From: THE HINDU, Thursday, February 25, 1999 (SECTION: Opinion)

By Gail Omvedt

A recent study of the Dalits in India, The Untouchables by Oliver Mendolsohn and Marika Vicziany, refers to this decision of Ambedkar as ``almost quixotic''; in spite of its impressive coverage of economic and political issues, the book generally sees the concern with religion as representing a backward stage in the quest for liberation, succeeded and superseded by struggles for economic and political equality. This wasessentially the traditional Left interpretation of Ambedkar's conversion.

Ambedkar's own analysis was different. Drawing on long-standing interpretations by pioneers such as Jyotiba Phule, and parallel to Periyar's own critique in Tamil Nadu, he believed that Hinduism itself, because it was so tightly identified with chaturvarnya (the caste system), was the major source of oppression. In debates with Gandhi in the 1930s, he put forth the challenge: if the puranas and shastras and all scriptures that supported caste were thoroughly renounced, he could continue to call himself a Hindu. If not, then not. It was the middle 1930s; movements were growing on all fronts, among peasants and among workers, against foreign rule. But Ambedkar saw the need for a religion that would provide the spiritual and moral basis for equality as an integral part of these struggles.

Half a century later, it is Ambedkar who appears to be right. What is now in question is the belief that has prevailed among sociologists and Left intellectuals generally, that secularisation is the main thrust of history and that with industrialism and modernisation humanity will gradually leave behind its superstitions and outmoded traditions. Oppressive traditions are indeed being fought - but as we move into a new millennium, the concern for spirituality remains as vital as ever. The search for truth does not stop with a simple material analysis but seems to move inevitably into the realm of asking ``why?'' ``What about death, disease and the disasters of life? Why are we here at all?'' The different answers given to these questions in different cultural traditions appear to have a profound influence on personality and society.

Ambedkar chose Buddhism in the end for many reasons. Buddhism is the oldest universal religion of India. ``Hinduism'' frequently makes that claim - and the fact that large sections of scholars the world over accept this has been one of its victories in the ongoing culture wars. However, the main aspects of what is widely accepted as Hinduism, including karma, dharma and all the themes of the Vedanta, crystallised only about the time of Buddhism, and partly in response to Buddhism and other shramanic religions.

These were ``culture wars'' of the middle of the first millennium BC which took place in a society in turmoil, with moral and philosophical questioning provoked by huge social changes. Forests were being cleared, land was ploughed, settlements were taking place, cities and kingdoms were growing - but so was propertilessness and inequality. In the tumult of change, none of the existing traditions, whether of the Vedic pastoral sacrificial cults or the simple themes of collectivist tribal religions or the remanants of what were problably Indic mother goddesses, seemed adequate. Many took to the forests, some simply to escape the traumas of the growing urban life, others in a genuine religious search.

From these forest wanderers came the new creations of Upanishadic mysticism and the challenging religions of Buddhism, Jainism and other cults. The culture wars of the first millennium BC posed the Brahmanic tradition against the shramanic one. The shramanic cults were almost as pluralistic as today - Jainism, Buddhism, the materialism of the Lokayatas and others. What they had in common was their refusal to accept the authority of the Vedas and the Brahmans. Buddhism became the most influential of these.

Against the Upanishadic ``sat-chit-ananda,'' Buddhism placed its assertion that impermanence, the non-existence of the soul and sorrow were the realities of life. At a level, this seemed a pessimistic as opposed to an optimistic perspective, but it emphasised the role of reason and individual effort in the search for liberation: action, rather than essence, becoming rather than being. Where the Vedantic mystics seemed to take aspiration for reality, Buddhism sought a way to realise it. Buddha also emphasised the vernacular languages in his teaching and made the Sangha open to all, allowing in women and low castes (though not without obstacles).

For close to a millennium, Buddhism and Brahmanism were the main contenders for hegemony in the cultural and social life of the subcontinent. Yet while Buddhism went on to become a worldwide religion, within its homeland, Brahmanic Hinduism came to reign supreme. The influence of Buddhism never vanished, and it continued to maintain asubterranean existence, influence the Bhakti movement and particularlyspiritualists like Kabir, but it did not survive as a structured religion.

Why? Many have argued that its orientation was too unworldly, that outside the Sangha it neglected to provide rituals and rites for a secular life and that Brahmanism succeeded instead in incorporating many of the sublime themes of Buddhism (nonviolence) while providing a flexible religious guide to link the different classes and communities of society. Yet Buddhism has never been purely otherworldly; it was associated with sophisticated trading and commercial networks in India, often in contrast to the agricultural base of Hinduism.

When the Dalit movement arose in the 19th century, many of the militants who were beginning to reject their identity as ''Hindus`` saw an alternative in Buddhism. Before Ambedkar there was Pandit Iyothee Thass, a Tamil `outcaste' who argued that Tamils were originally Buddhists and organised a thriving Buddhist movement around the turn of the century. Brahmananda Reddy, Dalit leader of Andhra Pradesh, was also fascinated by Buddhism. There was also a series of brilliant upper caste intellectuals, such as Dharmananda Kosambi, who identified themselves with Buddhism.

None of these took Buddhism simply as he found it. Ambedkar, for one, was alienated by much in the existing Buddhist communities in Asia, feeling that the Bhikku Sangha in particular had become in most cases too unworldly and parasitical. In fact, for him Buddhism was to be a total world-view, an alternative not simply to Brahmanism but to Marxism also. A late essay, ``Buddha and Karl Marx,'' interpreted `dukh' (sorrow) as exploitation.

In his own modernised Buddhist ``scripture'' of the Buddha and His Dhamma, Ambedkar tried to give an interpretation that would be at once a new religion and a liberation theology version of that. The introduction argued specifically that the theory of karma should be rejected, that the normally accepted theory of Siddhartha's going forth should be changed and that the Sangha should try to function as a body for social service.

The new Dalit poetry of Maharashtra has also explored this social meaning of Buddhism. Daya Pawar, who died a tragically early death, wrote of the Buddha wandering among the poor rather than meditating in the forests. Hira Bansode, in almost feminist terms, has written of the sacrifice of Yashodhara, left behind by Siddhartha:

''He was moving towards a great splendour
far from the place where you lay...
he went, he conquered, he shone
while you listened to the songs of his triumph
Your womanliness must have wept,
you who lost husband and son
must have felt uprooted
like the tender banana plant
But history does not talk about/the story of your sacrifice
...But wait, don't suffer so
I have seen your beautiful face
You are behind the closed eyelids of Siddhartha
Yashu, just you"

            (translated by Jayant Karve and Philip Engbloom).

A Thai feminist Buddhist philosopher, whom I showed this to, remarked that ''this would be considered blasphemous in Thailand.`` But Ambedkar's Buddhism was meant for a community of super-exploited men and women seeking their place in a new millennium, a community with a fighting tradition, ready to seek out new ideas. It is part of a plurality of movements described as ``Engaged Buddhism.''

While the converted Mahars (and others) are frequently called ``neo-Buddhists'' with a somewhat derisive emphasis, describing Ambedkar's Buddhism as a ``Navayana'' points to the genuinely new, liberatory themes he has brought to the culture wars in India.