Editing Dalit Buddhism (section)

== Ambedkar and the Conversion of 1956 ==

{{Main|BR Ambedkar}}

At Yeola in October 1935 Ambedkar declared that although he had been born a Hindu he would not die one, and over the next two decades he studied alternative religions before choosing Buddhism.<ref>Gokhale, Balkrishna Govind (1999). "Theravada Buddhism and Modernization: Anagarika Dhammapala and B.R. Ambedkar". ''Journal of Asian and African Studies'' 34.1: 33–46, p. 42.</ref> On 14 October 1956, at Nagpur, he and his wife Savita took the Three Refuges and Five Precepts from the monk U Chandramani and then administered twenty-two vows to the crowd, renouncing Hindu deities and rites; he died on 6 December of that year.<ref>Rodrigues, Valerian (2024). ''Ambedkar's Political Philosophy: A Grammar of Public Life from the Social Margins''. Palgrave Macmillan, ch. 1; Ober (2023), ''Dust on the Throne'', pp. 185–186. Ambedkar's own account of the conversion and his arguments for Buddhism are on his page and are not repeated here.</ref> Pradeep Gokhale notes that Ambedkar was a lay follower (''upasaka'') who administered the refuges and precepts himself to thousands, a departure from the practice that only monks do so.<ref>Gokhale (Ed.) (2021), ''Classical Buddhism, Neo-Buddhism and the Question of Caste'', p. 265 (ch. 13, by Gokhale).</ref>

The number converted at Nagpur is reported differently in the sources, and the differences are recorded here and not resolved. The ''Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism'' says that "an additional 400,000" converted at Nagpur in its chapter on India (p. 47) and gives 600,000 in another chapter (p. 388); Hunt says "lakhs" (hundreds of thousands); Sarah LeVine and David Gellner write "half a million"; Meera Kosambi, reporting a figure of Sukhathankar, gives "two lakh" (200,000); and Aloysius writes "more than 300,000."<ref>Geary and Mukherjee (2017), "Buddhism in Contemporary India", p. 47; the Handbook, p. 388 (ch. 20); Hunt (2014), ''Hindi Dalit Literature'', p. 46; LeVine, Sarah, & David N. Gellner (2005). ''Rebuilding Buddhism: The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-Century Nepal''. Harvard University Press, p. 9; Kosambi (Ed.) (2010), ''Essential Writings''; Aloysius (1998), ''Religion as Emancipatory Identity'', pp. 103, 186–187.</ref> A related difficulty concerns the Handbook's wording: "additional" implies a prior Buddhist population, which the Handbook describes as limited, before the movement, to the Northeast and what is now Bangladesh, the Himalayan border populations, and Nepali ethnic groups.<ref>Geary and Mukherjee (2017), "Buddhism in Contemporary India", pp. 36, 47.</ref> The twenty-two vows are counted by LeVine and Gellner as including seven that are explicitly anti-Hindu or anti-Brahmin.<ref>LeVine and Gellner (2005), ''Rebuilding Buddhism'', p. 10.</ref> Sponberg, as reported in the Handbook, says that Ambedkar left no comprehensive model for applying the Dhamma.<ref>Geary and Mukherjee (2017), "Buddhism in Contemporary India", p. 48 (reporting Sponberg 1996).</ref>