Ambedkar’s Conversion To Buddhism Was No Political Stunt – OpEd
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, author of the Indian Constitution, converted to Buddhism in 1956 along with 500,000 of his followers after 49 years of wide study, intense debates and socio-political activism, says Harvard scholar Christopher Queen.
Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the icon of Indian Dalits (or the Untouchable Depressed Castes) and the chairman of the Indian Constitution Drafting Committee, converted to Buddhism from Hinduism along with 500,000 of his followers just before his death in 1956.
The ceremony, held in Nagpur in Maharashtra, was a humongous display of public protest against caste discrimination that was, and still is, rampant in India.
According to a few of his biographers, Ambedkar’s decision to formally leave the Hindu fold stemmed from his failure to make the Dalits an effective political community in post-independence democratic India. His “Independent Labour Party” had failed to make the grade in elections held in the early 1950s. Conversion was therefore an act of political desperation and not a religious or spiritual one, critics said.
Earlier they had charged that his advocacy of Buddhism was a “gimmick to lobby for political reforms.”
But Christopher Queen, Buddhist scholar and Lecturer at Harvard University, argues in his latest paper, that Ambedkar’s conversion was stemmed from a spiritual cum political quest. In fact, it stemmed from a socio-political and spiritual need to find an alternative to the unequal, caste-ridden, Hindu religion.
Queen says that conversion was the culmination of decades of wide study, intense debate, and socio-political activism undertaken by Ambedkar over five decades (Reference: Christopher Queen Buddhist Roots of Ambedkar’s Judicial Philosophy in CASTE: A Global Journal on Social ExclusionVol. 5 No. 2 pp. 287-301/ April 2024).
According to Queen, Ambedkar’s tryst with Buddhism began way back in 1907, almost half a century before his formal conversion. 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, over the years. He picked up Ph.Ds in Economics from both Colombia and the London School of Economics and also bagged a law degree from the UK. His residence Rajgrihain Mumbai had 50,000 books at the time of his death, 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.”
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 Buddha’s time and that the Buddhist model was ideal, being without 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, Censure Motion, etc., 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 Kancha Ilaiah, 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.” The reference was to the advent of Buddhism.
Ilaiah identifies verses advocating frequent, regular, and harmonious meetings of the tribal assembly and guidelines for quorum, motion, voting by voice and secret ballet, the forming of committees when consensus is not possible, and barring the 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 organization, 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 and happy community that ruled the Mithila region of northern Bihar.
Drawing from Buddhism, Ambedkar warned the Constituent Assembly that was drafting the Indian 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 can 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 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,” he said. He went on pledged to devote the rest of his life to the revival and spread of the Dhamma
Ambedkar published an article in the English-language Buddhist journal, The Maha Bodhi, entitled “The Buddha and the Future of His Religion” in which he declared that Hinduism was sitting on a “volcano about to explode”. The 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 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.
Visited Sri Lanka
Ambedkar went to Colombo to attend the first meeting of the World Fellowship of Buddhists. He visited Viharas and observed the practices there up close, and spoke at the Young Men’s Buddhist Association. There he implored Buddhists to spread Buddhism around the world.
An Agitator
Ambedkar was no cloistered scholar. In the early days he hadfought for water rights for the Dalits in Mahad in Maharashtra. In March 1927, Dalits took a ritual sip from the public water supply and were beaten by angry caste Hindus. In December the Dalits returned to burn a copy of the Manusmriti,the Hindu code justifying violence against outcastes. The Mahad battle ended in the courts, where Dalit access to public water was upheld but only years later.
In 1933 he told Mahatma Gandhi that he could not honestly call himself a Hindu. He wrote from London that he was determined to leave Hinduism and was inclined to Buddhism. In 1935, Ambedkar delivered his historic speech in Yeola in Maharashtra, vowing not to 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 “untouchability” was originally imposed on Buddhists for their refusal to practice the Hindu Dharma.
