Editing India (section)

=== Contemporary Ambedkarite Movements ===

Ambedkar's legacy continues to shape both Indian Buddhism and Dalit politics. The Bahujan Samaj Party, founded in 1984 by Kanshi Ram and later led by Mayawati, mobilized Dalit communities electorally while drawing on Ambedkarite ideology, though it is not an explicitly Buddhist organization. A more militant strand of Ambedkarite politics emerged with the Dalit Panthers, founded in 1972 and explicitly modeled on the Black Panther Party.

==== Namdeo Dhasal and Raja Dhale ====
{{Main|Namdeo Dhasal}}
{{Main|Raja Dhale}}

Namdeo Dhasal (1949–2014) and Raja Dhale (1940–2019), co-founders of the Dalit Panthers, fused Ambedkar, Marx, and street-level radical politics, treating Buddhism less as formal doctrine than as revolutionary consciousness and a moral language for militant organizing; Dhale in particular led Buddhist conversion ceremonies explicitly framed as acts of class struggle.

Contemporary intellectuals and activists continue this tradition in varied forms: the political philosopher Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd (b. 1952) blends Gramscian and Ambedkarite analysis to position Buddhism as a civilizational alternative for India; Dhammachari Lokamitra (b. 1947), co-founder of the Nagaloka education center, has developed a vision of the sangha as a discipline of political transformation; Bhante Surai Sasai (b. 1935) has led campaigns to reclaim the Mahabodhi Temple for Buddhist control; and the poet and publicist S. Anand represents a younger generation combining anti-caste politics with serious Buddhist practice.

The rise of Hindu nationalism and the Bharatiya Janata Party since the 1990s has intensified both the pressures on, and the salience of, Ambedkarite Buddhism: continuing anti-Dalit violence — including the widely publicized 2016 Una flogging incident in Gujarat — demonstrates that conversion has not eliminated caste-based discrimination, even as Buddhist identity has become an increasingly explicit platform from which to contest Hindu-nationalist politics. Scholars and activists including Gail Omvedt and Anand Teltumbde have extended Ambedkar's analysis to connect Dalit liberation with broader critiques of capitalism, patriarchy, and environmental destruction, while Ambedkarite feminists have in turn challenged patriarchal patterns within both traditional Buddhist institutions and Ambedkarite organizations themselves.