Introduction
Introduction: Reconstructing the World Preface ix
‘The purpose of Religion is to explain the origin of the world. The
purpose of Dhamma is to reconstruct the world’ (Ambedkar 1987:
322). With these words, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the famous leader of
India’s untouchables, interpreted Buddhism as a world-transforming
religion. This meant a threefold challenge: to Brahmanism, the
main exploiting system of traditional Indian society; to Marxism,
the main social ideology opposing exploitation; and to the existing
interpretations of Buddhism itself.
Ambedkar had no doubt that Brahmanism was responsible for
most of the evils affecting India and that Buddhism was its main
potential alternative. ‘The history of Indian society,’ he had written
in his draft essay, ‘Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Indian
Society’, ‘is a history of conflict between Brahmanism and Buddhism.’
This raised the issue of the civilisational impact of Buddhism, its role
in Indian society and history. Many radical anti-caste movement
leaders had been concerned with these questions for over a century,
and Ambedkar’s own interpretation of Indian history increasingly
looked at the dialectics between Buddhism and Brahmanism.
At the same time, Ambedkar also saw the Dhamma as a funda-
mental alternative to Marxism. But in seeing the Dhamma as a
solution to exploitation he was asking Marxist questions. His very
words echoed his interpretation of Marx’s famous saying in the
Theses on Feuerbach, ‘Philosophers have only interpreted the
world differently; the point, however, is to change it.’ In one of his
last essays on ‘Buddha or Karl Marx’, Ambedkar had rephrased
this as ‘The function of philosophy is to reconstruct the world and
not to waste its time in explaining the origin of the world’
(Ambedkar 1987: 444). He had seen this theme as part of the small
‘residue of fire’ in Marxism which was still burning. But while
Ambedkar’s formulation of the problems of the world may have