Buddhism in India

Introduction 17

Buddhism, for most of those who now defined themsleves as

Hindus, was most often seen as a kind of protestant Hinduism. In

their view, it arose out of the basic philosophical ideas of early

‘Hinduism’; it protested against the ritualism and violence of

Vedic sacrifices and the rigidities of the caste system; but these

protests either won their point (as Vedic sacrifices were done away

with and vegetarianism became a way of life for the Brahmanic

elite) or were carried on through the ages by the bhakti move-

ment and by other reformers. Buddhism died away finally

because there was no need for it in the truly open ‘catholicism’ of

existing Hinduism. Buddhism was not essentially different; many

argued in particular that the Mahayana concept of sunyata(no

essential nature) was practically identical with the Vedantic

‘brahma’.

This developing ‘Hindu’ ideology was contested by a vigorous

anti-caste movement that arose in the 19th and 20th centuries,

beginning with Jotirao Phule in Maharashtra and Iyothee Thass in

Tamil Nadu. This developed into strong non Brahman movements

in the two regions, and an even more widely spread, if sporadic,

Dalit movements by the 1920s. Central to the thinking of the intel-

lectuals of these movements was the concept of contradiction as a

basic feature of Indian society and history. Not only were exploita-

tion, struggle, violence and dominance prominent realities, but also

the various religious and philosophical systems that had sprung up

on Indian soil contained contradictory elements.

Ambedkar was building on this tradition. While he used the term

‘Hinduism’ in most of his writings—accepting the reality that by

the 20th century most Indians had accepted the definition of them-

selves as ‘Hindus’, still in defining the contradictions in Indian

society he used the term ‘Brahmanism’ to emphasise the crucial role

played by the concepts of Brahmanic superiority and caste hierar-

chy. Brahmanism’s unique characteristic was to foster all those

features; Buddhism opposed them. Brahmanism emphasised magic

and ritual, while Buddhism emphasised rationality and ethics. The

conflict between Brahmanism and Buddhism was seen as of the

utmost interest to Dalits in particular, because it was in the process

of defeating Buddhism that the caste system solidified, and certain

specific groups were particularly degraded and classed as ‘untouch-

able’. Thus Ambedkar argued that Dalits were in fact origi-

nally Buddhists who had been rendered untouchable and their

as ‘Hinduism’. ‘Hinduism’ was seen in various ways, but usually as
a flexible, amorphous collection of all the existing cults and sects,
with roots in the Vedas and unified by a vague Vedantic idea of the
‘being’ at the heart of it all, and of the individual soul being identical
with this universal being. The originators of the ‘Hindutva’ position
argued openly that a ‘Hindu was someone who accepted India as his
holy land and as his father land’, but even the more reformist nation-
alist elite took Hinduism, in effect, as a ‘national religion’. This
is implied in Gandhi’s argument that untouchables should not
convert to other religions, rather they should try to reform ‘their
own’ religion.
In this formulation of a ‘modern Hinduism’, the question of the
relationship between Hinduism and caste was evaded, though the
word dharmawas often used as the translation of ‘religion,’ and one
of the most essential meanings of dharmahas referred to var-
nashrama dharma. Reformists and conservatives alike usually took
the position that the original caste system had been a fairly harmo-
nious way of integrating the various ethnic and linguistic groups
in India, and that it was only in the modern period that it had ‘degen-
erated’ into thousands of rigid jatis. Thus the solution was a recov-
ery or return to an idealised varna system. Even Jawaharlal Nehru is
inclined to make apologies for the caste system, which he views along
with the village and the joint family in his Discovery of India as one
of the ‘pillars of Indian society’. ‘Caste has been essentially functional
and similar to the medieval trade guilds of Europe’ (Nehru 1959:
150). Similarly, stressing the harmonious character of Indian think-
ing and collective character of its social system, he writes,

The old Indian social structure thus had some virtues, and indeed it

could not have lasted so long without them. Behind it lay the philo-

sophical ideal of Indian culture—the integration of man and the stress

on goodness, beauty, and truth rather than acquisitiveness.... The

duties of the individual and group were emphasized, not their rights

(Nehru 1959: 160–61).

Thus, Indian thinking is contrasted with western thinking, individu-
alism with collectivism or cooperation, and spiritualism with mate-
rialism. These contrasts were as handy for ‘secular’ socialists as
for the more open ‘Hindu nationalists’ because they appeared to
provide an important indigenous basis for socialist thinking.

16 Buddhism in India