“Dr Ambedkar’s Buddhist movement is, I believe, the best hope for Buddhism in the world today”

An Interview with Dhammachari Subhuti

By Anoop Kumar

Dhammachari Subhuti, a British born, is an ordained member of International Buddhist order known as Friends of Western Buddhist Order (FWBO). This order was founded in London in 1967 by another British Buddhist monk known as Urgyen Sangharakshita to promote Buddhism in the West. Highly impressed by Babasaheb Ambedkar’s interpretation of Buddhism and its role in contemporary times, this Buddhist Order has been working with Indian Buddhists from ex-untouchable communities since last thirty years through its Indian wing known as Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangha Sahayak Gana (TBMSG).  However, recently the Order has been renamed as the Triratna Buddhist Order (Triratna Bauddha Mahasangha) and the wider movement is called the Friends of the Triratna Buddhist Order or Triratna Bauddha Mahasangha Sahayak Gana in Hindi (TBMSG).

TBMSG has been working for the last thirty years in Maharashtra, and in some other states too, among the Dalits who have embraced Buddhism following in the footsteps of Babasaheb Ambedkar. How did your association with Ambedkarite Buddhism and Dalits begin?

Though our Indian wing was formed in 1979 as Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangha Sahayaka Gana, but our relationship with Dr Ambedkar and his Buddhist followers goes long back, even before the time of Babasaheb’s conversion to Buddhism in 1956.

Urgyen Sangharakshita, our teacher and the founder of TBMSG, although he was born in England, was at that time living in Kalimpong in West Bengal, where he had settled after his ordination as a bhikkhu. He first encountered Dr Ambedkar in 1950, when he read ‘The Buddha and the Future of His Religion’ in the Mahabodhi Journal.

Impressed by Dr. Ambedkar’s vision of bringing revolutionary social changes in India through the revival of Buddhism, Sangharakshita met him in Bombay as soon as he could. He found that he shared Babasaheb’s vision of Dhamma as socially relevant, as well as his strong objection to the domination by caste Hindus of the Mahabodhi Society, which was then the principal Buddhist organisation in India.

Unfortunately Babasaheb died soon after his conversion, leaving incomplete his mission to take the Buddha’s teaching to the entire country. Sangharakshita remained in India for a few more years, especially working with Babasaheb’s Buddhist followers, mainly in Maharashtra. In 1964 he returned to England and, finding that there was a growing interest in Buddhism in the West, three years later founded the TBMSG (then FWBO). However he always kept in touch with his friends and disciples among the Buddhists of India.

TBMSG was formally initiated in India in 1979. What were the immediate reasons?

In 1979, a close friend of mine and fellow member of our order, Dhammachari Lokamitra, came to India to practise yoga with Mr. Iyengar and made contact with many of Sangharakshita‘s old Buddhist friends, especially in Pune.

During his visit, he was invited to the Diksha Bhoomi in Nagpur on 14th October. There he witnessed the huge gathering of Buddhists commemorating Babasaheb’s conversion to Buddhism. He was very much inspired by the devotion and enthusiasm both for Babasaheb and for the Buddha that he saw among ordinary Dalits and he identified immediately with their quest for a revolutionary change in Indian society through the Buddha-Dhamma.

Lokamitra says that from that moment he felt clearly that he had no choice. He returned to England, closed his affairs there, and came back to India, starting work immediately with Ambedkarite Buddhists in Maharashtra, laying the foundations of TBMSG in Pune – an Indian Buddhist organisation committed to Babasaheb’s vision of Buddha-Dhamma, yet part of an international Buddhist movement.

Thanks for giving us the background of TBMSG. But prior to that how was the Buddhist mobilisation in India? What was the scene then with respect to Ambedkarite Buddhism?

The general impression that I have of those times before TBMSG started, and it is not a first hand impression, is that people were very loyal to Babasaheb and felt strongly about him and his mission. They were very proud of being Buddhist, however most knew relatively little about the Dhamma. The movement’s main focus was on socio-political activism, but the Dhamma side of it was not developed much.

Many people wanted deeper understanding of Dhamma and its practice, but they did not have much effective guidance. It seems that there were not many genuine Dhamma opportunities for Ambedkarite Buddhists, in the sense of organised Dhamma training and practice, and teachers and organisations dedicated to specifically Dhamma activities.

The coming of Lokamitra and the formation of TBMSG was therefore very much welcomed and appreciated by many. That is the impression I got when I started my own connection with the Ambedkarite movement from 1985 onwards.

What were the initial activities of TBMSG in India?

We started with Dhamma talks, meditation classes, and retreats. The retreats were especially important because they gave people the opportunity to taste the Dhamma quite deeply. People would go away for a weekend, a week, and even two weeks and meditate together, listen to and discuss the Dhamma, and develop friendships with one another on the basis of their commitment to the Dhamma.

This last point, the development of spiritual friendship, is perhaps the most important thing we did to begin with. The deep significance of friendship in human life in general and Dhamma life in particular is one of our key teachings in TBMSG, and we think that Buddhist organisations need to pay much more attention to developing positive human relationships.

During the 70s, in Maharashtra, there was a lot of churning and agitation going on. Dalit Panthers had already left their mark. There were cases of brutal caste repression happening all around, the discrimination was still acute. There was complete lack of opportunities for the Dalits in every sphere. In such an environment, Lokamitra, or for that matter any Buddhist organisation, would have found it difficult to even talk about Dhamma. What were the strategies adopted by the TBMSG then?

We started quite late in the 70s, rather you can say in the early 80s. Nonetheless you are right. Even as late as 1985, when I came to India for the first time, the atmosphere among Buddhists was strongly influenced by those agitations and one was very much aware of many atrocities happening against Dalits in Maharashtra and elsewhere.

What we have always emphasised in TBMSG is Babasaheb’s recognition of the need for a change in consciousness, individual and collective, for a deep change in social and cultural attitudes, if there is to be a real change in society – a real move towards genuine liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Though we never neglect the role of political and social activism through protests and agitations against any discrimination, we believe our main efforts need to be focused on bringing a change in the fundamental attitudes of people; and the Dhamma, as Babasaheb saw it, is the principal way to bring that about.

We found from the start that many people quickly understood this point when it was put to them clearly enough. However, we realised early on that we had to do something to help people with their social and economic problems, alongside our work of teaching the Dhamma.

Our motivation was partly a spontaneous response to the difficulties that we saw people faced around us – it would be inhuman to witness such injustice and not doing anything about it; and partly we wanted to show the power of Dhamma to change people’s life in many basic ways.

So, two other members of our Buddhist order came here from England - a doctor and a nurse. They set up a primary health care project among Dalit Buddhists in the Pune slums. They soon discovered that many children died because they got dysentery and parents did not know how to replace the salt and vitamins they lost. We were able to make some impact just by providing simple oral rehydration.

Later we also started many balwadis, as both parents usually went to work and children were left behind more or less on their own. At least we could give them some basic stimulation and education and two good meals a day.

In the end, however, we have stuck mainly to our primary emphasis. Although TBMSG is strictly non-party-political, we know that politics is necessary - but we leave that to others. We do our social work also to a limited extent, but we know that it is not our major contribution.

Our major contribution is to try to bring the practice of the Dhamma into the lives of ordinary men and women. We are trying to show that the Buddha-Dhamma is directly relevant to the situation that people face every day and that it will help them to live a happier and more successful life and to overcome the severe disadvantages from which they have suffered.

We also try to communicate that the Dhamma is the best basis for a new society in India, as Babasaheb taught us. Babasaheb refused violent revolution, although he could easily have started one: he believed that what India needed was a revolution based on the Dhamma. That is what we try to communicate and that is what we serve. We want to continue the Dhamma Revolution Babasaheb launched in India.

It is now for more than half a century that Dalits are embracing Buddhism to break free from caste manacles. Fifty years of Ambedkarite Buddhism is a good enough time to reflect, to see where we are heading towards and the challenges that need to be overcome in order to have desired impact. According to you, what are challenges before Ambedkarite Buddhism?

There are many. I think the first one is to take Buddhism outside one Dalit community and one state. Babasaheb’s Buddhism has been largely confined for the last 50 years to Maharashtra and ex-Mahars. There is a strong need to take it to Dalits everywhere in the country if we are serious about the socio-cultural revolution that Babasaheb envisaged.

The second challenge is to overcome internal aspects of caste conditioning. This is a subject that interests me very much. I am from England and have become well aware of my own cultural conditioning, especially since spending time in India. We have a class system; we have there a history of racism too. Coming from that society, these are in me also and I have to work on them.

The same thing goes here. People have various kinds of conditioning that come with caste-ridden Indian society. Every Indian learns caste with their mother’s milk. So the general conditioning of caste every Indian has is quite a challenge for us to work with.

But there is special conditioning that people, who come from a Dalit background, from the bottom of the socio-economic heap, have, like lack of confidence, resentment that can’t be expressed directly and so comes out within the community rather than towards the oppressors, a sense of inferiority in relation to others socially and so on. All of this has to be worked upon.

Caste is so complex, so deep, and so protean - it is constantly changing and adapting to new politico-economic circumstances. I say it is like a chameleon in its constant adjustments. This poses a great challenge for all of us because it is deeply buried in the mind of India and re-emerges in new forms whenever the situation changes. Even when people convert to Buddhism, they bring some of these caste attitudes with them.

The third challenge is perhaps the hardest: to bring the Dhamma to the whole of Indian society. Dhamma is for all Indians no matter what their caste background is. Dr Ambedkar had this very clearly as his goal. He expected that, after the initial conversions in Nagpur, there would be a huge wave of conversions from educated and modern-minded Indians from all sections of society - but it didn’t happened. Things might have been different had Babasaheb lived longer.

The great danger is that Buddhism will be seen as merely a Dalit religion – indeed as a new caste denominator. Buddhism must not remain the religion of just one section of Indian society as a whole, otherwise caste will not be destroyed and liberty, equality, and fraternity will not be achieved.

Buddhism being reduced just to a new caste is indeed a great danger and we clearly witness this happening around us. How do we over come this?

We must overcome this danger of the marginalisation of Buddhism, referring back to Dr Ambedkar’s thoughts on conversion: Why did he choose Buddha Dhamma?

According to him, liberty, equality and fraternity can only be attained when there is a completely different set of ethical attitudes in Indian society.

In a caste-based society one does not see another person in terms of duties towards him or her as a human being, but as a member of a particular caste that stands in a particular relation to one’s own caste. Babasaheb says that this is not really ethics at all. Dr Ambedkar’s great insight was that society has to be based on some genuine ethical principles, not the pseudo-ethics of caste duty.

He says that you can only control a very small minority of incorrigible, anti-social elements by means of the police and law; the majority in society can only live in genuine harmony and respect for one another when all are guided by ethical principles, based on some spiritual vision – ’sacred and universal morality’. This sacred and universal morality is found in the Buddha-Dhamma: ‘Dhamma is morality: morality is Dhamma’.

His vision therefore applies not only to Dalits but to every member of Indian society. The great majority of the population needs at least to be touched by the transformative power of the Dhamma, if liberty, equality, and fraternity are to flourish. Our challenge is therefore to reach out to all the citizens of India, above and beyond all the divisions of caste and community.

There need to be different approaches for different sections of society. You have to approach Dalits through Dr Ambedkar, but if you approach others that way at first very few will respond. So, one has to approach them in some other way. But, yes, Dr Ambedkar has to be recognised by them before too long, because the social revolutionary dimension of Buddhism must be understood by them. They have to recognise their duties towards society as a whole.

Given the complete apathy and even active hostility shown by Indian civil society on issues pertaining to discrimination, deprivation and social exclusion this is going to be a very difficult task.

It is indeed. One of the problems with Indian society is that much of its middle class is completely amoral. It has no conscience. This is absolutely striking. People can ignore the sufferings of others right under their noses, right outside their front doors, right on the railway platforms beside them. I recently read a very interesting article by an ‘upper caste’ Indian academic in England, in which he writes that the Indian middle class has no social conscience. It created a huge furore among the Indian community in the UK – and questions were even asked in Parliament. They opposed him, but he stuck to his guns. Good for him – he is absolutely right.

I think this behaviour of Indian middle class is direct outcome of the caste system. We are too conditioned to worry about the sufferings of other people who do not belong to our castes. The only common factor in so called Indian middle class is probably their similar life styles otherwise it is just a collection of caste groups who only mingle within their groups or with comparable caste groups.

I would like to go a step further: the key issue is that caste completely negates human solidarity. It breaks society into exclusive solidarity groups. You have solidarity within each group but no solidarity outside – the only moment of collective solidarity is when a cricket match is going on against Pakistan!

So the major sense of ethical responsibility, if you can call it ethical at all, is towards your own community. It is however mainly a selfish solidarity, for the sake of mutual security, rather than a solidarity of human feeling. So this lack of social conscience is the result of the whole caste mindset that is so dominant in India. And that is why Dr Ambedkar says that we have got to have a new attitude and a new mindset. That he found in Buddhism, which is India’s true religion, the best of India.

There is quite a number of Indians from ‘upper caste’, middle class, educated back grounds who have come to Buddhism for the same sort of the reasons for which I came: personal anxiety, existential concerns - what is life for? why I am here? what is the purpose of my life? etc. Some may have been attracted due to social conscience but not many, I think.

So the challenge is to reach all sections of Indian society so that they may gain a genuine social conscience and feel their human solidarity with their oppressed brothers and sisters – and therefore work with them to change this terrible system.

What are the other challenges before Ambedkarite Buddhism?

Another challenge for us is to keep Dhamma related to social and political transformation. What do you do when you meet people and talk Dhamma with them and they say, ‘Well, I need a job?’ People say, ‘I want my children to get education’: what do you do then?

So we continuously need to reinforce the message that Dhamma is not merely about personal spiritual well being, as it is initially for many in the West, as it was for me. We need to engage with socio-economic issues. We believe that in the long run Dhamma is the answer, but in the mean time people are badly suffering and are severely mistreated. We need to address that.

We encourage people to help themselves, form Sangha, and help others. We have, for instance, an organisation in Pune, the Manuski Institute, which provides people with the information and tools to deal with caste-based atrocities and other related socio-economic issues.

But we need to keep the right balance: social work without the Dhamma ends up merely dealing with the symptoms of the problem, but Dhamma practice without social relevance becomes obscurantist, individualistic, and very subjective – and therefore not really Dhamma.

Buddhism is one of the world’s major religious traditions and therefore building linkages with wider Buddhist world was one of the main concerns of Babasaheb Ambedkar. As a practising Buddhist who is deeply involved with Buddhism as defined by Babasaheb, what are your observations on the wider Buddhist world?

Buddhism generally covers three worlds today: the old Buddhist world, the new Buddhist world of the West, and the revived Buddhist world of India.

The old Buddhist world of the East is not in good shape. There are signs of revival here and there, but it is severely battered by modernity and is often not impressive today as an example of a living faith, related to the modern situation. There are impressive people and impressive movements, but Buddhism overall is not that impressive in its old heartlands. The example before us at present is, of course, Sri Lankan Buddhism, a significant and leading proportion of whose followers are, frankly speaking, racists and have used Buddhism as a weapon of cultural dominance.

Then, you have got the new Buddhist world of the West that has emerged from what has been called the ‘Me generation’, which I myself in fact came from - spoilt children of the post-colonial west who have lived with silver spoons in their mouths and face quite different sets of problems from their brothers and sisters elsewhere in the world, problems more of personal meaning and happiness. There is a strong tendency to individualism among western Buddhists and the Dhamma is often interpreted in quite narrow personal terms.

Then you have got Buddhist India, which I think is a very interesting intersection of the other two. For me, India is the key to the revival of Buddhism worldwide, because here the Buddhist movement is uncompromisingly modern and has a social conscience, as well.

This happened because Babasaheb, at least from one side, was the child of the European enlightenment, with its critical intellectual tradition, and at the same time he was also the child of the best of Indian culture: of the whole non-brahmanical shramanic traditions, of the Sant traditions represented by such as Kabir and so on, and above all of the Buddha.

So the movement initiated by him has the intellectually critical approach - if you like, the scientific approach - that is a principal feature of the modern world. Indian Buddhism is modern in this sense; on the other hand it is functioning in a traditional society with intact family structures, which we have lost to a considerable extent in much of the west, and it has a very strong commitment to social transformation.

In some ways, our Western Buddhist world shares more in common with India than the old Buddhist world of the East, because in our case we also started from a critical perspective. We in the west feel ourselves very much Buddhist, very much part of the Buddhist tradition, but we are not going to accept all aspects of it uncritically, and that is the position you take in India, following Babasaheb.

However, although there are similarities between Indian Buddhism today and western Buddhism, there are also discontinuities and some of these we should be careful to maintain. I don’t want to see western individualistic attitudes imported into India – although that is already happening, of course.

The social structure of India must change in very big ways: caste is the most obvious example, but there is also the status and treatment of women, so many of whom are subject to domination and violence. However there is much that must be preserved and not replaced by the rootlessness and individualism of the west.

As someone has said, we should ‘take the best from the west and leave the rest’! This is very much the same issue faced by the old Buddhist world, although in other respects Indian Buddhists do not share so much with them.

How do we, then, approach building linkages with the rest of the Buddhist world?

It is a great challenge to keep linkages with the rest of the Buddhist world, given the differences between its three spheres. Indian Buddhists need the help of other Buddhists, especially in the form of resources.

However, the rest of the Buddhist world needs the inspiration and example of Buddhism in India, even more than Indian Buddhists need the help of the rest of the Buddhist world. Dr Ambedkar’s Buddhist movement is, I believe, the best hope for Buddhism in the world today.

When people from the old Buddhist countries visit us here and witness the role that the Dhamma plays in transforming society, they get very inspired indeed. They become inspired not only because Buddhism is coming back to where it originated, but many of them genuinely feel that what is happening here is what they want in their country: a Buddhism that is very fresh and alive and related closely to the problems that people face in their ordinary lives.

For the Western Buddhist, Ambedkarite Buddhism is the antidote to subjectivism and psychologism, which is the plague of Buddhism there. It is so individualistic, so ‘choice based’ in the false sense – the ’spiritual supermarket’.

Buddhism is in fact the religion of choice but not of a whimsical choice. It has to be a solid and intelligent ethical choice, which is respectful of others and concerned with society.

So we need to keep this relationship between the Buddhist movement in India and Buddhist movements in the West and East. They have many differences from the Buddhism here but we have to see ourselves related to them, too.

A lot of Ambedkarite Buddhists are very dismissive of much of the old Buddhist world, for instance Tibetan Buddhism, believing that Tibetan Buddhism is degenerate. Now there is degeneration in Tibetan Buddhism, no doubt, but there is a great deal of Dhamma vitality there too. Not all is relevant for us, but I don’t think we should dismiss it out of hand.

My experience is that no matter what Buddhist traditions I look at, I find the presence of some essential Dhamma vitality. Degeneration, corruption, appropriation of tradition by powerful groups are inevitable and all human activities will have that, but you can find in all these traditions some living spiritual vitality somewhere. For instance, many of the most impressive spiritual personalities I have come across have been Tibetan Buddhists.

There are many things in most forms of traditional Buddhism that are not relevant for us and even dangerous for us in India. For instance I personally certainly have sympathy with much of Tibetan Buddhism, but so much of the imagery looks just like Hinduism and cannot therefore be communicated and practised widely here.

We do not want to encourage people to go back to the superstition that has supported their enslavement. I say leave it behind, leave it up in the Himalayas, and let’s go back to basics - let’s go back to the Buddha. We should respect these other Buddhists, honour them and not negate them as Buddhists. We just say that this or that is not relevant to us in India.

So I think we have a challenge to keep Ambedkarite Buddhism related to the wider Buddhist world without simply imitating it. We need to maintain our critical approach towards all traditions. This is our TBMSG approach: we are ecumenical, insofar as we do not align ourselves with any particular school or tradition and accept all in principle, but it is a critical ecumenical position - critical in the sense that we evaluate and discriminate what is valid and relevant for us from what is not.

Thanks so much for your elucidation on wider Buddhist world and its relationship with Ambedkarite Buddhism. I am very much sure that our readers would now have a very clear picture. Now I would like you to look back and assess the activities of TBMSG and tell us about its impact among Indian Buddhists.

In the first phase of our movement in India we were building institutions where Ambedkarite Buddhists could assemble together and engage with us through different activities like meditation, retreats, Dhamma talks etc. We were fortunate to have good support from Western Buddhists, then increasingly from Taiwan and the old Buddhist world of the East.

We were able to create a number of impressive viharas and Dhamma centres, which are very important to give confidence and pride to the people. We have, for instance, a very nice vihara in Pune and then Nagaloka Buddhist Institute in Nagpur to train young people in Dhamma. TBMSG has also built a number of other places all around Maharashtra.

We have also established a certain amount of social work, especially setting up hostels where poor Dalit children from the villages and slums get the support and facilities they need to get a good education. We have established a number of other projects, such as literacy, HIV awareness, and rights advocacy. Although this is not our most important contribution, nonetheless it is very significant.

However, the achievement of TBMSG I most rejoice in is that many Indians have become full and equal members of our International Sangha – they constitute roughly a quarter of Triratna Bauddha Mahasangha as a whole. They are increasingly playing a key role in our movement here in India and worldwide. What is especially significant is that we now have Indian preceptors who give ordinations.

Urgyen Sangharakshita, who founded our Order, handed on his responsibilities as head of the Order to a team of Public Preceptors who give ordinations into the Order and form a kind of collective spiritual leadership – which we call the Preceptors’ College (in the sense of a council or team). There are now Indians in that College who are therefore responsible with their colleagues for the work of the Order worldwide.

One of our Indian Public Preceptors, Dhammachari Sudarshan, once told me his own experiences of caste discrimination – he used to walk several miles to school every day without water, because he would not submit to the humiliation of waiting for someone to pour it for him. His mother led the other Dalit women in their village to get water from the main well when the one set aside for them dried up. This sparked a big riot against them.

This is the background he came from. He got an education and became a Professor at the National Defence Academy. Then he joined our Order and is now a leading member. I feel very proud of what he has achieved – he is a real Ambedkarite of the old type and now he is a leading member of our Order internationally. (Tragically, since this interview was conducted, Dhammachari Sudarshan was killed in a car accident.)

TBMSG has also been successful in creating positive links between Buddhists inside and outside India. The great tragedy of Babasaheb’s premature death, within seven weeks of his conversion, was that it was not possible then to mobilise support from the old Buddhist world, which really was needed.  Babasaheb said traditional Buddhists would need to provide both manpower and money. I am sure he would have got that support, had he lived, because he was a man of international stature. But without him very little help came.

A little bit came from individual bhikkhus from Thailand and Sri Lanka but not very much initially. So we, I think, are pioneers in creating the link between the new Buddhist of the west and the Indian Buddhists, as well as between the Buddhists of the East and the Indian Buddhists.

Since last few years, TBMSG has come out of Maharashtra and has started working in different states like UP, Delhi etc.? What were the thoughts that went behind in bringing TBMSG to these places?

From very early on, Lokamitra and other Indian members of our organisation were sensitive to the fact that we needed to spread outside Maharashtra and we did begin work almost from the start, especially in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.

We have always seen that there is a great danger in mainly talking to only one community, one caste – the ex-Mahars of Maharashtra. If Buddhism remains confined to only one caste it just becomes a new caste denominator and that is what has happened in Maharashtra, to some extent. Though we were very sensitive to this need to spread outside Maharashtra from the beginning, we were not able to do so much, because we were very tied up building and sustaining the basis of our movement.

Although we have certainly reached out beyond that one community and one state from the very beginning, for the last ten years or so, we have been feeling the urgency of the situation even more. Lokamitra established the Nagarjuna Training Institute at Nagaloka eight years ago and that has trained about 500 young people from 20 Indian states in the basics of Buddhism and Ambedkarism.

Some of us became particularly sensitive to this need to spread as the 50th anniversary of Babasaheb’s conversion approached. 50 years is a rather long time for the movement to be confined mainly to just one community in just one state.

Yes, the Maharashtrian Dalits have achieved a lot. They are a living example of the high value of Ambedkarite Buddhism for other Dalits anywhere in the country. They prove the effectiveness of the Dhamma. All the statistics shows that conversion to Buddhism works.

The educational standards of the Ambedkarite Buddhist community are much higher than any other comparable community in Maharashtra. Their social status is much higher and they are better organised, socially and politically. This has largely happened due to their following Babasaheb by embracing Buddhism. It has given them the self-confidence and sense of responsibility for their own lives they need in order to succeed.

They have achieved a lot but they are in great danger of isolation .We have been emphasising to Buddhists there to reach out to other Dalits, Tribals, and other backward communities - indeed to everyone who can be inspired to listen, because in the end everybody has to become Buddhist or nobody is a Buddhist. Everybody has to leave their caste; otherwise caste will go on and on, as it has gone on for thousands of years.

At first sight, the situation looks a little desperate – so many years after Babasaheb’s conversion and so little response from beyond the original Buddhist community and region. But when one looks more closely, one realises that Dr Ambedkar was far more successful than one might have thought. His example and influence has been decisive throughout the country.

Mr Kanshiram had a huge impact in revitalising Dr Ambedkar’s name and taking his philosophy to every nook and corner of the nation - for which we hail him greatly. Dr Ambedkar’s life and mission is like an earthquake that has shaken up the entire Indian society. And the tremors of that earthquake are still being felt.

All over India, in one way or another, people have started saying, ‘Enough is enough; we want change’. They are very strongly affected by the genuine democratic movement that has been inspired by Dr Ambedkar’s teachings. That movement consists of many facets. It appears to me as a large, disparate inchoate movement, having no one leader but thousands of leaders. I prefer that rather than a coherent, focused, ‘big man’ movement. We don’t want that any more.

As Babasaheb said, the age of Mahatmas is gone. We want grass root movements, coming from below, with many different people approaching very many issues with different attitudes, styles and concerns and we see ourselves as part of this very broad movement, making our own distinctive contribution.

With these thoughts in our mind we have now started concentrating on working with Ambedkarite Dalits in different parts of the country, I myself, particularly in North India.

What is your first impression while working in North India?

I find Buddhism here more interesting. To start with it is not just about one caste. You will find people from many Dalit communities, some Tribals, some OBCs, all interested in Buddhism. There is much more diversity here. I think this is largely due to Mr Kanshiram’s ‘Bahujan’ concept. I feel very excited about the potential here for spreading the Dhamma and for the Dhamma to have a real impact on society.

What have been your relationships with other Buddhist organisations in India like Mahabodhi society, All India Bhikkhu Maha Sangha etc. given that most of them represent different Buddhist traditions?

To speak of relationships with other organisations is in a way misleading. I think essentially the relations have to be personal ones between people devoted to Dhamma in different traditions and different organisations, not between organisations. On this basis we can say we have got a full spectrum of relationships with individuals in different groups, ranging from excellent friendships to people who might view us with some degree of doubt.

One major issue in our relationships with some other Buddhists in India is that in our Order we do not give any special place to bhikkhus. Our Order is based on the principle of Going for Refuge to the Three Jewels, which we believe is more important than the lifestyle you follow, and our Order consists of lay people and anagarikas, some of whom choose to wear the yellow robe – but all of whom share the same ordination and status, whether monk or lay, male or female.

We value the renunciant life very highly and we are all encouraged to move towards it, but anagarikas are not given any special status, beyond what their own personal merits justify.

It seems to us there is something not very healthy about the rather extreme hierarchical relationship there often is between bhikkhus and lay people. Some scholars believe that this developed in the early middle ages as Buddhism began to compete more and more with resurgent Brahminism: the role of the bhikkhu, they think, was modelled on that of the Brahmin so that they could out-compete them in the quest for offerings.

It seems often that lay people treat bhikkhus as a source of quasi-magical blessing, rather than as examples of a more intensive Dhamma life. We do not think this is helpful. We do not believe that anybody should be honoured simply because they wear a robe. We say we should honour anybody who is respect-worthy, monk or lay.

We know, and many bhikkhus also know, that many of them are not really proper monks and are simply living on the dana without doing anything for the Dhamma or for the people. Babasaheb spoke of the bhikkhu Sangha, in ‘The Buddha and the Future of His Religion’, as a ‘huge army of idlers’ and there is still some truth in this.

So we are not going to believe in people automatically, just because they are wearing robes. We don’t believe that the robe itself is worthy of honour – this again sounds like the old religion. It is the man or woman who is worthy of honour, not the clothes they wear.

We will honour people if they are doing good work and show themselves to be respect worthy – but respect should be earned: surely that is the lesson of thousands of years of caste. And we Dhammacharis and Dhammacharinis expect the same for ourselves. We don’t expect anybody to show respect for us automatically or accept us simply on who we say we are.

We just want to be accepted as sons and daughters of the Buddha and of Babasaheb, and if we are doing something good, give us a garland - if not, then we don’t mind. But some people seem to expect that respect should be given simply to the robe and take offence at our approach, although no offence is intended. That has been one major source of misunderstanding.

We don’t however go to the other extreme and dismiss bhikkhus out of hand, of course. There are many worthy bhikkhus and bhikkhunis and we do honour them – just as we honour worthy lay-people. We have excellent relationships with many bhikkhus and bhikkhunis. But we do not believe it is healthy to put people on the platform just because they are in a robe or because they are powerful and well known.

Another source of contention and misunderstanding is that we are very deliberately non-party-political. Politics is very important, but we have a role independent of politics, which we believe is beneficial for the Buddhist and Dalit world in general. Of course the practice of the Dhamma is a political act, in the sense that it naturally changes society.

According to Babasaheb, Democracy ultimately is a state of mind and is equal to bandhutva, which is equal to maitri, and that is what Dhamma teaches people to develop. So we very much see ourselves as politically active, in that sense. But we don’t take political platforms or support any particular party, apart from in the privacy of the ballot box, if we are entitled to vote.

Indians have this tendency of treating themselves as ‘the teachers of world’: ‘We have taught everything to the world,’ especially in the religious and spiritual sphere. How do they take a westerner preaching to them about the Buddha and his teachings? Did your foreign origin become a matter of concern while working in India?

I never came across it as a concern in a very serious way. There have been some comments and criticisms, but very few and usually as a sub-issue to something else – ‘and he’s a foreigner!’. In our Order worldwide, the principal leaders still happen to be westerners, because the Order started in the West and has a head start there. But there are now Indian Order members who are playing a very active and leading part and certainly do not just do what we say.

I think it very likely that within the next ten or twenty years Indians will be the principal leaders. One Indian Order member, with an Ambedkarite background, is already the leader of our centre in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Indeed, I think, the fact that I am a foreigner is often very useful because I stand outside the caste system of India. I am caste blind. I can’t be bracketed in any caste. I can’t respond to you in a caste way. I have begun to learn the caste differences but still in very theoretical way. I have none of the visceral caste responses that most Indians have.

I do identify very strongly with my Buddhist friends and get indignant when so called ‘upper’ caste people ignore me when they hear that I am a Buddhist - they immediately understand that Buddhist means Ambedkarite. Often, once they realise I am working with Ambedkarites, the conversation ends.

One of the biggest lacunas in Dalit movement has been the total lack of robust student/youth movements? How you are going to link Buddhist movement with the Dalit students residing in the campuses?

We are very much aware of the need for working with the student community. Towards this end we have, for instance, initiated our National Network of Buddhist Youth (NNBY), just two years ago, and we are active on a number of campuses, for instance we have a small and very dynamic group at JNU. NNBY is part of our attempt to create a Buddhist wing for the Dalit youth movement. We completely agree that there is a need for a Buddhist contribution to the Dalit youth movement. However, again we believe that all Buddhist organisations should be based on serious commitment to the practice of the Dhamma and on strong and deep human friendships. If these are not present, no organisation can be fully and truly Buddhist.