http://savebuddhist.blogspot.com/2008/03/rss-bid-to-swallow-budhism.html
Friday, March 28, 2008 RSS bid to swallow Budhism Dalits are still struggling to understand the exact significance of the attempts of RSS to appropriate the Ambedkarite plank. It is wrong to consider that the "intuitive emotional distrust" of Ambedkarite masses will protect Dalits from such attempts. Let me try to explain my understanding of their strategy. 1. While evolving their "Hindutva plank" to make it appealing to Dalits, Hindutva has had to concede some ground to Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit movement. I refer to the fact that Meera Nanda and Dattopant Thengdi admit that Dr. Ambedkar represents an unparalleled intellectual and philosophical challenge to Hindu culture, ignoring which is not an option at all. 2. That our Dalit movement has not yet managed to pose the above challenge adequately in practice by correctly following the prescribed medicines of the learned Doctor Ambedkar is a tragedy. Currently Dalits get defined by their non-Hindu stances and not by the positive content of their own internal culture and values. Only by rigorous practice of their "cleaned-up" religions, will the right values emerge in the social life of Dalits. And only when these social values emerge, will Dalits become a self-sufficient culture, independent of and disinterested in Hinduism. When such a role model Budhist (and other rational anti-caste religions) society emerges in reality, comfortable with its past, present and future and actually starts impacting popular Indian culture through books, movies, TV-serials in a manner, which is fully independent of the "Hindu", that will be the real day when every Hindu will start wanting to be a Baudh. RSS fears: That will be the master-stroke of Dr. Ambedkar. This is the fear of people like Dattopant. These fears might not come true, if Dalits focus on Hindu-hatred alone and do not practice the excellent religion bequeathed to us by Dr. Ambedkar. There is nothing that Dr. Ambedkar's legacy cannot give Dalits, if only they imbibe his legacy in thought, speech and action. It will bring social, economic and political power. 3. The risk of RSS succeeding in stealing the Ambedkarite plank is high and the implications can be drastic for the movement. See the following article for example: http://www.hvk.org/articles/0500/53.html There are a few other books about initiatives of SSM and the Dattopant Thengdi team of people. Some material is available online. Corrupt Dalit leaders: RSS is systematically destroying the credibility of the corrupt leaders among Dalits by exposing them. I predict that this trend will only accelerate. And if Dalits do not start practising Ambedkarite Budhism, I predict that it will not take long to see the fellows like Bhikuji Idate create a strong Ambedkarite Budhist contingent inside the RSS with some fancy theory to fit hitch them to the Hindutva bandwagon. Once this happens, the radical independence of the Dalit "Budhist" plank from the Hindutva bandwagon will be lost. If even a few senior Dalit Budhist leaders get misguided into the RSS flock due to lack of social understanding, the dangers are massive. If this happens, the main reason why Dr. Ambedkar chose Budhism for Dalits (radical independence) will be lost. The Hindutva folks will get to say lot of things which will become increasingly difficult for Dalits to question and debate. Once this happens, if they set up a proper working religious structure for Ambedkarite Budhism, which the Baudha Jan Panchayat and the Baudha Mahasabha have failed to popularise in general, that can pose a significant challenge and misguide generations of Ambedkarites. That is the strategy of Hindutva. They might steal thus our Ambedkarite legacy from right under our noses, because most Dalits are not rigorously practising it. The most important defence to stop them is to evolve our religious structure quickly and practice religion rigorously. Posted by Save India, Save Buddhist in India at 2:10 AM
