Religious Converts in India- Socio-Political Study of Neo Buddhists

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About the Author The author, Dr. Uttara Shastree, is Head of the Department of Sociology in S.P. College, Pune. She is deeply interested in studying Backward Class movements, religious conversions of the oppressed groups and the issues related to the Reservation Policy in India, and similar welfare measures for the oppressed communities in the world.

Preface This book is substantially based on the findings of my doctoral researchwork, carried out at the University of Poona. With all my sincerity and ingenuity, I am deeply beholden to Dr. A. Bopegamage, who taught me to aim at excellence. His brilliant guidance enabled me to complete the doctoral re- search and his encouragement and valuable suggestions helped me to make this venture of writing the book possible.

I am particularly grateful to all my respondents for sharing with me their life-time experience which constitute the soul of this work.

It is under Bo tree the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, supposed to have attained enlightenment. This work is a study of a group which has taken shelter in Buddhism.

Foreword One of the unique events that took place in the social history of post-Independent India was the embracing of Buddhism by more than three hundred thousand Hindus in a day during the middle of 1950's and within five years the number rose to three million. It was done without any one's coercion. These converts belonged to the so-called Hindu untouchable castes who had for centuries together suffered from various disabilities in the social, religious, economic and political spheres.

The conversion movement was initiated by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar as he failed in his struggle carried on since 1920's to get a respectable place for his people, the depressed classes, in the Hindu society and embraced Buddhism where one is free from the taint of untouchability and other humiliating conditions and from the notion of high and low and other disabilities on the basis of caste. This study of Dr. Shastree examines in detail all those reasons that led to their embracing of Buddhism and more important, the series of social and psychological problems they faced after their conversion. To explain these problems she has used the conceptual framework of 'Marginal Man' as adumbrated by the Chicago sociologists Park and Stonequist.

Dr. Shastree's whole study is based on first-hand information obtained in the field with the help of questionnaire, personal interviews, and group discussions among the neo- Buddhists in an urban setup. Also in her study there is a significant departure from the usual types of such studies by assessing the views of the upper caste members about the social position and the treatment metted out to the neo- Buddhists in the society. Furthermore, her examination of the popular hypothesis that education and better avocation could raise the status of these depressed classes in the society indicates that these are false beliefs as even the educated elites among the neo-Buddhists experience some discrimination at the hands of the upper castes. After embracing Buddhism the new converts landed in a peculiar dilemma when they asked for the constitutionally guaranteed concessions offered by the Government of India to the Scheduled Castes. When the question was raised in a Lok Sabha debate, Mr. Morarji Desai, the then Prime Minister of India, pointed out, for twenty years they are out of the Scheduled Castes because they have converted themselves into another religion. That is why they ceased to be members of the Scheduled Castes. They now wanted to be considered as Scheduled Caste members' (November 21, 1977). Continuing the same Lok Sabha debate, Mr. Charan Singh, the then Minister of Home Affairs stated that 'neo-Buddhists by no logic are entitled to any privileges or concessions given to the Scheduled Caste Hindus on the ground of untouchability'. This denial of concessions for some period of time forced the neo-Buddhists to occupy a position of ambiguity, sometimes presenting themselves as Scheduled Castes to claim the con- cessions, other times presenting themselves as neo-Buddhists to claim equal status with the upper castes. Dr. Shastree has pointed out that the neo-Buddhist began to see himself through two looking glasses, each presenting clashing images. (During 1990's the concessions were extended to the neo-Buddhists too). The peculiar situation of the neo-Buddhists has also spurred them to fight the dominant upper castes through two militant movements, 'Dalit Panther' and 'Dalit Sahitya' (liter- ary) movements.