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HomePageTurnerBook ExcerptsHow a pragmatist Ambedkar persuaded and convinced Dalits to convert to Buddhism

How a pragmatist Ambedkar persuaded and convinced Dalits to convert to Buddhism

In his book 'The Evolution of Pragmatism in India', Prof Scott Stroud writes that Ambedkar's pragmatist philosophy reached its culmination in the conversion movement.

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Ambedkar’s appeals for conversion began in earnest after 1935, but his rhetorical activity changed in significant ways in his final years. Eventually, Buddhism was announced as his preferred religion—one that would safeguard the personality of each oppressed Dalit. By 1950, some in the Indian press had tired of his attacks on Hinduism and did not believe the justification behind the anticipated conversion. For instance, the Free Press Journal of May 18, 1950, included a short but scathing note on Ambedkar’s recent moves toward Buddhist conversion, demanding, “Let him make up his mind once for all… Dr. Ambedkar should make it clear why the Hindus should embrace Buddhism and what is wrong with the Hindu religion at present.” The unsigned commentary even echoed Gandhi’s critical comments on conversion from the 1930s, incredulously asking, “Does he imagine that changing one’s religion is as easy as changing one’s walking stick?”

Ambedkar’s speeches to his followers in the 1950s served as his way of directly or indirectly answering such skeptical questions about the planned conversion to Buddhism. The frequency of these discussions of religion and conversion increased during his final years. Emphasizing his calculated uses of communication as a way to effectively change agents and the socially problematic situations they inhabit is a vital part of understanding Ambedkar as a pragmatist. If a central part of rhetoric, or the art of speech aiming to persuade, is attention to the particularities of self and audience in such problematic situations, it follows that understanding Ambedkar as a rhetor means attending to the specifics of how he attempted to move his various audiences through his speeches and texts, given their specific concerns. 

When Ambedkar addressed his followers in the 1950s, he typically spoke in Marathi, the tongue of his stronghold of Maharashtra. Keer tells us about the power of his speaking style: “Ambedkar was a powerful speaker both on the platform and in Parliament. Galvanic and embarrassingly brutal to a fault in his speech, he showered a fusillade of pistol shots at his opponents. . . . Simple, direct and trenchant, his speech had a charm of its own. Its fearlessness was sharpened by a vast confidence and experience which he had attained by his ceaseless study.” This directness was altered in his speeches to friendly audiences, however, and augmented by his personal ethos as a successful Dalit in modern India. Instead of addressing confrontational arguments to his followers, Ambedkar was direct and clear about the need for his audience to convert to Buddhism. In a Marathi speech entitled “I Shall Devote Rest of My Life to the Revival and Spread of Buddhism” and delivered to an audience at Bombay’s Buddha Vihar on September 29, 1950, Ambedkar extends his earlier point (made in Annihilation of Caste and elsewhere) that the problems of India were not merely political; they were primarily those of religious orientation. The Sunday News reports Ambedkar claiming to his audience that “as long as there is no purity of mind, wrong doing and utter disregard of morals would continue in every day life; and as long as man does not know how to behave with man and creates barriers between man and man, India can never be prosperous.” The problem with India, still reeling from the pains of independence and violent partition with Pakistan, is cast in terms of purity and impurity. Instead of Dalits being a source of impurity, Ambedkar believed that it was the mental habits associated with Hinduism that brought impurity and division into a society that otherwise could be whole. This habit-spurred division among social groups is anathema to Ambedkar’s reconstructed notion of Deweyan democracy. In the 1930s, in texts like Annihilation of Caste and “What Way Emancipation?,” Ambedkar calls for consciousness of this problem and a renunciation of the problematic orientation. Now, in 1950, he tells the audience what orientation to convert to: “To end all of these troubles, India embrace Buddhism. Buddhism is the only religion based upon ethical principles and [that] teaches how to work for the good and well-being of the common man.”

Ambedkar’s rhetorical activity with his Dalit audiences continued to gain in strength. On January 14, 1951, he delivered a Marathi address to a meeting of the Buddha Doot Society in Bombay known as “Buddhism Will Once Again Be the Religion of This Country.” In the heart of his most favorable constituency in his native state of Maharashtra, Ambedkar puts more detail into the orientational solution of Buddhism. One of the reasons Ambedkar was drawn to Buddhism was that it, unlike Christianity, both prized equality and was native to the Indian subcontinent. He attempts to establish this point by noting that “Buddha lived in this country in blood and flesh for 80 years. He spent 45 years of his life counseling the people of this country.” Yet this person who traveled by walking to help relieve individuals of their suffering “is not even remembered in this country! Nowhere his name is even uttered. I am very puzzled.” Of course, Ambedkar is betting that those hearing this utterance will also be puzzled and be pushed to reflect on why this state of affairs is unjustified. Buddha’s views are portrayed as the truth, and “the truth always prevails. Today, that time has come. Buddhism will be again the religion of this country, I am sure about it.”

His enthusiasm is matched with a dichotomous way of approaching Buddhism, buried in Ambedkar’s way of parsing the complexity of Indian history. He follows this personal exclamation with a matter-of-fact reading of the Hindu religion being like a stream formed from two other rivulets, “one of clean water and the other one of dirty water.” The former is “that of clean Buddhism and another rivulet was that of dirty Brahminism,” the interpretation of the Vedic tradition that placed Brahmins as the superior caste, much to the disadvantage of the lowest castes. The resulting third stream is dirty and impure; the audience must see Buddhism as retaining a lost sense of purity that must come with the entropy of its merger in ancient times with Vedic Hinduism. What is the audience to do? Ambedkar follows out his own evocation of the rhetoric of purity and claims, “We must clean it by removing the dirty customs imposed by Brahminism, so that the Hindu religion becomes clean and pure.” Cleansing modern Hinduism of Brahminism arguably returns it to Buddhism, a fact revealed by his advocacy of Buddhism as a replacement for Hindu habits of mind. This is why he claims that once his listeners join the Buddhist fold, “you will not be allowed to carry the Gods, customs or rites of Hinduism along with you. Khandoba (Hindu god) inside your hearts and Buddha on the front of your house will not be allowed.” The return to pure Buddhism—of habit and observable practice—also means leaving behind the concept and practice of caste. 

Ambedkar senses that this path will be difficult, so he exhorts his audience to “take time off to come here [to the Vihar or temple], learn it and then only if keen, [they] should adopt it.” He also states that he and others must assist would-be converts by formulating “some rules” for converts to Buddhism. He concludes his appeal to his followers by evoking guiding principles and values that echo his early appeals for self-respect among Dalits: “The principles of equality, compassion, fraternity and brotherhood which are essential for the welfare of humanity are found only in Buddhism.” Harkening back to his initial pronouncement to leave Hinduism at Yeola in 1935, he completes the circle of conversion by indicating, “I have studied all the religions of the world for the last twenty years. And only after that it is my firm belief that everybody should adopt Buddhism.” The stages of reflection and renunciation happened long before for his followers in regard to their original religion of Hinduism, but now he was certain enough to advocate a positive path of orientational reconstruction: all Dalits should choose to convert to Buddhism, as it is more useful and meaningful for their need for equality, freedom, and dignity. In short, it fulfills the conditions needed for the flourishing of personality of individuals that he sought in the 1930s. 

Ambedkar’s appeals to his followers to convert to Buddhism began to grow in detail and strength in his final years. In a Marathi speech titled “The Tide of Buddhism Would Never Recede in India” (given on May 24, 1956), Ambedkar speaks to around seventy-five thousand followers at the celebration of the 2500th Buddha Jayanti in Bombay. There he links Hinduism to a belief in the caste system, thereby emphasizing his concerns that the mental orientation connected with this religious tradition divides individuals and ranks them in a pain-producing hierarchy. Buddhism, however, as a mindset or religious orientation “has no place for the Caste System and Chaturvarnya.” Buddhism foregrounds equality among all humans. Reports of the speech highlight that during his address he compares himself to Moses, most likely because of his status as positive lawgiver in the form of the Indian constitution and in terms of advancing the spiritual law of Buddhism to an Indian people that had long forgotten it. He also indicates three causes for the decline of a religion, presumably Buddhism in India: “Lack of abiding principles in it; lack of versatile and conquering orators; and lack of easily understandable principles.” The first cause is important, as it establishes continuity with his appeals in the 1930s to reflect on and then renounce Hinduism. Ambedkar evokes the Deweyan distinction between set “rules” and flexible “principles” in criticizing the Hindu mindset in Annihilation of Caste, in which he expresses longing for a religion of principle, not of rules. What he wants his audience to do in 1936 is to abandon Hinduism, since it is a religious orientation that is fixated on rules, not on general guiding principles that allow for an adaptive engagement with changing social situations. By 1956, at the very end of Ambedkar’s life, Buddhism had become the orientation to convert to because it holds the possibility of being such an adaptable religion of principle. Even if its past instantiations suffer from being too rigid, Ambedkar implies that this isn’t inherent in it in the same way that caste is integrated into the Vedic worldview. We simply need creative and brave lawgivers—strong reformers with will and an emboldened personality— who also serve an oratorical function as a spur to further Buddhism’s renewed growth. These willful agents and individual reformers will be the “versatile and conquering orators” who will spread the understandable principles of Buddhism, just as Ambedkar demonstrates in his own example in his address. Reflection and renunciation now achieve their promised culmination in the act of conversion to Buddhism, a tradition reimagined for his audience as a religion of principle. 

This excerpt from Prof Scott R Stroud’s ‘The Evolution of Pragmatism in India: An Intellectual Biography of B.R. Ambedkar’ has been published with permission from HarperCollins India.

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