DR. B. R. AMBEDKAR, a so-called “untouchable” by birth and later the first law minister in Independent India, was the architect of India’s constitution in the Nehru government. Perhaps one of the most remarkable geniuses of his time in India, he saw clearly that while you can change things in writing, doing so has little relevance in practice. He turned to religion to explore the emancipation of his people because he realized that all caste was a state of mind, a notion, and therefore that the role of religion must be to emancipate the mind. Buddhism was his answer. He went on to conduct mass conversions, bringing hundreds of thousands of “untouchables” into Buddhism and out of the caste system into which they’d been born. He knew liberation, for his people, was freedom from systemic oppression. In turning the wheel of dharma, he also revolutionized it.
When he died, however, the Buddhist world did not rally to support his work or the people who had joined him in his cause, instead labeling what he had done as “political conversion.” But how can one separate the political from the personal? From the spiritual?
Ambedkar modified the Buddhist tradition to help it directly meet the needs of his own community, the people in India who were the most oppressed. He challenged the second noble truth by stating that suffering was not always due to craving. He asked, “But might there be circumstances in which there are innocent victims? There are children or whole communities who are marginalized
