India and the Dalit Community

Supporting the Legacy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar

Clear View Project works with the Dalit or “untouchable” community in India, supporting the legacy of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar who served the poorest of the poor and brought Buddhism back to India.

As chronicled by Donald Rothberg and Alan Senauke:

In 1956, Ambedkar publicly converted to Buddhism, receiving the traditional Three Refuges and Five Precepts from a senior Buddhist monk. Then Ambedkar himself turned and offered the refuges and precepts to the nearly 400,000 Dalits in attendance. However, only six weeks following this historic conversion, he passed away, three days after he had completed his abiding work, The Buddha and His Dhamma.

His untimely death left a void of leadership among the Dalits that took years to fill. Ambedkar reframed traditional Buddhism—emphasizing its social teachings, and the understanding of karma as moral opportunity rather than fate —in ways that would clearly resonate with and uplift the oppressed and dispossessed. Much like Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders, and like many now working to connect Buddhist practice and attention to various forms of oppression—linked with race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual orientation—Ambedkar saw the inseparability of spirituality and social liberation.

To learn more about the legacy of Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit community, see “Ambedkar’s Children: Indian Buddhism Reborn Among the Untouchables” and “Heirs To Ambedkar: The Rebirth of Engaged Buddhism in India.”