Buddhism in India

Colonial Challenges and Buddhist Revival 239

arbitrative body—the law courts—but the very principles of free

trade, property and work which underwrote and justified that rule

which seemed attractive (ibid.: 72).

Iyothee Thass’ interpretation of Buddhism also took up redefinitions

of what have been considered to be basic teachings of Buddhism.

He and his companions were not ready, in a modern ‘scientific’

age, to accept the notions of karma and rebirth, particularly since

these had been used in the Brahmanic framework to define their

untouchability. The interpretation of karma and rebirth made by

the votaries of ‘Sakya Buddhism’ seems to have paved the way for

Ambedkar’s rejection of it. For example, saying that ‘activity as

desire is the cause of birth’, Iyothee Thass wrote,

There is nothing everlasting in this world; and there is no ‘soul’ or

‘self’ in those born as human beings; it is about this, the compassionate

Buddha preached on the origin of the world—sarvan anityam, sarvan

anathmam, nirvanam shatam; the world moves in accordance with

‘activity’; those who are born as human beings too, are born, live and

die in accordance with it; in this whirlpool of human life what is

stable is saththanmamor the activity/life in accordance with thanman

[Dhamma]. Death itself is the disintegration of the five elements of

which all human bodies are composed. And as it is inevitable for every

life to come to an end, sorrow is not called for.... (quoted by Aloysius

1998: 115).

This is a slightly different version of the ‘three characteristics’.

Impermanence and non-self are cited, dukkhaor sorrow is ignored,

and ‘non-self’ is explicitly connected with the denial of rebirth.

As another Tamil Buddhist, G. Appadinaiyar later explained,

‘Wherever one’s thought, words or deeds are to be found influenc-

ing others, there one takes a rebirth’ (Aloysius 1998: 148).

More explicitly, in The Essence of Buddhism,Iyothee Thass’

co-worker Laxmi Narasu in 1907 wrote

That in the personal development of each individual every thought or

volition counts for something is not difficult to perceive; but that there

is a retribution in wrong and selfishness after death, when there is no

transmigrating atma,can have no meaning and validity apart from the

individual’s relation to mankind as a whole. Physiologically considered,

an individual reincarnates in his progeny, and his physicalkarmais

gods and goddesses were interpreted as great human beings, great
Buddhists, who had achieved nirvana and in the process helped
the people. For instance, a popular goddess, Ambika Amman, was
identified as a bhikkhuni who had aided people during a smallpox
epidemic, while popular festivals of Tamil Nadu were linked to the
Buddhist tradition. This was intended to combat the way in which
Brahmanism had absorbed (or ‘co-opted’) many popular deities, to
maintain but reinterpret popular mass religious and ceremonial
practices. These general themes of Iyothee Thass formed the radical
cultural–historical critique that gave thrust to the later mass, political
Dravidian movement (Geetha and Rajadurai 1998: 91–108).
Like Phule also, Iyothee Thass was a fierce critic of the swadeshi
movement, which took on a strong organised form in agitations in
the early 20th century. The columns in the Tamil journal of Iyothee
Thass, mostly written by himself, were titled ‘Swadeshi reform’ and
attacked the hypocrisy of Brahmans, whose continual exclusion of
Dalits and non-Brahmans was in contrast to their claim to be leaders
of nationalism. He argued that the ‘inner spirit’ of swadeshi and
swaraj (‘self-rule’, a term popularised by the Maharashtrian radical
nationalist Lokmanya Tilak) was based on four sorts of pride: caste
pride, religious pride, the pride of knowledge and pride coming from
wealth. What needed to be boycotted was not foreign cloth, but caste
hatred, prejudice that resulted in burning the houses of the poor and
destroying their gods and rituals. He was also critical of those who
opposed the ‘indentured labour’ under which Paraiah’s migrated to
distant lands—because in fact such migration was an escape from the
reality of village slavery. Brahmanic knowledge was ‘really useless’,
he argued, since it had never taken up practical arts of agronomy,
irrigation and transport. Finally, swadeshi nationalism had no viable
alternatives to propose to poverty and economic misery (ibid.: 62–70).
Iyothee Thass was in fact very similar to Phule not only in his inter-
pretation of Aryan conquest and the origin of the caste system, but
in his critique of Brahman nationalism and his insistence on educa-
tion, openness (including openness in trade, exchange of goods and
ideas). As Geetha and Rajadurai have noted, citing his journalistic
writings, for the Adi Dravidas who suffered under feudal forms of
oppression,

it was not only the liberal rule of law in British India, which granted

them the status of persons and the right to a hearing by a neutral

238 Buddhism in India