1996

AMBEDKAR AND THE PUZZLE OF MASS CONVERSIONS

   Good old-fashioned scholarship, a centenary celebration and the Indian Government's patronage brought about an unique seminar on Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in London. I have been reading a book on Ambedkar and Buddhism by Venerable Sangharakshita, an extraordinary English Buddhist monk who played an important role in Ambedkar's late conversion to Buddhism and his dramatic public conversion of some half a million untouchables in India to this pacifist and classless region at a mass rally. The ceremony was conducted by U Chandramani who had been recommended by Sangharakshita as the senior-most Buddhist monk at the time in India.

   Ambedkar's daring and public act only six weeks prior to his death makes sense when viewed in the context of his Hindu Code Bill which was rejected by the Indian Parliament in 1951, only two years after Ambedkar had been hailed as the New Manu, the architect of India's secular Constitution.  A giant statue of Ambedkar now stands a silent witness outside India's temple of democracy, the Parliament Building in New Delhi. His arm is outstretched pointing his index finger towards the Parliament. Ironically and tragically, India turned him into a saint and ostracised him from its democratic forums.

   The seminar held in the august surroundings of the Nehru centre in London brought together what India's learned High Commissioner Dr.L.M. Singhvi, a scholar diplomat with the common touch, called a "collection of difficult and durable eggheads". Ironically however, the well-meaning participants came to praise, canonise Ambedkar, but also to bury the memory of Ambedkar's passionate and angry war with the Hindu hierarchy in his later years. It failed to make a connection with the brilliant radicalism of his strategy of mass conversion. No one remembered or referred to Sangharakshita, a great Buddhist scholar and a senior Buddhist monk, whose organization in India continues to work with the untouchables.

   I met Sangharakshita in his East London Offices of the Friends of the Western Buddhists Order, a fort-like conversion of an old London fire station and talked to him about Ambedkar, his association and his private memories of the great man. What has intrigued me and worried me was that in his great compassion Ambedkar might have used his very personal conversion to a new religion as an ill-prepared and ill-conceived means of liberating his people. Ambedkar himself was the scion of a class of Marath untouchables. I pointed out to Sangharakshita the sociological and class imperatives that made a converted group merely carry across their baggage of casteism. Any change was merely a new labelling  as the underlying divisions of caste and class and economic realities remained unchanged.

   The eminent academic Prof.M.S.Agwani, a member of the Minorities Commission and an ex-Vice Chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, argued lucidly and relevantly about the conversion of lower class Hindus to Islam in Northern India. This had not cleansed them of their class and caste mark or their traditional occupation like working in the leather trade; the converts simply re-arranged themselves, says Agwani into the same sub-structure of higher or lower caste moslems and intermarriage and social co-habitation between them within a single religion remains unthinkable. Ever since the earliest Moslem invasions, the hierarchical pecking order had a descending structure with the Syeds at the top, followed by the Sheiks, the Mughals and the Pathans similar to Hindu caste structure.  Agwani had argued, I told Sangharakshita, that any reform and aid and positive discrimination given to Hindu untouchables and scheduled castes should be extended to the millions of Moslems converted a century ago, only to be trapped in a social grouping similar to the untouchables.

   Sangharakshita addressed my disquiet with his usual thoroughness. "I see the mass conversion as a revolutionary event. Ambedkar was very conscious of the religious, social, economic and educational drawbacks suffered by the scheduled castes. Initially, he was more of a social reformer. He wanted to reform Hinduism and for 20 years he pursued this tack. He appealed to the Hindu leaders. He could not succeed. He became disillusioned. He rejected Communism. He was himself a deeply religious man. He acknowledged that a purely secular communistic solution would not do: there had to be a religious solution. He was deeply convinced that religion lay at the roots of all human activity, where man could find the source of inspiration. He looked around for several years and even looked at Sikhism. Christianity he considered alien to the Indian temperament; and he rejected Islam because it would exacerbate the existing divisions. He was concerned with the unity of India."

   Obliquely, Sangharakshita tried to answer my disquiet about a mass conversion leaving the underlying caste structures intact. If Ambedkar's experiment did not fully succeed, it was because of lack of time to train successors to his religious vision, although he had many political lieutenants who simply could not successfully carry on his religious dimension. Ambedkar had a poor opinion of Buddhist Bhikkus from South East Asia, who presented Buddhism in a traditional way. He could not entrust them with the imparting of the great tenets of Buddhism to a mass of new converts. For a while however Sanghrakshita played a key role in picking up the challenge and giving teachings to the masses of converted untouchables.

   Although Sangharakshita returned to England in the mid sixties, his Friends of the Western Buddhist Order has developed strong links with the Indian Buddhist Society and a wholly Indian Buddhist group called Vibhas which continues Ambedkar's work in all seriousness. Large retreats are held and basic teachings disseminated. Buddhism is not an easy religion to fathom, although its basic tenets are eminently accessible: the universality of suffering and its cure; the acceptance of impermanence of all phenomenon and the inevitability of change. However the Buddha's radical conception of "Anatma" has been misinterpreted as nihilism and atheism. The dialectic has concealed the radical dynamic of Nirvana -liberation. That was the hardest concept to grasp. How could a million untouchables without the benefit of education understand this central philosophy of Buddhism and draw nourishment from this intellectual religion?

   Sangharakshita says that the new converts' knowledge of the essentials of this liberating religion is firmly implanted. "Even if they do not know all the main tenets of Buddhism, very often they know what it is not" says Sangharakshita in simple clarification. In those heady days, Sangharakshita himself led a conversion of some 200,000 untouchables at a mass rally. I have no access to demographic figures, but the state of Maharashtra alone has some 4 to 5 million converted ex-untouchables, with their own Viharas, equivalents of Hindu Shrines. Although the frontline members of Ambedkar's Dalit masses may not wholly believe in Buddhism or in non-violence, specially in matters of self-defence, the memory of Ambedkar is immovably enshrined in their hearts.

 
   Sangharakshita affirmed that Ambedkar had studied Buddhism since the early age of 16 and had a strong personal devotion to the Buddha as the bedrock of his faith. However it took him a life time to realize that he would never be accepted as a reformer of Hinduism, in spite of his reformist zeal. He became a bitter and disappointed person, and all too human.

   In conclusion discussing the dynamics of Ambedkar's use of religion in politics, Sangharakshita says "In India religion is politics. If someone becomes a Moslem it is a political gesture. Ambedkar said that the people of India should be grateful that these mass conversions were not done to a more militant religion"

   Sangharakshita's synergetic involvement in this historical event is but a small part of the extraordinary story of this extraordinary monk. He walked the length of India on foot as a mendicant with a begging bowl for two years prior to his own ordination in 1949. I would be doing a fuller profile of Sangharakshita in one of my future despatches.

   Back at the seminar we were pleased to hear that the Dalit community in England were faring well. A large number of them had gone into leather and shoe-making trades, turning their traditional skills into successful businesses. It was heartening to hear that the Indian Ministry of Welfare was fully involved in a robust programme aimed at the untouchables, using Ambedkar centenary as a springboard. The keynote address by Mr. Mata Prasad, Secretary to the Ministry of Welfare dealt comprehensively with the ongoing work, supported by ample statistics. As it is not my role as a London based columnist to delve and analyze these, I trust fellow journalists in India will find time to look at the story of Ambedkar's legacy and role of the Indian Ministry of Welfare with some care. 

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