Buddhism in India

Introduction 7

and the Dhamma, and immediately afterwards, in spite of being an

unauthorised lay devotee, he himself turned around to administer

diksha to the hundreds of thousands of gathered masses

(Sangharakshata 1986: 136–37).

It frequently seems as if Ambedkar approached Buddhism not

with the heart of faith but with the scalpel of a practical reformer,

and seemed to believe that he could take what he wanted and leave

the rest. He openly adopted the role not of a simple believer but of

a charismatic leader, claiming authority for himself. He had his

arguments. The guiding principle he puts forward for what he

takes and what he rejects is simple. Arguing that there were after

all numerous interpolations in the texts and corruptions of time, he

goes on to say of the Buddha, ‘There is, however one test which is

available. If there is anything which could be said with confidence

it is: He was nothing if not rational, if not logical. Anything there-

fore which is rational and logical, other things being equal, may be

taken to be the word of the Buddha’ (Ambedkar 1992: 350–51).

Is this simply Enlightenment rationality in the guise of religion? Is

it going too far? It is more radical than, for instance, other ‘engaged

Buddhists’ mentioned by Christopher Queen and Sallie King in their

study of new Buddhist movements in Asia (1996). Most of these

modern ‘liberation’ forms of Buddhism give new social interpreta-

tions of Buddhism; none challenge what have been considered to be

basic doctrines. Sangharakshata’s Friends of the Western Buddhist

Order (in India, the Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangh Gana Vinayak

Samiti or TBMSG), the only pre-existing Buddhist order to actively

support Dalit Buddhism, and one whose equivalent to bhikkus,

known as ‘dhammacharis’, wear everyday clothes and live the

married life, does not go this far. It innovates, but justifies this as the

adaption of Buddhism to different cultures; it claims to accept all

the existing schools or yanas of the Dhamma. Ambedkar, in contrast,

seems ready to challenge them all!

Nevertheless, we will argue that Ambedkar should be taken

seriously.

Buddhism as Rational and Historical

There are two major points of interpretation at issue here which

need to be examined.

to accept their social lot and in India, specifically, to justify the
caste system. ‘If you accept karma,’ say militant neo-Buddhists in
India today, ‘you are accepting that you are an Untouchable
because of your sins in previous births.’ Therefore, they reject the
whole notion. In doing so, Ambedkar and his contemporary follow-
ers argue that the notion of karma/rebirth contradicts the basic
Buddhist theme of anatta, the non-existence of an eternal soul, but
while doing so they have to ignore and implicitly deny much of the
classical interpretations of Theravada Buddhism.
Just as he reinterprets dukkhain social terms, Ambedkar seeks
to reinterpret karma, at one point referring to it as biological-
genetic inheritance, but more generally that the transmission of
karmic causality is social and moral, not individual:

The theory of the law of Kamma does not necessarily involve the

conception that the effect of the Kamma recoils on the doer of it....

Individuals come and individuals go. But the moral order of the uni-

verse remains and so also the law of Kamma which sustains it

(Ambedkar 1992: 244).

Is this convincing? In spite of the apparent contradiction between
anattaand the karma/rebirth cosmology, it is still difficult to imag-
ine Buddhism without it. Rejecting the karma/rebirth concept
would mean that we take this only as a historically derivative
aspect of the Indian environment of early Buddhism and not as a
universal and essential aspect of the Buddha’s teachings.
Ambedkar’s fourth point, that the Sangha should be a commu-
nity dedicated to social service, seems to go counter to the tradi-
tional notion of any monastic organisation in which the primary
goal is the spiritual self-realisation of its members. Early Buddhism
seems quite unambiguous about this goal of the Sangha, which
was aimed at providing a framework for existence that would
make individual control of the passions—the major step towards
liberation—possible. The social-historical characteristics of much
of Buddhist monasticism provide a background for Ambedkar’s
position. Ambedkar was clearly disturbed about the way the Sangha
was functioning in Burma and Ceylon. Further, he was apparently
individualistic enough to have hesitated to submit to an organisa-
tion: even at the time of his own diksha, it appears that he had to
be convinced to ‘take refuge’ in the Sangha as well as the Buddha

6 Buddhism in India