among radical activists from Dalit-Bahujan backgrounds is greater
than ever. Debates are going on; books are published; songs are
written; meditation courses are organised. Mass vows of rejection
of Hinduism and mass acceptance of Buddhism are beginning to be
held. Dalits are making their mark not only nationally but on the
world arena, for example with the Durban conference. Perhaps we
are standing on the threshhold of a new age of ‘Buddhist India’.264 Buddhism in India Navayana Buddhism and the Modern Age 265
In the evening, a huge procession left from the Indora area...Everyone
held candles. In ranks of four and as disciplined as soldiers, thousands
of people walked one after another. Small children, women and men,
old people, everyone went along in that procession without shouting
slogans and with peaceful minds. Only one day before the people in
the procession might have felt a little fear while going past settlements
of Hindus, but the day they moved ahead fearlessly, as if with a torch
in their hands and with the solemn chant of Buddham saranam
gacchami. The Nagpurites were trying to extinguish the fire of sorrow
(Moon 2001: 161–62).Buddhist Renaissance
So began the Buddhist renaissance in India. It was only a begin-
ning; Ambedkar’s mass conversion brought together millions of
dalits, mainly from Maharashtra and parts of north India. It made
little impact on the majority of Indian Dalits, however, who con-
tinued for a long time to identify themselves as ‘Hindus’. And it did
not touch the masses of non-Dalit caste Hindus. As Buddhist
activists have noted, the small wave of high-caste conversions even
dried up as Buddhism now became identified as an ‘Untouchable
religion’.
The Mahars and other Dalits, though self-confident, and with
remarkable individuals emerging from them, were overwhelmingly
poor and with limited resources. Institution building was slow. The
assertion of Buddhism at the level of scholarship and art was slow.
For a long time, Buddhism was hardly taken seriously. The inde-
pendent Indian state adopted some of its symbols, for instance the
Asokan pillar and chakra, but continued to see these as part of an
India that was essentially Hindu, essentially derived from a
Sanskritic, Vedic culture.
But the assertion of Dalits and other ‘low’-caste groups has taken
on renewed force, beginning with the rise of the Dalit Panthers and
similar groups throughout the country in the 1970s, and continuing
unevenly but unabatedly into the 1990s. ‘Bahujans’ (or OBCs) and
‘Adivasis’ are making their mark and looking to alliance with
minority religious groups. In many ways the revival of ‘Hindu
nationalism’ or Hindutva in the 1980s and its coming to political
power in the 1990s has sparked a new sense of urgency about
cultural and religious struggles. Today the interest in Buddhism