Sixty-seven years after BR Ambedkar converted to Buddhism, his Navayana Buddhism — the new vehicle — has a small number of adherents in Tamil Nadu that is steadily growing as more people find social and spiritual emancipation in following Ambedkar’s prescription for a society based on equality, fraternity and liberty.
On October 5, when the Ashoka-Ambedkar Dhamma Yatra passed through Chennai on its way to Deekshabhoomi in Nagpur, many of the city’s Buddhists turned out to participate. Dressed in white – the colour Ambedkar asked his followers to wear on the day he embraced Buddhism – they greeted each other with both “Jai Bheem” and “Namo Buddhaya”. The two greetings go hand in hand because it was only because of “Babasaheb” that they found refuge in the Buddha.
Buddhism gave 40-year-old Priya the solace that was denied to her since childhood. “There is a scientific approach in Buddhism. There is no superstition, no need to believe what other people say. In Hinduism, if you do right you will go to heaven, if you do wrong you will go to hell. With Buddhism, if you do something wrong you have to face the consequences, but you can also make things right. You are it. There is no greater power,” she says.
Ambedkar and his Dhamma
Scholars have long argued that the Buddha introduced ethics into the concept of kamma (karma in Sanskrit). Kamma refers both to individual action, and also the system in which souls are trapped in a cycle of rebirth by good or bad actions. Gail Omvedt says in her book Buddhism in India that while Brahminism linked kamma with one’s place in the varna system, Buddha turned it on its head. He radically reinterpreted it to give an individual agency over one’s actions: one’s kamma was not bad if one acted without greed, hatred and delusion. Other scholars describe Buddhism as a psychological religion that gives agency to people and makes salvation (nibbana in Pali) possible in this life.
A post-graduate in computer applications, Priya runs a web design company in Chennai with her husband Surya Kumar Ashoka. (Her husband added Ashoka to his name after they converted). Her upbringing was ‘Hindu’ even though her parents were not very religious. Her father officially converted on December 6, 2015, but her mother still remains Hindu. She and her husband followed suit in 2017 at a vihara in Tyaganoor, Priya’s village in Salem district.
Becoming Buddhist meant rejecting an identity assigned to her as a default and allowed her to choose one that was affirming. “If you say you are Hindu, then the next question is ‘What is your caste?’. Hindus will only look at people from a caste lens. Since childhood I have had the fear that someone will ask what my caste is. Buddhism freed me. I stopped seeing myself as lower when I became Buddhist,” Priya says. Now, she says she feels as if she has a culture that she can call her own.
That culture has been in the making for several years, centuries even, if you look far back enough. But for Chennai’s Buddhists, it centres around spaces that they have created for themselves: sanghas and viharas. One such space is the Ambedkar Manimandapam — Ambedkar memorial — after its inauguration in June 2000. The city’s Ambedkarites claimed it as their own, each engaging with both Ambedkar and Buddha’s ideas both individually and collectively to fundamentally transform their lives.
In the past decade some of them got together to form the Nila Dhamma, a sangha which is unique not only because it is led by women and children but also because its 70-odd members comprise entire families and not individual members of a family as it is in many other sanghas.
“Most of the other sanghas that we know are male-dominated. It is only in our sangha that there are so many children and women who lead,” says Anuradha Chellappa Buddhar — she added Buddhar to her name after she converted. Priya says they know this because when they attended the Boudha Marumalarchi Maanaad held in Guduvancherry around two-three years ago, it was men who dominated things. “It can’t be that only one person makes all the decisions. In Nila Dhamma we all get together and make decisions. Even at home, we make decisions along with the children,” Priya says.
The sangha meets regularly for social and spiritual activities, to celebrate festivals and observe important events in an attempt to build a Buddhist community.
It became important for Anusuya, who works with school dropouts, to have such a community for her children. Her daughters once asked her a question for which she didn’t have an answer. “They asked me what festivals we have if we are Buddhist. We had to do something.”
Anusuya and her husband Mohan Raj, a college teacher, have two daughters aged 14 and 18. Referring to Ambedkar Manimandapam, she said, “We don’t have a place of worship. But Ambedkar is here, and it is built like a vihara with a dome and a Buddha statue, so we gather here. (Having a system of worship) gives us a disciplined structure as a community.”
On Sundays, the women and children gather at the Manimandapam. Often, they read from and discuss Ambedkar’s The Buddha and his Dhamma. On other days, if there’s a festival coming up, the children compose plays and songs with emancipatory themes.
Thaarini, Anusuya’s 14-year-old daughter, says, “We write our own songs and plays about the Buddha and Ambedkar.” She was around six years old when she first went to Deekshabhoomi. Now that she is older, she says she understands the significance of the place. “I’m very happy to see this statue,” Thaarini said, referring to the statue of Ashoka being taken to Nagpur in the Ambedkar-Ashoka yatra. During the Chennai leg of the Ashoka-Dhamma yatra, she and other children of Nila Dhamma walked along behind the statue, enthusiastically raising Buddhist and Ambedkarite slogans.
Today, Nila Dhamma sangha’s members observe several important days and celebrate a number of festivals—some Buddhist, some Ambedkarite, and some Tamil. Priya rattles off the names of festivals they celebrate: Pournami every month (to commemorate the full-moon night when Buddha attained enlightenment), January 1 (Bhima Koregaon anniversary), January 26 (Republic Day), April 14 (Ambedkar Jayanti), Buddha Poornima (in May, believed to be the day Buddha was born), May 20 (Iyothee Thass’ birth anniversary), August 15 (to celebrate freedom from Hinduism and freedom of equality, fraternity and liberty), November 26 (Constitution Day), December 25 (observed as both Women’s Day because Ambedkar burned the Manusmriti which oppresses women and to remember the Kilvenmani massacre).
Other sanghas in Chennai also observe these days to varying degrees. The Pallavamalai Arulnilai Budhar Aalayam in Pallavaram has about 25 members, mostly individuals who are Buddhist but other members of their families are Hindu or Christian. Regardless, they’re all Ambedkarite.
Kirubakaran, a 62-year-old social worker, has been organising study groups and scholarships for children and young adults in his neighbourhood. He and other members of the sangha organise a day-long celebration for Buddha Purnima and invite the families of all the children they work with.
Asked if he had officially converted, Kirubakaran said he felt that he only began learning about the Buddha 10 years ago and needed to learn more. “Learning about the Buddha isn’t so simple. Ambedkar revolutionised the Buddha’s teaching, so for everything, Ambedkar is our leader.” He says that a resident of the area holds meetings every month in the neighbourhood to teach young people about Ambedkar’s ideas.
In Ashok Nagar, for the past 40 years a small group of Ambedkarites has been working with children from poor families to help them study. Seventy-six-year-old Jayaraman started a night school named Annal Ambedkar Mandram in 1967 and renamed it Ambedkar Peravai in 1974.
Jayaraman has been an Ambedkarite since he was around 20 years old. Hailing from Old Town in Cuddalore, Jayaraman worked as a demonstrator in Binny Mills in Perambur. His job was to show new hires how to work the machines. He was arrested in 1969 during a struggle to install a photo of Ambedkar in the state Assembly. In 1992-94, he was part of the movement to reclaim panchami land and was associated with John Thomas and Elumalai. “I went to jail four times. There was an IAS officer called V Karuppan. He was also arrested.”
The Peravai’s premises are little more than a raised platform with a Buddha statue and pictures of Dalit icons and has metal sheets for a roof. Jayaraman says that the government gave them permission to use the land 30 years ago and hopes they can one day set up a trust to run these activities.
The evening that this reporter visited the makeshift building, there were two small groups: young children who had turned up to study under the watchful eyes of the sangha’s members, and a handful of adolescents who were learning painting from Ramakrishna, an art teacher in a government school in Nungambakkam. “It’s not just Dalit children who come here to study. Any child is welcome. We should see everybody as humans,” says Raja, a lawyer and member of the sangha.
Ramakrishna, the art teacher, says that the Peravai observes every Pournami, and Buddha Purnima, and Ambedkar’s birth and death anniversaries.
One of BR Ambedkar’s biographers, Ashok Gopal, notes in his book A Part Apart, that at the third World Fellowship of Buddhists in 1954, Ambedkar outlined steps for the spread of Buddhism. He spoke of a “Buddhist Bible” for those who converted, the need for a sangha that would be dedicated to social service, a simple ceremony for lay people to initiate them into the religion, and a seminary that could train lay preachers who could deliver sermons in viharas and hold worship.
Ambedkar envisioned the Buddhist “gospel” as including the Buddha’s life story, a collection of sayings from the Dhamma, important dialogues of the Buddha from the Pali canon, and lastly, a guide to Buddhist ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage and death, Gopal says. The first three of these, Ambedkar himself provided by writing The Buddha and his Dhamma,which infused personal spirituality and ethics with social emancipation, Gopal says. The text also compares and contrasts the Buddha’s teachings with the ideas in Brahminical texts and differentiates between religion and Dhamma.
As for the fourth aspect of religious life – ceremonies to observe important life events – Tamil Nadu’s Buddhists have devised these for themselves with the help of monks from Sri Lanka. Most Buddhists however, reject the term ‘rituals’ for the ways in which they follow their faith, preferring instead to call them ‘practices’.
“We follow the triratna, the four noble truths, the panchasheela, the eight-fold path, we read The Buddha and his Dhamma,” Anusuya says. She was taught these practices by a dhammachari, or lay preacher.
Sampath Kumar (63) is a dhammachari who has been travelling all over Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh for the past 10 years. An employee of the postal department in Walajabad, Sampath was trained by a Sri Lankan monk named Ratanapala who headed the Maha Bodhi Society in Egmore 40 years ago. It was Ratanapala who compiled a prayer booklet of sorts, photocopies of which are now used by people in Tamil Nadu. Written in the Tamil script, the booklet contains prayers and suttas (verses from the Pali texts) about incidents from the Buddha’s life, such as his encounter with Angulimaal, says Sampath.
“The triratna, panchasheela, Buddha Vandanam… they are handrails (that guide us). Without such guides, how can we live? We pray, but we don’t do any rituals,” he says.
Some Buddhists in Tamil Nadu are demanding a separate law for Buddhists which will give them statutory protection. When the Ashoka-Ambedkar Dhamma yatra passed through Chennai, this demand was discussed during the public meeting held at the South India Buddhist Vihara in Perambur. One of the key people pushing for a Dhamma Act is author and advocate AB Karl Marx Siddharthar.
In tracing their journey towards Buddhism nearly everyone laid claim to a Buddhist past that was twisted and erased by caste Hindus, echoing views put forward by Iyothee Thass, a Siddha practitioner from Chennai and later by Ambedkar.
Sampath Kumar says Dalits are descended from the “Sakya vamsa” and the “Naga kula”. “We were Buddhists. Hinduism was forced on us and our identity was given a different colour by Brahmins.”
In his book The Untouchables: Who were they? And Why They Became Untouchables, Ambedkar argues that two different groups of people were made “untouchable” by different historical and social processes. He calls one group the Broken People, the survivors of social groups which were defeated by other social groups; and the second group were Buddhists who resisted the varna system. He also argued that the Naga people mentioned in the Vedas were the same as Dravidian people. He cites evidence from the Mahar community in Maharashtra, Sanskrit texts, and information collected by the Census of 1910, which counted Hindus under three categories: Hindus, animists and tribals, and the Depressed Classes or untouchables.
Jayaraman of Ambedkar Peravai, who officially changed his religion in 2011, says, “We were Buddhist, but we were made Hindus. Now we are Buddhist again. We should be counted… they should know how many of us are there.”
The scholar D Ravikumar notes in his introduction to the book Dalits in Dravidian Land that according to Iyothee Thass, a Siddha practitioner from the Paraiyar caste, Dalits were Buddhists who refused to accept the authority of the Brahmins. Thass said that the Buddhists became the “other” because they continued to speak up (paraayar) against the Brahmins and drove them away from their settlements by chasing them with pots of dung-water. Ravikumar says that Thass’ views were not baseless, citing an account by a Brahmin who was similarly driven away from the para-cheri in 1925.
Ravikumar also cites linguistic and other evidence in support of the view that Pallars (another Dalit caste who today prefer to call themselves devendrakula vellalar) and Arunthatiyars (also a Dalit community) were also Buddhists in the past.
He also quotes Bavuthamum Tamizhum by Venkatasamy who says that Buddha was known by many localised Tamil names such as Ayyan, Saattan, Muneeswaran, Arugan, Dharman, Dharmaraja, and Satavahanan. Many scholars say that these temples still exist, but have been co-opted into the Hindu pantheon. Indeed, last year the Madras High Court ruled that a temple in Salem district was in fact a Buddhist shrine.
The women of the Nila Dhamma talked about the co-option of village deities such as Selli, Maari, Peechiamman, and Isakiamman, and Muppidaadi into the Hindu fold. “They were all bhikkunis who healed people. A lot of the rituals in these shrines are still the old ones but done by others,” says Thaaragai, an 18-year-old law student.
Priya, who has visited the Selliamman shrine in her village since she was a child, says, “I still go there because I see her as a bhikkuni, even though I don’t participate (in rituals and celebrations).”
Sangeetha, also of Nila Dhamma, said that the Muppidaadi deity in her village Kalidayikurichi in Tirunelveli district is a female one, and her name means “one who is knowledgeable in the Tipitakas (Literally, the three baskets. But the term refers to the three major sets of the earliest Pali texts, which are considered to be the word of the Buddha: the Vinaya Pitaka, Sutta Pitaka, and Abhidhamma Pitaka).
Iyothee Thass’ role in reviving Buddhism in Tamil Nadu has been the object of much research since the 1990s. Many scholars and observers argue that the non-Brahmin movement supplanted the Buddhist movement started by Thass. The last couple of decades however have seen a resurgence of Buddhist activity.
“In the 1990s, in the wake of Dr Ambedkar’s centenary celebrations, a new Dalit assertion emerged which eventually led to a Buddhist revival. Dalit intellectuals and the lay Buddhists considered it only a political movement to fight against caste. But now, changes are happening for good,” says Jeyarani, a Chennai-based senior journalist.
One of those changes includes the Tamil magazine that she edits: Bodhi Murasu. It was started by the Boudha Sanga Trust founded by Buddhist scholar ORN Krishnan and Dalit activist Thangavayal Vanidasan. “The objective of the trust is to spread the Dhamma and undertake welfare activities for those who need it,” she says.
In 2014, the Trust started Bodhi Murasu with ORN Krishnan as its editor. “People somehow convert to Buddhism but they don’t know how to live as Buddhist. Many people think that Buddhism is a weapon to fight against caste. It is true that as a Buddhist one must stand against all oppression but the main objective of a Buddhist is to live a life of morality and purify the mind, become humane and compassionate. Bothi Murasu aims to show and spread the way,” Jeyarani says. Bodhi Murasu is a subscription-only magazine with 2000 copies.
On the day that this reporter met members of the Nila Dhamma, Priya had a copy of Bodhi Murasu. It contained articles on the importance of Pournami, the emperor Ashoka, stories from the Pali canon about the Buddha’s disciples Sariputta and Mogallana, verses from Thirukkural and Manimekalai, articles about vipassana meditation and stories about Buddhist revival rallies held recently in Delhi and Varanasi.
The magazine’s contents reflect the intellectual influences on its editor. Jeyarani took over as its editor at the start of the year. For her, Buddhism is basically “a religion of rationalists” and she admires both Periyar and Ambedkar.
After having spent two decades as a journalist and reporting on caste, at some point, she got “tired of describing and writing about these atrocities”. “I wrote about caste violence for the first time at the age of 21, and I was deeply depressed when I realised that the situation in society was the same or worse in my 40s,” she says.
When she was reporting on an atrocity in Sivagangai district, Jeyarani was also studying for a masters in psychology. “I came to understand that caste hatred is instilled in childhood and is passed down through generations.”
It was in that context that she paid attention to Ambedkar and Periyar’s advocacy that Buddhism and conversion were the solution. “I don’t want to use Buddhism just for my intellectual development or entertainment. I sincerely wanted a medicine that could treat the psychological illness — the caste hatred towards fellow humans — that Indians suffer from and I found it in Buddhism and Dhamma,” she says.
A deep engagement with Buddhism changed her relationship with journalism too and she could no longer continue as she did before. “Politics is asking others to change and expecting change from the outside. Those who have not abolished caste within are the ones talking about abolition of caste without. In my 23 years of fieldwork as a journalist, I have seen many such people. But Buddhism primarily emphasises correcting one’s own faults. I like this characteristic of Buddhism because I now focus on solutions rather than problems,” she says.
Bharathi Prabhu, the head of the Buddhist Fraternity Council which is the force behind the Ashoka-Ambekdar Dhamma yatra, also now feels similarly. “We don’t want to talk about what people did to us (atrocities). We want to talk about what we want to do. We need to create awareness first, that India is the land of the Buddha, that the temples you worship in are Buddhist. Official conversion does not matter. Ambedkar and the Dhamma are the centre point of Buddhism in India. Change takes time, but you have to work for it.”
Does an Ambedkarite Buddhism have any takers other than Dalits in Tamil Nadu? According to members of the Nila Sangha, the answer is yes. “We have seen people change because of the time they spend with us. They see the way we do things, what we teach our kids, how we let them learn on their own without (dictating to them),” says Anuradha.
Thaaragai, the law student, says that one of her non-Dalit friends, a young man whom she addresses as “brother” has changed. “When he goes back to his village, he sees what his family is like and questions it.”
But for Pradanya and her mother, Ambedkar and his Dhamma have had a profound impact. She met her husband Siddharth Das, a journalist, through Facebook. “It was much later I realised that he is SC. I am MBC. My family practises untouchability, but out of affection for me, they agreed to us getting married,” says the 31-year-old homemaker.
The couple got married in 2017 in a ceremony organised by Nila Dhamma, which has organised about 40 Buddhist weddings so far. “My mother is a widow and she was very happy that she was asked to participate. My husband designed the taali. The pendant is shaped like a banyan leaf with a Dhamma chakra within it. There was no Brahmin priest, no homam. We exchanged vows, promised that through good or bad, we would be there for each other. Guests threw nellu (paddy with the husk) on us as part of the ceremony because it can still be planted. It will not go waste like rice,” she says.
Reading Ambedkar and engaging with Buddhism has completely changed not just her outlook on life but also the way she relates to people. “When I was young I was told that we were not supposed to associate with Dalits. There were a lot of rules for girls in my house. There were things I could do, and things I could not. All I knew before was school, work and home. Now, I talk to people, differentiate between people who motivate us and those who pull us down. I can differentiate between what is right and wrong. That’s what Buddhism is,” she says.
Nila Dhamma has also been a part of the change she sees in herself. “I have no blood relations with any of them,” she says, pointing to the women around her. “But the way they make me feel, the affection they have for me… I don’t feel that with my own family.” She says that she will not raise her twin daughters the way she was raised. She will let them try things on their own and use their own reasoning and judgement to learn things.
Nearly everyone who spoke for this story believes that change is possible. Anusuya’s words, referring to what is said to be the Buddha’s last message before he died, best explain this belief: “Buddha is not a god for us like he is for other Buddhists. Buddha told us to do what we think is right. He said, ‘Be a lamp unto yourself’.”
Anisha Sheth is a freelance journalist based in Chennai.