(RNS) — Last month marked the 10th Dalit History Month, a worldwide, community-led observance recognizing the people and events throughout history that raised up India’s oppressed minority class, once referred to as untouchables.
During discussions and retreats celebrating Dalit achievements, the top name on many minds was Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, known as Babasaheb, or “respected father.” The visionary social reformer and law minister who died in 1956 dedicated his life to abolishing the long-held caste hierarchy in India.
Ambedkar was known for leading movements to assert rights of Dalits, or members of the lowest caste, to public water, education and Hindu temples. Eventually, an affirmative action program was enshrined, and untouchability was eradicated within the Constitution of India. His followers are known as “Ambedkarites.”
Yet the decades Ambedkar spent attempting to reform the Hindu religion, which he saw as inherently structured by caste, ended in one of the largest mass conversions to any religion in history. Following his lead, nearly half a million Dalits in India converted to Buddhism from Hinduism in a single ceremony on Oct. 14, 1956. It was a socio-political statement that rejected Hindu justification for caste division — specifically the varna and jati systems found in some of the earliest Hindu texts tha …