Concept

Dalit Buddhist movement

Overview

The Dalit Buddhist movement is a religious as well as a socio-political movement among Dalits in India which was started by B. R. Ambedkar. He reinterpreted Buddhism and created a new school of Buddhism called Navayana. The movement has sought to be a socially and politically engaged form of Buddhism.

The movement was launched in 1956 by Ambedkar when nearly half a million Dalits, formerly untouchables, joined him and converted to Navayana Buddhism. It rejected Hinduism, challenged the caste system in India and promoted the rights of the Dalit community. The movement also rejected the teachings of Mahayana, Theravada and Vajrayana traditions of Buddhism; instead, the movement claims to be a form of engaged Buddhism as taught by Ambedkar.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie. In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the…
Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto
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Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have in every case formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavor, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still…
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
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According to this account we may say that the diffusion of our great doctrines in the East began from the setting up of this image. If it had not been through that Maitreya, the great spiritual master who is to be the successor of the Sâkya, who could have caused the 'Three Precious Ones,' [3] to be proclaimed so far, and the people of those border lands to know our Law? We know of a truth that the opening of the…
Confucius, Chinese literature
Close in meaning to Dalit Buddhist movement; the term itself is not named.
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Philosophers who discussed Dalit Buddhist movement

B. R. Ambedkar

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Neo-Vedanta.

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