8
8. Navayana Buddhism and the Modern Age
Modern Age
With the ‘revival’ of Buddhism we enter the tumultuous history of
20th century India. New classes were emerging with new struggles.
The country was striving to free itself from the grip of British imperi-
alism and the equally harsh grasp of economic backwardness to
confront the challenges of modernity. For many, modernity with its
emphasis on rationalism and social justice was against the spirit
of traditional religions; it certainly meant moral and intellectual
upheavals in the religious world. Yet, contrary to most earlier predic-
tions of sociologists—from Weber and Marx through American and
European sociologists in the 1970s—religion had not vanished or
even declined; it changed. Thus, the assertion of a new Buddhism in
India is not so surprising; nor is it surprising that it would challenge
many of the taken-for-granted assumptions of traditional Buddhism.
The history of this new Buddhism is interwoven with the life
of one of the most remarkable men of any era, any country—
Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), affectionately called
‘Babasaheb’ by his millions of ex-untouchable followers. A brilliant
economist, a lawyer, chairman of the drafting committee of India’s
Constitution, and for nearly 40 years the unchallenged leader of
India’s Dalit movement, his place in modern India rivals that of
Mahatma Gandhi. Ambedkar in fact confronted Gandhi, primarily
over policies to alleviate the exploitation of the ex-untouchables,
but also on a larger scale over policies of development for India. In
this confrontation, Gandhi stood as the spokesman of a reformed
and reinterpreted Hinduism, and Ambedkar emerged as a
spokesman for modernity and the heir of the Buddhist tradition.
Ambedkar’s debates with Gandhi in 1930–32 at the Round