Old Buddha and the New Buddha

What is important to us and what is not is difficult to decide. We are often confused and when faced with such a situation we often rely on the judgment of others. The others may be parents or friends or culture or society and we end up living a life not of our own but that which is dictated by others. If there were one person in history who refused to live a life dictated by others, it was Prince Siddharth, later known as Gautam Buddha. He realized very early after seeing a sick man, an old man a dead body and an ascetic that life is full of suffering and a way must be found to live. He found enlightenment under a fig tree later called Bodhi tree and he was thence called Buddha, a being who can discriminate between what is important and what is not. 

The path showed by him became very popular not only in India but also beyond Indian shores. It was called Buddhism and was in Swami Vivekananda’s words, a rebel child of Hinduism. Hinduism then was under strict dominion of Vedic Brahminism and society was clearly divided in to castes that served the interests of a few by keeping the people from lower castes away from the basic privileges of life. Buddhism refused to acknowledge these divisions and considered all in a society as equals. This aspect of Buddhism found its echo most powerfully again, more than 2500 years later when Dr Bhimrao Ramji  Ambedkar converted more than 5 lacs of his supporters to Buddhism in 1956 at Nagpur. 

Dr Ambedkar was a student of Anthropology and studied plight of people who were forced to live outside their village as they were untouchables. He wrote a remarkably scholarly book on this issue titled “Who were sudras? How they became untouchables”. He studied Buddhism all his life, founded Buddhist Society of India and wrote the masterpiece “The Buddha and His Dhamma”. He prescribed 22 vows for his followers that were taken from the three refuges and five precepts of Buddhism. The first one was “I shall have no faith in Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara nor shall I worship them” and also included “I firmly believe the Dhamma of the Buddha is the only true religion. Many Ambedkarite organizations today are working towards popularizing these 22 vows, the one at the vanguard is “22 Pledges Practice & Propagation Movement” and claims to have more than 50 lacs volunteers. 

Dr Ambedkar was the first law minister of India and was also the Chairman of Constitution Drafting Committee. His extensive study of Buddhist literature was of immense utility while drafting the constitution. He borrowed the Sangha practices like voting by ballot, rules of debate and precedence and use of agenda to conduct business for the Indian constitution. He also introduced the system of reservation in jobs and schools and colleges for under-privileged classes and was hailed as affirmative action towards eradicating socio-economic inequalities in the country. Towards this end he also had a famous fight against Gandhiji when British Government accepted his demand for a separate electorate for untouchables while Gandhiji was vehemently against it and went on to a fast unto death as a protest. There was a nation-wide concern for Gandhiji’s health and fearing his death several Hindu leaders organized joint public meetings with Dr Ambedkar and under massive coercion he dropped the demand for separate electorate for untouchables and accepted reserved seats for them. This pact is famously called Poona Pact.