Rallying to Freedom
From Delhi Vishvapani gives an eye witness account of a new wave of mass conversions to Buddhism — and the clashes of culture, character and politics behind the event.
Udit Raj exudes a sense of power that indicates he’s accustomed to being in charge. He is good-looking, charismatic, intelligent. He was also angry when he came to my hotel room the day I arrived in Delhi. It was also the day before the mass conversion ceremony that had brought me to the city, when thousands of Dalits — people once considered ‘Untouchables’ under the Hindu caste system — were to become Buddhists. Quickly!
he shouted, and he hurried my friend Amogabhadra and I out of the hotel and into a waiting car. It was a government hotel, and Raj is a leader of low-caste government workers. Staff gazed disbelieving as we walked through the lobby. He is our leader!
one of them later told me reverentially. The next day I was put in a much better room.
I squeezed into the back seat, with Raj and two others, all of whom had mobile phones that rang constantly. Delhi’s traffic is crazy at the best of times, but we were screeching at speed through the three-wheelers, bicycles and clapped-out Ambassadors. Raj barked into his cell phone, mostly in Hindi, sometimes in English, and I tried to piece together what was happening. Eventually he turned to me and explained:
I’m underground. Yesterday the government banned the conversion ceremony we have been planning for all these months because they say so many people converting to Buddhism will threaten public order. The venue, Ramlila ground, is barricaded and guarded by armed police. Outside Delhi they are turning back buses and trains that are bringing our people to the city. So we have been staying at Ambedkar Bhavan [headquarters of the Buddhist Society of India] because we think they might arrest me to stop the ceremony. This is my one trip out: to meet you.
Will the conversions go ahead?
I asked. Oh, yes. We will conduct the ceremony at Ambedkar Bhavan. And if we can’t do it there we will do it on the roadside, in parks, anywhere. They can’t stop us.
At Ambedkar Bhavan Raj jumped out and was immediately surrounded by a scrum of cameras and chanting supporters. He told reporters, This is an outrage against freedom of religion. The government is flouting the constitution because they are afraid. This is the end of the Hindu Samaj!
Indicating a bhikkhu beside him, Raj said, This is Buddhapriya, who will be conducting the ceremony.
I was in front of Raj, snapping away in reporter mode. He pointed at me: And this is Vishvapani, who will also be conducting the ceremony.
What had I got myself into?
For six months rumours had been circulating that something big was stirring among India’s Buddhists — and that Raj (aged 47) was at the heart of it. I had received a letter proclaiming that One million Dalits will convert to Buddhism
.
The ceremony was to be in Delhi and the date set was 14th October 2001 — the 45th anniversary of the first historic mass conversion rally led by the legendary Dr Ambedkar. From that seed has grown India’s community of eight million Buddhists, but was there now a second wave of conversions? I heard reports that thousands, perhaps even millions, were preparing to convert in the Indian states of Kerala and Orissa, and the Punjab. At the centre of this new movement was the Delhi rally (deferred now to November 4th) with Ram Raj its convenor.
Westerners can struggle to take mass conversions seriously. Perhaps this reveals a western assumption that religion is an individual affair concerned with a private ‘inner life’. In India life is understood in more communal and collective terms. These conversions are very serious. Dalits’ position within Hinduism defined their spiritual as well as their social status. Many converts described feeling as if they had been reborn into new lives in which they could follow the liberating and affirming teachings of the Buddha.
At Ambedkar Bhavan I had no chance to tell Raj that I was not in a position to take a leading role in the ceremony. I had a tourist visa and, as a newcomer to India, could not risk involving my organisation in conflict with the government. Above all we needed to understand him and his movement far better. When Raj turned away I found that for a few minutes I was a celebrity. A gaggle of boys wanted my autograph, and one old man asked me who my teacher was.
Sangharakshita
, I replied. Ah, Sangharakshita!
he said, a wide smile spreading across his cracked face. Sangharakshita is a great teacher! I heard him in Bombay, many years ago.
This was the root of my connection with India’s ‘new’ Buddhists.
Sangharakshita was an English bhikkhu living in India at the time of the first conversions in 1956. Dr Ambedkar had consulted him before his historic decision and, when he died just six weeks after converting, Sangharakshita was one of the very few teachers who could step into the breach and try to keep the new movement on track. In 1979 members of the Western Buddhist Order (which Sangharakshita had founded when he returned to the West) started Dhamma activities in Pune in western India and these have grown into a substantial and thriving movement known as TBMSG.
Being a member of the same Order as many Dalit Buddhists creates a deep and mysterious connection. So when I heard about a second wave of conversions I was interested and wanted to help. I was able to stimulate media coverage of the rally in the uk and on the BBC’s international services, and I decided to attend. The Dalits need help. India’s caste prejudice is a serious issue of human rights and injustice comparable to apartheid. But caste affects far greater numbers than apartheid and is underpinned by a religious sanction. In the villages, where most Indians still live, Dalits often have to live separately and do the worst jobs. Many murders and rapes of Dalits are committed, and these tend to go unpunished, especially in the country’s more lawless north. However, the issue of caste is little known in western countries and even western Buddhists are little better informed. Casteism is less visible to outsiders than racism, and Indians argue that it is a thing of the past since caste discrimination was made illegal under India’s post-Independence constitution, which Ambedkar framed.
It is true that Dalits have made some progress since Independence, particularly through the help of the ‘Reservations System’, an affirmative action programme that reserves a proportion of government jobs for Dalits and other disadvantaged groups. This offers a ladder out of poverty for talented and fortunate members of the community, and the beneficiaries have become its leaders, a new Dalit middle class. But India is changing. Socialist provisions are under pressure from free market philosophies, and resurgent Hinduism is challenging post-Independence secularism.
The nationalist Hindu BJP currently forms India’s government, and beyond it are powerful, radical Hindu supremacist groups, such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). Their principal target has been Indian Muslims, but caste is also an issue. The BJP has started privatising government services, taking them out of the sphere covered by Reservations, and instituted a Constitutional Review to reconsider the system in the public sector itself. Many Dalits fear these changes will remove their slender hold on social advancement and that without legislative protection Brahmin-dominated organisations will give them short shrift.
That’s where Raj came in. A senior officer in the Inland Revenue Service, he formed an organisation in 1997 representing Dalit government employees that held a series of rallies that attracted several hundred thousand people. But government policy was unaffected. In 2000, with a kind of despairing defiance, Raj called on Dalits to quit Hinduism. He was following the example of Dr Ambedkar, who declared in 1935: I was born a Hindu; I had no choice. But I will not die a Hindu because I do have a choice.
The choice of Buddhism as the alternative to Hinduism is due to Dr Ambedkar, whose prestige and influence among Dalits can hardly be overstated even 45 years after his death. Buddhists from outside India naturally ask whether Ambedkarite Buddhism is really a political tool, but it is wrong to dismiss it. In India it seems scarcely possible to separate religion and politics: religion defines identity.
The question of whether the converts are positively choosing Buddhism or simply leaving Hinduism is important none the less, because what happens after conversion depends upon the answer. Dr Ambedkar urged his followers to practise their new religion, claiming that the dignity and self-reliance it offered are the true antidotes to one of the worst consequences of caste: that Dalits tend to share the Brahmins’ low view of themselves.
Few Buddhists outside India have helped the Dalits. TBMSG tries to offer coherent, serious Dhamma training on a large scale with, as far as I can see, a good deal of success. But few others are doing the same. When I met Raj a week after the conversions he complained bitterly of this failure. We sent 200 letters to Buddhists around the world and received just two responses.
One of these was from me.
Tibetans, India’s other prominent Buddhist community, cannot get involved as they are refugees, and the Dalai Lama maintains that people should remain within the religion of their birth. Raj is also mistrusted by many Dalit leaders who express concern that he is building a political power base by co-opting Dr Ambedkar’s prestige.
The only significant help for Raj came from leaders of India’s 24 million Christians, who declared solidarity with the Dalits, while the international Christian media used its considerable resources to promote the November 4th event. But Christian support is not disinterested. Because Buddhism is an indigenous religion, it cannot be attacked for nationalist reasons, whereas churches are often attacked by Hindu extremists and missionary work is restricted. So in return for Christian support Dalit leaders expressed their willingness for Dalits to become Christians.
We are alone
, Raj told me. And we will continue alone as long as we have to.
But Raj’s Christian connections gave his enemies a weapon. In the days before the conversions, when Hindu nationalists were frantically trying to prevent them, the VHP claimed there was a conversion ‘conspiracy’ by western Christian organisations under the guise of a Buddhist event and its web site called for ‘volunteers’ to disrupt the Dalit rally. Raj issued vehement denials and called on the President to uphold the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, and to protect rally participants.
Amid rising fears of violence, Delhi police banned the rally. Police imposed a de facto state of emergency in the surrounding states, prevented many Dalits travelling to Delhi. Raj claimed that police turned back 350,000 people, by force and with reports that the rally was cancelled. Raj declared, If, as police fear, violence breaks out, it will be the responsibility of the government.... If the police shoot, we’ll take the bullets.
That is what I had got myself into.
On November 4th I attended the rally, still unsure of what awaited me. I was accompanied by several other Order members, all of whom urged me not to get on the platform. So I stood at the back even after the announcement, Will Bhante Vishwapani please come to the podium?
My fellow Order members formed a phalanx to conceal me. It was a galling moment. History was being made and I was skulking at the back. But this was due to communication failure and the chaos that surrounded the event. I had no choice.
Ambedkar Bhavan was thronged now by thousands of people who chanted slogans and punched the air. What was Dr Ambedkar’s dying wish?
Amogabhadra translated the chant, That we embrace Buddhism!
came the reply. The atmosphere was far more political than religious. Outside the ground lines of baton-wielding, khaki-clad police barred the road leading to the compound. They were not facing out to prevent disruption, but inwards, towards the Buddhists.
The Times of India reported that 50,000 attended, the BBC reported 60,000 and the espl tv channels said 100,000. I find these figures hard to credit. But adding these to the people who had been turned back, Raj was able to claim the magic million had been reached.
It’s hard to know what the ceremony meant for those who attended. Many were Buddhists already, and others were there for solely political reasons. One man had told me he’d be attending but that he was still a Hindu. Of course I am. These are the Gods I love!
He added that he did not think the event was really a conversion, It’s just a diksa.
He used the word I’d always heard translated as ‘conversion’, but for him it simply meant a ‘ceremony’.
When the rally took place Buddhapriya led Raj and then the rest of the crowd in reciting the Refuges and Precepts, by which one commits oneself to the Buddhist path. Raj was tonsured, and surrounded by his family. Then he led the crowd in reciting the 22 vows that Dr Ambedkar had instituted at his conversion, which enjoin an unambiguous repudiation of Hinduism: We do not recognise Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh [Shiva], nor will we worship them ... nor Rama and Krishna ... nor other Hindu Gods ... nor allow any religious rites to be performed by any Brahmin priests.... We firmly believe that only Buddhism is Saddhamma [the truth] ... [And] will hereafter lead life according to the teachings of the Buddha.
It is easy to dismiss the conversions as mere politics. That is the favoured tactic of both Hindu and Dalit opponents. For the time being Raj has focused his considerable energy on stimulating conversions, but I wonder if he has looked beyond them to consider how these new Buddhists will practise their religion.
In TBMSG centres, however, I saw that it can become something of real substance. I stayed for a week in the house of Shantisil, an old man recently ordained into my Order. I never went to school, but I always learnt songs,
he said. As a Buddhist I sang Buddhist songs. But I did not understand their meaning. When I met our movement it was as if my life started anew. I have travelled to many towns and villages and sung Buddhist songs to the people, knowing that I am also practising the teachings they describe. And I ask others to do the same. Singing is my way to share the Dhamma.
In many Dalit faces one sees that Buddhism represents hope, an escape from ‘the hell of caste’. These are powerful motivations, with the potential to unleash potent forces. Beneath the events I witnessed in Delhi are tectonic shifts in India itself. The rigid stratifications of caste are a way — albeit an unjust one — of organising a traditional society that values stability and in which people do not question their place.
Yet modernity has disrupted all of this. Educated Dalits (of whom Ambedkar with his training in law and economics was exemplary) see that they need not accept their lot. Hinduism, they come to consider, has offered the 200 million Dalits only inferior status and opprobrium. Beyond the Dalits are another 500 million low-caste Hindus, who also have many reasons to resent Hinduism, and putting these communities together there is potential for a massive religious realignment in India.
This is only the beginning,
Raj told me. Tens of millions will become Buddhists! Hundreds of millions! Hindus are afraid because they know they are losing their power. That is why they tried to ban our rally.
Was this rhetoric or prophecy, delusion or prediction? And will this new movement be Buddhist in more than just name? Can it avoid the factionalism that has beset the Buddhist followers of Ambedkar for two generations? I do not know. But that day in Delhi I felt the plates shifting beneath my feet.