How new Ambedkarites are busy undermining Ambedkar and his legacy

Mr Rajiv Malhotra

It is well known that BR Ambedkar turned to Buddhism for the upliftment of Dalits. But what is not widely understood is that he changed Buddhism in fundamental ways – away from its spiritual focus and towards a social-political focus. To achieve this, he did away with the karma theory and meditation practice, both of which are integral to the teachings of Buddha. This enabled him to differentiate it from Hinduism. He wanted to reject Hinduism because of Gandhi’s position on caste.

But his rejection of Christianity and Islam was even more emphatic. Ambedkar was uncompromising in insisting that Indians should not adopt either Christianity or Islam because these religions were alien to the ethos and core values of Indians. He feared that they would create conflicts and cause divisions among Indians. He also explicitly rejected communism.

Another remarkable quality in his uncompromising patriotism was that he left the US and UK after his higher education there and returned to India to pursue his Nation-building ambitions. He did not like the idea of championing his reformist ideas from American or British soil or in alignment with any of their institutions.

Unfortunately, Ambedkar didn’t live long enough to fully implement his modified version of Buddhism and be able to demonstrate that this new religion would succeed in uplifting his followers. After his death, his followers lacked the creativity and leadership to advance his pioneering ideas further.

This vacuum of creative leadership has been filled by Harvard University’s poster boy, Suraj Yengde, who has proclaimed himself as Ambedkar’s successor. Yengde assumes that it is his destiny to step into Ambedkar’s shoes and complete the social transformation Ambedkar had started.

However, using his Harvard perch and alliance with Black Americans and the Woke movement, Yengde has positioned himself in ways that betray Ambedkar’s patriotism. Without support from the Harvard power nexus, he could not have become so prominent considering that he openly propagates falsehoods and frequently contradicts himself without remorse or inhibition.

Yengde is on a warpath with Hinduism, and more broadly with Indian social and cultural values, in ways that compromise India’s integrity and sovereignty. As our recent book Snakes in the Ganga has documented, Yengde calls Shankaracharya, a legendary intellectual leader of Hinduism, an ‘ugly head dumpster’; and he accuses him of ‘killing many monks’.

Without citing any shred of evidence, Yengde has said : “When the Buddha came on to the consciousness of India, he became the biggest threat to the Vedic caste system because Buddha just crumbled the house of cards of caste system”.

Yengde’s vitriolic hatred for Brahmans leads him to want to dismantle Hinduism. What he ignores is that Indian traditions, Hindu and Buddhist alike, have thrived on open and honest debates among experts. There was never any form of what is today being practiced as cancel culture. Indians of all persuasions have prided themselves by engaging in logical arguments instead of being fixated on dogma or political rivalry. The cancel culture championed at Harvard today is antithetical to the path of the Buddha and inconsistent with Ambedkar’s ideology.

– Mr Rajiv Malhotra (Courtesy : Excerpts from an article in FirstPost.com, 23.12.2022; Mr Rajiv Malhotra is an Indian-born American Hindutva ideologue, Founder of Infinity Foundation.)