkar’s airbrushing of the many charming myths and legends associated with the Buddha and Buddhism and viewing him and his philosophy exclusively from a social protest perspective and as a blueprint for good governance based on social equality. Therefore, she argues, Ambedkar cannot be considered part of the indigenous ‘Indic’ spiritual protest tradition, as the 15th century Hindi poet Kabir and Mahatma Gandhi are.
Vajpeyi describes Ambekar’s notion of Buddhism as a “strangely unpoetic account of Gautama’s life and teachings; a text so devoid of metaphor, so stripped down in its language, so bereft of the marvels and miracles associated for 2,500 years with the name and memory of the Buddha that, yet again, we have to wonder at just how distant Ambedkar was from the kind of imagination that had heretofore been at work in the Buddhist traditions.”
Christopher Queen
However, Christopher Queen, Buddhist scholar and Lecturer at Harvard University, argues in his latest paper that Ambedkar’s conversion stemmed from two concerns – spiritual and political. In fact, it stemmed from an intensely felt socio-political cum spiritual need to find an alternative to the unequal and caste-ridden, Hindu religion. It was both a spiritual and political quest (See: Christopher Queen Buddhist Roots of Ambedkar’s Judicial Philosophyin CASTE: A Global Journalon Social Exclusion Vol. 5 No. 2 pp. 287-301/ April 2024).
True, Ambedkar discarded the many myths and legends associated with the Buddha. But he studied them and the sayings of the Buddha thoroughly before shelving the tales in favour of the Master’s political and social doctrines. He found the latter to be extremely relevant for his day and age and for his on-going mission of Dalit liberation.
Ambedkar had been studying Buddhism (and other religions and philosophies) for nearly 50 years before he converted. His tryst with Buddhism began way back in 1907. Soon after he passed out of high school, a famous Marathi social reformer and writer, Krushnaji Arjun Keluskar gifted him a copy of his own biography of the Buddha. The Marathi language book opened a whole new world to young Ambedkar. He was spellbound on learning of the existence of democratic republics in Buddha’s time and Buddha’s democratic constitution for his Sangha.
Ambedkar became a voracious reader on Philosophy, Religion and History. He picked up two PhDs in Economics, one from Columbia University in the US and the other from the London School of Economics. In between he also bagged a Law degree from the UK. His residence Rajgriha in Mumbai had 50,000 books at the time of his death in 1956, Queen says.
“There were hundreds of volumes on Buddhist history and literature, including volumes of Max Muller’s Sacred Books of the East, of Theravada scriptures in Rhys Davids’ Pali Text Society translation series, volumes of The Maha Bodhi and other journals and endless scholarly studies of Comparative Religion, Social Studies, Philosophy, and History. Most significantly, Ambedkar had marked many of his books with coloured pencils, sometimes profusely, underlining passages he felt were important and filling the margins with notations that would help him classify and sort the material in the future,” Queen wrote.
The Buddha’s democracy
When independent India was drafting its Constitution and the form of Government it should have was being debated, Ambedkar plumbed for parliamentary democracy which he said existed in the Buddha’s time and that the Buddhist model of democracy was ideal, devoid of inequality, hierarchy and violence.
“There was a time when India was studded with republics and even where there were monarchies, they were either elected or limited. They were never absolute. A study of the Buddhist Bhikshu Sanghas discloses that not only were there Parliaments – as the Sanghas were nothing but Parliaments – but the Sanghas knew and observed all the rules of Parliamentary procedure known in modern times.”
“They had rules regarding seating arrangements, rules regarding Motions, Resolutions, Quorum, Whip, Counting of Votes, Voting by Ballot and Censure Motion. Although these rules of Parliamentary procedure were applied by the Buddha to the meetings of the Sanghas, he must have borrowed them from the rules of the Political Assemblies functioning in the country in his time,” Ambedkar said.
This was validated by Prof. KanchaIlaiah, a political scientist at Osmania University in Hyderabad and an activist in the Dalit civil liberties movement. Ilaiah says that “at a critical stage in Indian history, when the free tribes were being ruthlessly exterminated or brought within the orbit of expanding State power, people were experiencing the rise of new values on the ruins of tribal equality.”
These new values were propounded by the Buddha.
Ilaiah identified verses in Buddhist literature advocating frequent, regular and harmonious meetings of the tribal assembly and having guidelines for quorum, motion, voting by voice and secret ballot, the forming of committees when consensus is not possible and barring re-litigation of matters that were duly resolved in the past (res judicata in modern law).
As A.L. Basham author of ‘Wonder that was India’, said in 1954: “The Buddha himself, though a friend of kings seems to have had a deep affection for the old republican organisation and in a remarkable passage is said to have warned the Vajjians shortly before his death, that their security depended on maintaining their traditions and holding regular and well attended assemblies.” The Vajjians were a prosperous group which ruled the Mithila region of northern Bihar.
Hero-worshipping
Drawing from Buddhism, Ambedkar warned the Constituent Assembly drafting India’s Constitution about hero-worship of powerful personalities derived from India’s love of holy men. He also warned against the false belief that the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity could be treated as separate things.
Having learnt about the centrality of ‘equality’ in running a democratic state from Buddhist history, Ambedkar told the members, “India is a land of massive inequality in which liberty and freedom cannot exist without equality and fraternity.” He warned the Indians that political independence will not bring prosperity while immorality governs the country.
“To end these troubles, India must embrace Buddhism, the only religion based on ethical principles,” Ambedkarsaid. He pledged to devote the rest of his life to the revival and spread of the Buddha Dhamma.
Ambedkar wrote in the English-language Buddhist journal, The Maha Bodhi, an article entitled ‘The Buddha and the Future of His Religion’ in which he declared that Hinduism was sitting on a “volcano about to explode”. The only way to avoid the catastrophe would be to address the problems of the downtrodden, he added.
“Like the overthrow of paganism by Christianity in Roman times, India’s backward classes will banish Brahmanism and embrace a religion that offers mental and moral relief from the scourge of caste. But the steps to conversion to Buddhism will require a new Buddhist Bible, reform of the Bhikkhu Sanghas from idleness to service and the establishment of Buddhist missions throughout the land,” he said.
Sri Lankan visit
Ambedkar came to Colombo to attend the first meeting of the World Fellowship of Buddhists. He visited Viharas and observed the practices there closely. He spoke at the Young Men’s Buddhist Association where he implored Buddhists to spread Buddhism around the world.
Ambedkar was no cloistered scholar. In the early days, he had fought for the Dalits in Mahad in Maharashtra as they could not use the public water tanks. In March 1927, the Dalits took a ritual sip from the public water supply and were beaten up by angry upper caste Hindus. In December, the Dalits returned to burn a copy of the Manusmriti, the Hindu code justifying discrimination and violence against the Dalits.
In 1933, Ambedkar told Mahatma Gandhi that he could not honestly call himself a Hindu. He wrote from London to say that he was determined to leave Hinduism and become a Buddhist. In 1935, Ambedkar delivered his historic speech at Yeola, also in Maharashtra, in which he famously said: “I was born a Hindu but will not die a Hindu.”
A year later, addressing a conference of Mahar caste leaders, he ended with the words of the Buddha, “Be ye lamps unto yourselves. Look not for refuge to anyone else.”
In February 1940 he told a reporter that in ancient times, ‘untouchability’ was imposed on the people who refused to practice the iniquitous Hindu Dharma.
