Organizer: Christopher Queen, Harvard University
Chair: Tara Doyle, Harvard University
Discussant: Gananath Obeyesekere, Princeton University
October 14, 1956, the date of the conversion of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (1891-1956) and his wife from Hinduism to Buddhism, marks the return of Buddhism to India after more than a millennium of decline and virtual extinction. Ambedkar, the leader of India's Untouchables in the years leading up to Independence, and the law minister and principal draftsman of the Indian Constitution under Jawaharlal Nehru, had vowed in 1936 to seek a religion that offered "liberty, equality, and fraternity" and that did not justify class warfare and economic oppression. On the day following Ambedkar's refuge taking in 1956, nearly a half million members of various Untouchable communities, who had journeyed to Nagpur in central India for the occasion, also embraced Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha.
In the years since these events, the new Buddhist movement has grown in numbers and character, spawning literary and political expressions in Maharashtra and elsewhere. This panel will explore four aspects of the legacy of Ambedkar: the ideological underpinnings of Ambedkar's Buddhism, suggested by his personal library and collected writings; the iconography of the movement, reflected in Ambedkar's use of print design and statuary; new genres of Buddhist literature, including poetry, novels, histories, and translations of Western scholarship; and recent political campaigns for the recovery of Buddhist control of the pilgrimage site at Bodh Gaya. Each paper will address the issues of continuity and change in the reemergence of Indian Buddhism.
Christopher Queen, Harvard University
Early critics of Ambedkar's The Buddha and His Dhamma charged that "Ambedkar and His Dhamma" would have been a better description of the radical refashioning of canonical materials in the Untouchable leader's last work. Others, including the noted scholar, Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, have defended the work as a creative interpretation that respects the spirit of Theravada legend and precept.
With the republication of all of Ambedkar's principal writings and speeches by the Government of Maharashtra in recent years, it is now possible to study the evolution of his thinking in many areas, including Buddhism. In addition to these works, the present paper examines the system of coded annotations and interlinear notes Ambedkar used to mark his own, extensive collection of works on Buddhism and social thought. As part of a personal library numbering more than 20,000 volumes (now partly housed at Siddharth College in Bombay), Ambedkar's books give us insight into his scholarly method and contemporary influences on his thought.
We will approach the debate on Ambedkar's Buddhism from three angles: (a) in the context of his earlier writings on religion and culture, (b) in the context of the European and American secondary sources upon which he relied in his historical and literary reconstructions, and (c) in the light of his emerging hermeneutic of liberation, i.e., the application of the criterion of social uplift to the selection and glossing of materials at his disposal. The outcome is the formulation of a new Buddhism with local and universal implications.
Gary M. Tartakov, Iowa State University
By the time of his public conversion to Buddhism in 1956, B. R. Ambedkar already had a long involvement in the absorption of previous Buddhist lore and the development of his own. As early as 1948 Ambedkar was responsible for the republication of P. Lakshmi Narasu's Essence of Buddhism. The following eight years saw him proceed to dedicate and even to design Buddhist imagery. Among his visual creations are the graphic layout and decoration of his major text, The Buddha and His Dhamma, and an image of the Buddha.
Analysis of Ambedkar's Buddha image and evidence about the process of its creation offer us insights on two important levels. The first is specific and personal to Ambedkar's approach to the development of his New Path, in terms of the manner in which he drew on previous traditions. The second is more general, offering us a ground for reconsidering our interpretation of traditional imagery and such issues as the Western controversy over the supposed Gandharan and Indian origins of the Buddha image.
Eleanor Zelliot, Carlton College
The converts to Buddhism in the post 1956 Ambedkar movement have begun to produce Buddhist literature in some quantity. There is much folk literature now and many popular songs, but there are also three fields in which educated Buddhists write: Belle Lettres (chiefly poetry and a few biographical novels of the Buddha or Yashodhara); histories of Buddhism (most recently, regional histories of Kashmir and Gujarat); and translations into Marathi of either Buddhist or western works.
My paper will analyze the symbols of the Belle Lettres, the rationale behind the historical writing (often not by historians), and the kind of western or Pali work which is translated in an effort to describe the intellectual content of the contemporary movement.
Tara Doyle, Harvard University
This paper investigates a series of recent campaigns (1991-present) mounted by several Buddhist groups in Maharashtra concerning the present management and use of the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, conventionally held to be the site of the Buddha's enlightenment. These Untouchable converts are challenging the presence of Hindus on the Temple's management committee and demanding that this body be composed solely of Indian Buddhists. They are also insisting that a small Hindu complex, situated directly in front of the Mahabodhi Temple and under the jurisdiction of a local Shaiva monastery, either be reconverted to a Buddhist complex or moved outside the Mahabodhi grounds.
These campaigns, which have involved marches, demonstrations, and a considerable amount of political jockeying in Maharashtra, Delhi, and Bihar, will be investigated in light of previous disputes concerning the jurisdiction of the Mahabodhi Temple, contemporary Indian politics (both regional and national), and the recent use of religious sites as foci for political activity and debate.
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