Buddhism in India

Navayana Buddhism and the Modern Age 255

attack on property relations, on capitalists as the main enemy. The

viewing of ‘Brahmanism’ as a major enemy could be analysed and

dismissed as simply another petty-bourgeois illusion.

When the ‘class against class’ thesis was rejected after 1935, the

Communists in India gave their support to the national movement. This

they identified with the National Congress, and they fought to bring the

working class movement into the Congress Socialist Party which they

tried to treat as their ‘front’ within the Congress (though a split between

Communists and Socialists took place fairly quickly). This meant draw-

ing all the activists, including those Dalits and non Brahmans whom

they could influence, out of movements led by Ambedkar, Periyar and

other social radicals. As the Political Thesis of the 2nd Congress in 1948

put it, the untouchables had to be drawn into the ‘democratic front’ and

this meant an attack on their leadership:

This task will have to be carried out by a relentless struggle against the

bourgeoisie of the upper castes as well as against the opportunist and

separatist leaders of the untouchables themselves. We have to expose

these leaders, tear away the untouchable masses from their influence,

and convince them that their interest lies in joining hands with the

other exploited sections... (Communist Party of India 1976: 112).

Ambedkar was specifically named as a ‘reformist and separatist

leader’. The document described untouchables as forming ‘the most

exploited and oppressed sections of our people’ but made no specific

analysis of caste. The same language could have been applied to

Blacks, or to any other non-class oppressed section. Brahmanism,

and its support by a particular religion, was not at all at issue.

Nothing was said about the question of representation in public

services and education, which Dalits and non-Brahmans had sought

to achieve through reservation. The Left simply ignored reservation,

taking it as another ‘petty-bourgeois’ demand.

Yet it was not a simple question of antagonism between

Ambedkar and the Communists and socialists. Ambedkar and the

Dalit movement were very much a part of the struggles of the radi-

cal 1930s. He and his companions were leading anti-landlord

struggles in the Konkan and fights of textile workers in Bombay—

in both cases uniting with caste Hindus, in both cases sharing plat-

forms with the Communists. In 1936 when he founded his first

political party, he called it the Independent Labour Party, signifying

a basic allegiance to the working class movement.

the chief thing still remains to be done. For the fact that the secular

foundation detaches itself from itself and establishes itself in the

clouds as an independent realm is really to be explained only by the

self-cleavage and self-contradictoriness of this secular basis. The latter

must itself, therefore, first be understood in its contradiction and then,

by the removal of the contradiction, revolutionized in practice. Thus,

for instance, once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of

the holy family, the former must then itself be criticised in theory and

revolutionised in practice.

From this perspective, Marxism was fundamentally uninterested in
religion, in the critique of religion or in changes of religion. A
change of religion would do no good and even the critique of religion
should follow social praxis.
It might be said that marxism’s basic difference with Buddhism, at
least with classical Buddhism, was not so much in the critique of
‘God’ as in the view about humans in society. Marx looked at human
nature as a collective product, and at human action as exerted col-
lectively. The individual will and individual action had little rele-
vance. In modern sociological terms, ‘structure’ implied ‘agency’;
action was determined. The Buddha had also rejected the efficacy of
speculation about god or the cosmos. But his attention was directed
towards the psychological nature of individual action; and institut-
ing changes in society was not so important as changes in the indi-
vidual; from that social changes would flow. In that sense, early
Buddhism was a radically individualistic doctrine, though it stressed
a social ethic and the role of a social organisation, the Sangha, in pro-
viding a framework for search.
Marxism did have a potential for incorporating culture, ideology
and individual action in a dialectical relationship with social-material
relations of production in an overall therapy. However, it was
propagated in a collectivist and economist version that proved a
handy ideology for the Indian brahmanical elite. It systematically
downplayed non-economic factors such as gender and caste, arguing
that these would be nearly automatically taken care of with social-
ist revolution. Young Communists were called upon to ‘declass’
themselves and they themselves became atheists—but there was no
strong pressure, even as much as with early social reformers, to try
to make much effective change in the religious ideologies of their
families. One religion was as alienating as another; a choice of a
different religion was not necessary—what was necessary was an

254 Buddhism in India