Buddhism and Dalits : Social Philosophy and Traditions
| Date: 21 April 2011, 10:15
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..Preface
Buddhism is nothing if it is not social. A man from Kapilavastu
on the border of Nepal saw the interaction of interests among
individuals, associations, kingdoms and general folks with
murderous hunt for enthronement, cut-throat competition between
kins, rule of might over meek from a corner of Uruvela forest and
found the way leading to the end of this misery and professed and
propagated his vision of new and fresh dispensation by words of
mouth while treading the rugged lands from east to west and n:orth
to south on foot for forty five years and breathed his last at the
age of eighty years in Kusinagar. This was Siddhartha Gautama
the Buddha whose legacy is transmitted to the world through
Buddhist countries and missionaries who cared it more than their
own and passed it on to us at present.
Buddhism as philosophy appealed to the rational and as art to
the artists. In the later half of the 19th century the attention of
European scholars was drawn to the study of the Buddha and his
religion. The story of Buddhism in India extended to Far East with
its ramifications into different schools and sects, its literature, its
education, its rulers and writers, during the fifth and seventh
centuries A.D., its art, its revival and its present status in the
world.
The most compassionate feature of Buddhism was its adoption
of Dalits as its own and rendering service to uplift them on par
with generality. Dr. Ambedkar, the 14th Dalai Lama, Yen. Thich
Nhat Hanh, Sulak Sivaraksha and alike belonged to this social
stream of Buddhism. They have always espoused the cause of the
most degraded and downtrodden sections of society and set them
free from the thraldom of social slavery, economic exploitation,
educational backwardness and political subjugation.
Out of 14 million Dalits in India none falls above ultra peor or
poverty line poor. As such they suffer from poverty including
deprivation of food, income and employment and, being socially
disadvantaged group Dalits suffer from backwardness in education,
discrimination in employment. atrocities and suppression in social,
cultural and religious matter. Needless to stress that compared to
SCs and STs, let alone OBCs and General Category the Buddhist
group in Maharashtra has greatest incidence of poverty. No radical
change is possible without Dalit participation in the midst of
capitalist privatized corporate market economy neglecting human
labour and its contribution for new products and new order of
humanity.
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