Locating Ambedkar in the Buddhist Tradition

Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar is a figure of monumental importance in the history of modern India. Inside India he is perhaps the single most well-known and revered social justice figure for the oppressed classes in Indian history. It is quite difficult to overstate the influence of his life and work, and yet, curiously, his profile remains largely provincial. When those outside of India do recognize his name, it is often in terms of his role in drafting the Indian constitution and have little awareness of his status as a religious icon in the Ambedkarite Buddhist tradition. In the imagination of religious studies scholars in the Euro-American academy, Ambedkar's role as a 20th century Indian model of religious action is completely obscured by Mahatma Gandhi’s shadow.

What can account for this oversight in the Euro-American religious studies literature? Why has a significant place for Ambedkar not been made in the fields of Buddhist studies, religious ethics, and comparative religions? In this paper, I offer two potentially fruitful approaches to making sense of the above questions. First, I look at the way in which Buddhism has been received and imagined in the Euro-America mind as one potential important axis for exploration and then shift gears to explore, in a related way, the ways in which domination and caste dynamics in the South Asian setting have created the conditions for the relative invisibility of Ambedkar in Western academic and popular imaginations about Buddhism.