Editing Marxist Interpretations of Buddhism in India (section)

== Later Syntheses ==

=== Sharad Patil ===
Sharad Patil (1925–2014) was a Marathi historian, Sanskritist, and political organizer who tried to join Marxism with the thought of Phule and Ambedkar and, later, with Buddhist epistemology. However, this account rests on one chapter, by Sarwate, with name-level mentions in the volume edited by Pradeep Gokhale.<ref name="sarwate2">Sarwate (2025), "The Caste Subconscious", pp. 211–213, 224 n. 2; Gokhale, Pradeep P. (Ed.) (2021). ''Classical Buddhism, Neo-Buddhism and the Question of Caste''. Routledge, p. xx.</ref> Born on 17 September 1925 into a Satyashodhak family in Dhule district, Khandesh, he joined the communist student movement, worked as an artist for the party, and was a full-time activist of the CPI(M) from its founding in 1964 until 1978, when he left after an internal struggle over caste and founded the Satyashodhak Communist Party.<ref>Sarwate (2025), "The Caste Subconscious", p. 212 and n. 2 (p. 224).</ref> His early program was "Marxism-Phule-Ambedkarism," which he later described as a historical document, and from the early 2000s he developed what he called "Sautrantika Marxism," joining Marxism to the Sautrantika school of Dignaga and Dharmakirti, and a method of "multilinear historical materialism."<ref>Sarwate (2025), "The Caste Subconscious", pp. 211–213, 217.</ref>

Patil held that Indian Marxists treated caste as superstructure and failed, and that Indian Marxism was itself "inherently Brahmanical."<ref>Sarwate (2025), "The Caste Subconscious", p. 212.</ref> He found that Buddhist impermanence "resonated deeply with dialectics," and he translated dialectics into Marathi as ''anitya'', later ''kshanikavada''.<ref>Sarwate (2025), "The Caste Subconscious", p. 213 and n. 7 (p. 225).</ref> He argued that the Buddha led a revolution that ended slavery based on varna and promoted jati against it, a claim that Sarwate lists among Patil's constructed myths, and he took Dharmakirti's list of signs of ignorance, which includes caste vanity, as the basis of an anti-caste epistemology.<ref>Sarwate (2025), "The Caste Subconscious", pp. 215–217, 223.</ref> He faulted Ambedkar's account of jati as static and unhistorical.<ref>Sarwate (2025), "The Caste Subconscious", pp. 214, 223.</ref> The reception is divided: Gail Omvedt criticized his reliance on literary rather than archaeological evidence, and Gokhale said that applying Buddhist idealist philosophies against caste is "like using an axe to shave one's beard," while Sarwate calls Patil's categories coherent and internally consistent.<ref>Sarwate (2025), "The Caste Subconscious", pp. 212, 222–224.</ref>

=== Tulsi Ram ===

The Hindi Dalit writer Tulsi Ram (1949–2015), a professor of international studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a specialist on the former Soviet Union, is a minor case. Kapoor's reading of his autobiography ''Murdahiya'' (2010) describes a life shaped by the communist movement and by an intimate relationship with Buddhism as a possible anti-caste outlook; no formal conversion or organizational Buddhist role appears in the pages read.<ref>Kapoor, [given name] (2025). "Rewriting Life: Caste, Body and Time in Tulsi Ram's ''Murdahiya''". In: Banerjee, Prathama (Ed.), ''Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages'': 231–243. Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 231–232, 236–240.</ref>