Buddhism in India

Navayana Buddhism and the Modern Age 249

be disillusioned. The crucial events occurred in the 1930–32 period

when the British government invited leaders of various Indian

political groups to ‘Round Table conferences’ in London in an

effort to get a consensus for gradual devolution of political power

(see Omvedt 1994: 167–77).

The Congress boycotted the first conference, but Ambedkar

attended as the leading representative of India’s untouchables.

There he gave eloquent support to the demand for independence:

We feel that nobody can remove our grievances as well as we can, and

we cannot remove them unless we get political power in our own

hands. No share of this political power can evidently come to us so

long as the British government remains at it is. It is only in a Swaraj

constitution that we stand any change of getting the political power in

our own hands... .We know that political power is passing from the

British into the hands of those who wield such tremendous economic,

social and religious sway over our existence. We are willing that it

may happen.... (Ambedkar 1982: 505–56).

This however necessitated safeguards, and so Ambedkar made a

plea for separate electorates for Dalits, similar to those that were

granted to Muslims. Though the majority of Dalit leaders were

making this demand, Ambedkar’s own first inclination had been to

ask for only reserved seats if there were to be universal suffrage.

Universal adult suffrage, however, was not on the books, so he

asked for separate electorates, fearing that even with reservation,

the majority of caste Hindus in a constituency would be able to

elect whatever untouchable they wanted.

The first Round Table Conference was followed by the suspen-

sion of the Civil Disobedience movement and a pact which led to

the appearance of Gandhi at the second conference, with all the

prestige of the national movement behind him and a claim to be the

sole representative of the Indian people. Between the two confer-

ences, Gandhi and Ambedkar had their first meeting, one which

took place in an atmosphere of some tension, with Gandhi treating

Ambedkar with insufficient respect and Ambedkar telling Gandhi,

‘Mahatmaji, I have no country.’ The clash continued at the second

conference, as Gandhi claimed himself to represent all Hindus,

including Dalits. In fact, it was on specifically Hindu and not

nationalist grounds that Gandhi opposed the demands for separate

representation:

Hindus, we should become Christians or Muslims and win the support

of a powerful community and with this erase the mark of Untouchability

(Bahiskrut Bharat, July 29, 1929, page 6).

Clearly, this image of Buddhism and its being linked to with the
Hindu-reformist Arya Samaj, resulted from the fact that the vast
majority of upper caste individuals who had turned to Buddhism in
the 19th and the 20th century saw it as a kind of reformed Hinduism.
The propaganda that the Buddha was only an avatar of Vishnu and
that Buddhism was not much different from Vedanta, still dominant
in Maharashtra, made it seem less than radical to the militants of
the new movement.

Confrontation with Gandhi:

‘I will not Die a Hindu’

In 1916 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a lawyer from a Gujarati
‘bania’ family, returned from South Africa where he had won a
reputation for organising Indians to fight apartheid. He quickly
distanced himself from both the existing factions within the Indian
National Congress, the ‘moderates’ who advocated constitutional
methods and by and large supported social reform, and the ‘extre-
mists’ who wanted to organise mass movements and who sometimes
associated themselves with small terrorist groups. Gandhi’s way was
different—nonviolent mass action and social reformism that
included organising his followers in ‘ashrams’ to carry on various
types of constructive work. He identified himself strongly as a
‘Hindu’ but interpreted Hinduism in his own way, as fundamentally
oriented towards non-violence. Thus he could use concepts such as
‘Ram Raj’ to denote his ideal society, but never really confront the
fact of the armed Ram. He would say with apparent decisiveness, that
if untouchability were in the Hindu scriptures he would renounce
them, yet would never confront the clear evidence of untouchability
in texts of Manu and others.
Yet, in Ambedkar’s challenge, Gandhian social reformism was to
meet its most bitter foe. During the 1920s, briefly, Ambedkar had
apparently seen Gandhi as someone rather different from the
orthodox Brahmans of Maharashtra who had mostly controlled
the Congress, though may have used his themes for the Mahad
satyagraha only for tactical reasons. However, Ambedkar was to

248 Buddhism in India