An Ambedkarite Woman’s Perspectives on Buddhism and Human Rights: An Oral History

Abstract

B.R. Ambedkar, enraged at the discrimination experienced by members of his Mahar caste and other Dalit castes, announced in 1936 that he would not die a Hindu. In 1956, he committed to Buddhism along with hundreds of thousands of other converts. Opposing religious doctrine that divided humanity and denigrated lower castes and women, he promoted the Buddhist idea of maitri or “fellowship.”   

Excerpts from my recorded and transcribed life history of Kumud Pawde, one of this community’s original converts and a prominent intellectual in western India, articulate an Ambedkarite Buddhist conception of religious agency and social justice. Her analysis is intersectional, encompassing caste, class, and gender critiques and the need to overcome different forms of domination in tandem and in community.

Pawde’s conversion, like Ambedkar’s, was unabashedly both a spiritual and political statement in support of the humanity of Dalits and their rights. This synthesis troubled critics of the mass conversion, who perceived any evidence of politics as a strike against the sincerity of conversion, yet rights were central to both Ambedkar’s and Pawde’s Buddhism. In the context of contemporary legislation and litigation about religious freedom in India and around the world, Ambedkar and Pawde’s insights and experiences support the idea that religious freedom must be accompanied by religious equality and religious fraternity.