Ambedkar and the quest for India’s spiritual heritage

A historically grounded Dalit identity can anchor resistance to majoritarian nationalist narratives

B R Ambedkar’s engagement with the figure of the Buddha transcends conventional spiritual admiration and enters the realm of social and political transformation. By converting to Buddhism, Ambedkar did not simply seek a new deity; instead, he identified a historical rupture, imagining that the vehicle for social emancipation is hidden in the Indian past. He imagined the Buddhist era as the ‘Golden Age’ of egalitarianism that predated the consolidation of Brahmanical hegemony. This move was a strategic reclamation of history, positioning Dalits not as mere outcasts within the Hindu fold, but as the rightful inheritors of a robust civilisation that stood in direct opposition to the Brahmanical caste order.

With this attempt, Ambedkar demonstrated that in the past, Dalits inherited distinct social locations, intellectual traditions, and ethical prospects. Ambedkar’s Navayana Buddhism has witnessed a discursive engagement across impressive socio-religious traditions from the past that offered Dalits an alternative cultural site to explore their spiritual quests. The Ravidassia movement in Punjab, the Adi-Dravida assertion in Tamil Nadu, and the Matua Mahasangha in Bengal embarked on a similar historical excavation of India’s past to showcase that Dalits represent alternative civilisational and spiritual identities. Ambedkar’s revival of Buddhism has highlighted that the nuanced cultural and spiritual traditions of marginalised social groups promote the values of equality, dignity, and social justice and reject their dehumanised social location.

Today, while the dominant Hindutva political assertion attempts to assimilate Dalits into a hyper-nationalist narrative, these movements emerge as an ideological resistance. The Dalit religious and cultural outfits have continued to assert that the Dalit identity is not a mere subset of the Hindu identity, but that they represent a distinct historical legacy and philosophical agency. Navayana Buddhism suggested that the utility of such a robust cultural past in modern times will complement the new ideals enshrined in the constitution. Furthermore, these emancipatory ideas would assist in building an impressive cultural resistance against the hegemonic Hindutva project of assimilation.

Before Ambedkar announced the mass conversion, the Matua Mahasangha shared a similar objective and opted to define the presence of the untouchables outside the Hindu fold. Rooted in the teachings of Harichand Thakur, this movement built a collective identity through independent rituals and community organisation, asserting a spiritual lineage and contesting the Brahmanical framework. It disturbed and challenged the Brahmin elite authority in religious rituals and promoted the ex-untouchables as equal inheritors of spiritual solace. Similarly, the Ravidassia Movement of Punjab institutionalised Guru Ravidass’s hymns and reinterpreted the Amritbani scripture to establish a sovereign spiritual counter-space (called Begampura) against the Hindu caste order. This was an assertive proclamation to introduce their separate spiritual and cultural path, independent of the exploitative caste hierarchies.

In southern India, the Adi-Dravida movement pushed the argument even further by claiming ‘original inhabitant’ status for the Dalits. By identifying as the pre-Aryan, pre-caste inhabitants of the land, they rejected the entire framework of the Hindu social order as an external imposition. This historical framing mirrors the Buddhist reclamation, suggesting that their subaltern identity is a product of the caste system, yet they are the survivors of a grand civilisation that existed before it.

Ambedkar’s ‘Navayana’ envisioned a community that would reclaim its ancient intellectual prowess to navigate the modern world. This was not an attempt to reform Hinduism but to demonstrate that a superior, more rational Indian tradition existed long before the current orthodoxies took hold. These symbols became instruments of resistance, fostering a sense of belonging that was entirely autonomous from the Hindu social landscape.

A return to the roots

The mass conversion of 1956 was far more than a change of faith; it was a radical counter to the depressing diktats of the Hindu social order. The 22 vows administered during the conversion ceremony at Nagpur functioned as a formal declaration of independence from Hindu orthodoxy. These were not mere spiritual promises but a decisive, radical break intended to purge the Dalit consciousness of passive untouchable identity. By framing conversion as a ‘return to their own intellectual roots’, Ambedkar provided Dalits with a powerful historical memoir. He thus supplemented the impressive religious-spiritual movements offered by the Dalits, as it elevated them with a new consciousness about their past, offered an ethical worldview, and showcased their readiness to completely bypass the need for Brahmanical mediation.

In the post-Ambedkar period, though these movements offered an interconnected social life, they failed to emerge as a unified transformative project of the subaltern castes. In their regional specificities, they have constructed a vibrant cultural autonomy for the Dalits, often resisting the Brahmanical accommodation in the unequal caste order. However, the possibility that such spiritual and intellectual awakenings would provide impetus to a radical social transformation against caste division hasn’t effectively materialised. Instead, the Hindutva cultural project has taken the centre-stage in the discourse of India’s ancient past, spirituality, and social reforms. Right-wing nationalism is appropriating the cultural symbols of the Dalit religious movement to build an emotive equivalence.

The spiritual-religious traditions for the emancipation of the Dalits could have emerged as an impressive ideological force to examine India’s cultural past and to resist its appropriation by Hindutva ideologues. By denouncing the hegemonic leadership of the conventional social elites and by placing the worst-off social groups as the key articulators of cultural values, nationalism, and social order, the alternative Dalit traditions can become an organic intellectual resistance against the Brahmanical Hindutva project.

(The writer is an assistant professor at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.