Sumanapal Bhikkhu
Abstract:
Ambedkar’s first recorded contact with Buddhism occurred in 1908, when he was sixteen. At that time he had just passed the matriculation examination of Bombay University in that year. On a function a copy of the life of Buddha was presented to him. Being an auld reader Ambedkar took no time in perusing the book. Rom 1908 to 1917 Ambedkar was fully engrossed in his studies and during that period he went to America and England. At that time he was not giving any special thought to Buddhism. In 1927 a very significant incident occurred which can be described as a milestone in Ambedkar’s progress towards Buddhism. It was the year of the chowder tank campaign. Chowder tank was a water body and caste Hindus used to draw water from it for household purposes. But untouchables were not allowed anywhere near the tank. When the tank was thrown open to the untouchables, the Caste Hindus prevented the untouchables from using their moral and legal rights by hostility. The debate was referred to the court and the right of the untouchables to draw water from the tank was finally established in 1937 by the Bombay High Court. On the night of 25 December of that year. Ambedkar has followers publicly and ceremoniously learned the notorious Manusmriti one of the must celebrated of all such scriptures that preached the gospel of inequality. In October 1935, Ambedkar delivered a powerful speech in which he declared, ‘Though I have been learning a Hindu, I will not die a Hindu’. Then after many years of vacillation on 24 May 1956 Ambedkar and his wife took three Refugees and Fine Precepts from the Burmese monk U. Chandramani.
Ambedkar’s first recorded contact with Buddhism occurred in 1908, when he was sixteen. At that time he had just passed the matriculation examination of Bombay University. It was an extraordinary achievement for an untouchable boy and the Maharashtra celebrated the occasion with a public meeting in his honor. The well known social reformer S.K. Bole acted as the Chowdhar tank campaign. The local high school teacher Krishraji Arjun Keluskar had recently published the life of Buddha in Marathi and a copy of the book was presented to the young Ambedkar. Ambedkar was an avid reader and took no time in perusing the book undoubtedly the story of the Buddha’s great renunciation, his search for truth, his ultimate attainment of enlightenment, and his compassionate activity on behalf of his fellow men all left a deep impression on his young mind. Keluskar, for his part, took a great interest in the young Ambedkar and it was through his good offices that three year later the Maharaja Gaekwad of Baroda granted Ambedkar the scholarship that enabled him to continue his education.
From 1908 to 1917 Ambedkar was fully engrossed in his studies and during that period he went to American and England. At that time he was not giving any special thought to the Buddha’s teaching. Then in 1927 a very significant incident occurred which can be described as a milestone in his progress towards Buddhism. It was the year of the Chowdhar tank Campaign, which in the beginning was a complete success. A resolution was moved in the Bombay Legislative Council by S.K. Bole to the effect that the untouchable classes be allowed to use the water of all places including wells, and dharmasalas which were built and maintained by Government or created by statute, as well as public schools, court, offices and dispensaries. After being adopted by the council, the resolution was accepted, with some reluctance by the Bombay Government. Heads of Departments were directed to give effect to resolutions so far as it related to public places and institutions belonging to and maintained by the Government and the collectors were requested to advise the local public bodies in their jurisdiction to consider the desirability of accepting the recommendation made in the resolution so far as it related to them.
One of the public bodies thus advised was the Mahad Municipality and the Chowdhar tank was one of the amenities administered by the Mahad Municipality. Caste Hindus used to draw water from the tank for household purposes but untouchables were not allowed anywhere near the tank. When the tank was thrown open to the untouchables by the Mahad Municipality in compliance with the Bole resolution, the Caste Hindus prevented the untouchables from using their moral and legal right of using the water of the pond by hostility. The statement continued for three years. Then in March the Depressed classes of the Kolaba district in which Mahad was situated held a conference to deal with the situation. 10000 untouchable representatives from all over the Bombay Presidency attended the conference which took place on the outskirts of Mahad where Ambedkar delivered a string speech. On the second day of the conference a procession was brought out through the streets of Mahad to the Chowdhar tank. There Ambedkar, who led the procession, took the water of the tank, drank it and others did the same.
But their victory was short lived. A rumor was circulated that untouchables were planning to enter the Vireshvar temple. At this the caste Hindus were infuriated and a mob attacked the delegates with bamboo sticks. A riot ensued, in which twenty untouchables were seriously injured and many others were assaulted. The police arrested nine of the troublemakers and later five of them were sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for four months.
But the caste Hindus seemed to have learnt no lessons from the incident. They believed that the action of Ambedkar and other untouchables has polluted the tank and rendered its water unsuitable for use. A purification of the water of the tank was arranged and that was deeply offensive to the untouchables. Ambedkar decided tot continue the struggle and establish their right to draw water from the tank. In the meantime a group of caste Hindus filed a suit claiming that the Chowdhar tank was a private property and got an injunction issued which restrained Ambedkar and his principal tenants from approaching the tank and drawing water from it. Ambedkar and his colleagues decided to postpone the struggle until the court had settled the question of whether or not the Chowdhar tank was a private property.
The right of the untouchables to draw water from the tank was finally established in 1937 by the Bombay High Court but by that time the Mahad Campaign had been ever shadowed by other events. On the night of 25 December of that year, Ambedkar and his followers publicly and ceremonially burned the notorious Manusmriti one of the most celebrated of all such scriptures that preached the gospel of social inequality.
While the burning of the Manusmiriti indicated how far Ambedkar had traveled had traveled from Hinduism. Other incidents occurring in connection with the Chowdhar tank Campaign showed how near he was beginning to draw towards Buddhism. Addressing the opening session of the first Mahad Conference, Ambedkar told his poorly clad and illiterate audience, “No lasting progress can be achieved unless we put ourselves through & threefold process of purification. We must improve the general tone of our behaving, retune or utterance, and revitalize our thoughts”. The threefold purification which Ambedkar spoke was, of course, the purification of the three principles of body, speech and mind which between them make up the individual human being what is especially noteworthy about Ambedkar’s insistence on the need for a threefold purification, corresponding to a threefold division of the individual human being, are found throughout Buddhist literature, they appear to be unknown to the Vedic and post Vedic literature of Hinduism. This suggests that even before the time of the Chowder Tank campaign Ambedkar had not only familaries himself with the Buddhist scriptures but had started thinking in specifically Buddhist terms. It also suggests that he saw progress not as simply material but as having a moral and spiritual basis. As the Buddhist scriptures make clear, the threefold purification is effected by abstention from the ten modes of ‘unskillful’ (i.e. ethically disastrous) action. Body is purified by abstention from killing, stealing and sexual misconduct; speech by abstention from falsehood, abuse, idle chatter and back biting; and mind by abstention from covetousness, hatred and wrong views. These ten constitute what are traditionally known as the ‘ten percepts’ (dasa sila), in their negative rather than their positive from, and it is not surprising that when, towards the end of his life. Ambedkar complied ‘The Buddha and his Dhamma; he should have included in that work a number oh passages from the Pali scriptures dealing with the threefold purification and the ten precepts. In the light of these facts one cannot help thinking that when Ambedkar told the first Mahad conference that no lasting progress could be achieved unless they put themselves through a threefold process of purification he was, in effect, telling them that no lasting progress could be achieved without Buddhism.
The two remaining incidents occurred in connection with the second Mahad Conference. Two prominent non-Brahmin leaders of Maharashtra offered to support Ambedkar in his campaign on condition that no Brahmin should be allowed to participate in the campaign. Ambedkar flatly rejected the two leaders’ offer. Ambedkar believed in seeing people not simply as members of this or that community but as individuals. In these eyes what counted was not birth worth, and in accordance with the latter that men should really be judged. This is of course a basic Buddhist principle, and the fact that Ambedkar should have stated it so unequivocally shows how close he was, even at that time to Buddhism.
But Ambedkar’s closeness to Buddhism was not just in respect of certain principle; it was a also closeness of personal sympathy. In other words, the closeness was not only intellectually but also emotional. To days after his burning of Manusmiriti, Ambedkar and his entourage went on an expedition to a place in the neighborhood oh Mahad in order to see the excavation of some rivers that were believed to date from the time of the Buddha. Deeply moved by the sight of his encourage how the Buddha’s disciples had lined lives of poverty and chastity and devoted themselves to the service of the community.  
The six years that followed the Chowdhar tank campaign were years of vacillation. Sometimes it seemed that Ambedkar had traveled a long way from Hinduism, whether or not in the direction of some other religion and sometimes it seemed that he had not. Actually he was waiting for a change of heart on the part of the caste Hindus. But in the end he was forced to recognize that there was going to be no change of heart on the part of the caste Hindus, and that a casteless Hinduism of which he had sometimes spoken so enthusiastically was only a dream. Indeed, it was a contradiction in terms. Hinduism and the caste system were inseparable and as a result no emancipation of the untouchables was possible within Hinduism.
So Ambedkar became increasingly convinced that renunciation of Hinduism was the way forward for him and his people. The explosion took place at Yeola on 13 October 1935, and it rocked Hindu India in a way that even the burning of the ‘Manusmriti’ had not done Ambedkar delivered a powerful speech in which he described the hardships suffered by the expressed classes in all spheres of life and spoke bitterly of the failure of their attempts to secure their basic human rights as members of the Hindu community. As for himself, he believed that was his misfortune that he had been born an untouchable Hindu.  That was beyond the power to prevent, but it was certainly within his power to refuse to live under ignoble and humiliating conditions. ‘I therefore solemnly assure you’, he declared, and ‘that though I have been born a Hindu, I will not die a Hindu.’
But despite the fact that Ambedkar had now started traveling away from Hinduism and despite the fact he had concluded his address to the Mahar Conference by quoting the words of the Buddha he had apparently still not made up his mind which religion to embrace. On 1-3 September 1939 World War II broke out in Europe and soon involved India, and on 15 August 1947 a truncated India achieved independence. During the eight years spanned by these events Ambedkar reached the Zenith of his political career, first as Labour Minister of the Viceroy’s Executive Council, then as a member of the Constituent Assembly, and finally as Minister for Law in the first Government of free India. In 1948 Ambedkar brought out a new edition of P. Lakshmi Nasaru’s he Essence of Buddhism’ originally published in 1907. In the preface he wrote that he praised the author for his unflagging faith in the Buddha and recommended the book as ‘the best book on Buddhism that has appeared so far.’ He also revealed that he was working on a life of the Buddha, in which he intended do deal with some of the criticisms that been leveled against the teachings of the Buddha, by his adversaries – past and present.
The life of the Buddha must have been the work that was eventually published under the title of the Buddha and his Dhamma, and the fact that Ambedkar engaged on it while still a member of the Cabinet showed that he was more preoccupied with Buddhism than ever. By February 1956, the last chapters of The Buddha and His Dhamma had been written and on 15 March Ambedkar was able write – or dictate – the preface. From this time onwards he and his followers traveled along the road to conversion with increasing rapidity, and incidents that show in which direction they were moving occurred more and more frequently.
24 May was the anniversary of the Buddha’s attainment of enlightenment and, according to the Sinhalese Buddhist calendar, the 2500 anniversary of his Parinirvana or final passing away. On that day Ambedkar addressed a meeting in Nare Park, Bombay, and declared that he would embrace Buddhism in October. On 23 September Ambedkar issued a press note announcing that his conversion to Buddhism would take place on 14 October in Nagpur. On the morning of 11 October he flew from Delhi to Nagpur accompanied by his wife and P.N Tattu, his private secretary. On the evening of 13 October he gave two press conferences, among other things telling the newsmen that his Buddhism would adhere to the tenets of the faith as preached by the Buddha himself, without involving the people in the differences which had arisen with regard to the Hinayana and Mahayana. His Buddhism would be a sort of neo Buddhism or Navayana. At 9:15 the following morning he ascended the dais that had been erected at one end of the Diksha Bhumi or Initiation Ground as the spot came to be called; fifteen minutes later he and his wife took the three Refuges and Five Precepts from U. Chandramani the Burmese Bhikkhu from Kushinara, Fifteen or twenty minutes later after that Ambedkar himself administered the some three Refugees and Five Percepts – together with the twenty two supporting vows of his own devising – to the 3,80,000mens, women and children who had assembled there in response to his called. They had reached the end of their long journey. They had now not only renounced Hinduism but embraced Buddhism. No longer were they untouchables. They were human beings. They were Buddhists. After centuries of separation, they had reestablished contact their spiritual roots and could start producing flowers.
We find that Ambedkar’s thoughts on Buddhism are contained in his article on ‘The Buddha and the Future of His Religion’ and in certain sections of ‘The Buddha and His Dhamma’. The later was until a year after Ambedkar’s death and the article ‘The Buddha and the Future of his Religion’ appeared in the April. May issue of the Mahabodhi. In the first section of the article, Ambedkar boldly declares that what distinguishes the Buddha from the Jesus, Mohammed and Krishna is his self abnegation. By the Buddha’s self abnegation Ambedkar means his refusal to claim for himself the kind of Bible Jesus insists that he is the son of God and that those who wish to enter the kingdom of God will fail to do so if they do not recognize him as such. Mohammed went a step further. Like Jesus he claimed that he was a messenger of God on earth but he further insisted that he was the last messenger. On this footing he declared that those who wanted salvation must not only accept that he was a messenger of God but also accept that he was the last messenger. Krishna went a step beyond both Jesus and Mohammed refusing to be satisfied with being merely that the son or messenger of God, of even with being the last messenger of God, he claimed that he was God himself.
Having described the claims made by Jesus, Mohammed, and Krishna, Ambedkar proceeds to emphasize the every different attitude assumed by the Buddha who has says, never arrogated to himself any such status as they did. He was born a son of man and was content to remain a common man and preached his gospel as a common man.
Beside being distinguished from the three other founders of religions by his self abnegation the Buddha is distinguished from them by the fact that he did not claim infallibility for his teachings. The passage of the Mahaparinibbana Sutta or ‘Book of Great Decease’ to which Ambedkar refers to is probably the well known one, where the Buddha, on the eve of his departure from the world, tells his faithful attendant, ‘When I am gone, Ananda, let the Order, if it should so wish, abolish all the lesser or minor precepts. For Ambedkar, the fact that the Buddha had given liberty to his followers was nothing less than a direct expression of his teaching and a triumphant affirmation of Buddhism as a religion based not on authority but on reason and experience.
In the second section of the article Ambedkar compares Buddhism and Hinduism. Ambedkar says bluntly, ‘Hindus is a religion which is not founded on morality’. This is not to say that in Hinduism there is no morality at all but that wherever morality Hinduism has is not an integral part of it, but a separate force which is sustained by social necessities and not by the injunctions of the Hindu religion. On the other hand, he said, ‘The religion of the Buddha is morality. It is true that in Buddhism there is no God. In place of God there is morality. What God is to other religions morality is to Buddhism.’ This means in Buddhism actions are to be performed or not performed, not according to whether they are, or are not, commanded by God, but according to whether they are, or are not, right or wrong or, in Buddhist terms, skilful or unskillful. God’s commands are the infallible scriptures and in the caste of Buddhism it is the Vedas that are the infallible scriptures. The Buddha rejected the Vedas because they enjoin the performance of rituals involving animal sacrifice and because animal sacrifice controversies the principle of non violence or reverence for life.
Shortly after sharing his thoughts on ‘The Buddha and the future of His Religion’ with the readers of the Mahabodhi and trough them with the Buddhists of the world, Ambedkar left for Ceylon. In May 1954 and again in December 1954 he visited Burma. Then after six years after the appearance of the article the day dawned when thinking about Buddhism was transformed into the reality of Buddhism itself.
Bibliography:
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