Dalit Buddhist movement
[8][9] During the Middle Ages, Buddhism slowly declined in India,[10] while it vanished from Persia and Central Asia as Islam became the state religion.
[13] In the 13th century, states Craig Lockard, Buddhist monks in India fled to Tibet to escape Islamic persecution,[14] while the monks in western India, states Peter Harvey, escaped persecution by moving to south Indian Hindu kingdoms that were able to resist the Muslim power.
[17] The two Adi Dharma movements[18] – those that rejected Hinduism in favor of Buddhism – were launched by the Swami Achhutanand Harihar in Uttar Pradesh and Babu Mangu Ram in Punjab.
Born in an untouchable family, Achhutanand joined the Arya Samaj suddhi reform movement and worked there for about eight years (1905–1912).
He felt Arya Samaj practiced untouchability in subtle ways,[clarification needed] and subsequently left it to launch the socio-political Bharitiya Achhut Mahasabha movement.
He opposed Mahatma Gandhi's non-cooperation movement and fasts as well as the Indian National Congress, stating that Brahmins were "as foreign to India as were the British", according to Anand Teltumbde.
[18] In 1925, he shifted his focus onto Dalit freedom, launching the "Ad Dharm" movement as well as a weekly newspaper titled Adi-Danka to spread his ideas.
He was the fourteenth child in an impoverished Maharashtra Dalit family, who studied abroad, returned to India in the 1920s and joined the political movement.
[21] During 1931–32, the Mahatma Gandhi led Indian independence movement held discussions with the British government over the Round Table Conferences.
[27] The resulting public outcry forced the government, in consultations with Ambedkar, to replace the Communal Award with a compromise Poona Pact.
He dismissed Gandhi's ideas as loved by "blind Hindu devotees", primitive, influenced by spurious brew of Tolstoy and Ruskin, and "there is always some simpleton to preach them".
At the conference, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, and Buddhist representatives presented the tenets of their respective religions in an effort to win over Dalits.
[37] Ambedkar's new sect of Buddhism rejected these ideas and re-interpreted the Buddha's religion in terms of class struggle and social equality.
Inspired by this Ambedkar's conversion, 5,000 Tamils of Myanmar had accepted Buddhism in Rangoon under the leadership of Chan Htoon, the justice of the Supreme Court of the Union of Burma on 28 October 1956.
[42] The conversion ceremony was attended by Medharathi, his main disciple Bhoj Dev Mudit, and Mahastvir Bodhanand's Sri Lankan successor, Bhante Pragyanand.
[19] Ambedkar asked Dalits not to get entangled in the existing branches of Buddhism (Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana), and called his version Navayana or 'Neo-Buddhism'.
The Buddhist revival remains concentrated in two states: Ambedkar's native Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh – the land of Bodhanand Mahastavir, Acharya Medharthi and their associates.
[49] In 2002, Kanshi Ram, a popular political leader from a Sikh religious background, announced his intention to convert to Buddhism on 14 October 2006, the fiftieth anniversary of Ambedkar's conversion.
Sasai and Bhante Anand Agra are two of main leaders of the campaign to free the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya from Hindu control.
When his new ecumenical movement had gained enough ground in the West, Sangharakshita worked with Ambedkarites in India and the UK to develop Indian Buddhism further.
After visits in the late 1970s by Dharmachari Lokamitra from UK, supporters developed a two-pronged approach: social work through the Bahujan Hitaj (also spelled as Bahujan Hitay) trust, mainly sponsored from the general public by the British Buddhist-inspired Karuna Trust (UK), and direct Dharma work.
[56] Since Ambedkar's conversion, several thousand people from different castes have converted to Buddhism in ceremonies including the twenty-two vows.
The question that is then clearly put forth: is a fourth yana, a Navayana, a kind of modernistic Enlightenment version of the Dhamma really possible within the framework of Buddhism?
[69] In addition, its emphasis on people's liberation in the religious sense does not deny social distinctions as the norm of organizations in society, as the Buddha himself was the founder of a monastic order.
[69] A number of critics also argue that there is no moral foundation for the political practices that are based on Neo-Buddhist notions, since religion is totally voluntary, and Neo-Buddhism may thus violate democratic principles by restricting its followers to abide to certain non-religious rules.
[71][72] According to Janet Contursi, Ambedkar re-interprets Buddhist religion and with Navayana "speaks through Gautama and politicizes the Buddha philosophy as he theologizes his own political views".
According to Ambedkar, the Buddha advocated a rational and peaceful resolution of an inter-tribe water conflict but was unable to gain the necessary political leverage because he lacked majority vote.
In this way the Buddha’s renunciation is motivated more by political exigencies rather than a desire to find the ultimate truth, and he becomes a figure not unlike a minority politician in contemporary India.
[38][75][b] Gombrich (2012),[76] states that there is no evidence that the Buddha began or pursued social reforms, rather his aim was at the salvation of those who joined his monastic order.
[76][77][78] Modernist interpreters of Buddhism, states Gombrich, keep picking up this "mistake from western authors", a view that initially came into vogue during the colonial era.
