Explained : The Chimera of Power: Buddhism, Identity Politics, and the Unfulfilled Ambedkarite Revolution in Uttar Pradesh and Its Impact

Buddhism as a religion owes its origin to present-day UP, as after attaining knowledge (Nibban), the Buddha gave his first sermon at Sarnath, near Banaras. He and his pupils travelled widely in and around UP and Bihar, propagating his ideas and philosophy before finally attaining Mahaparinirvan (death) at Kushinara (current Kushinagar, UP) in c. 483 BCE. Since then, Buddhism travelled far and wide in India and across different parts of the world, especially in South and East Asia. It developed very firm grounds where it assimilated local cults and popular traditions within its fold, manifesting in the emergence of different sects of Buddhism like Mahayana and Vajrayana. Interestingly, just a few centuries after its inception, Buddhism ceased to exist as a mainstream religion or even a mediocre religious force in the lands where it originated, although it dominated religious life in neighbouring areas like Sri Lanka, China, Japan, Cambodia, and especially in parts of Burma, where it has retained its purest form till now. Historians and scholars have given explanations for the emergence, expansion, and extinction of Buddhism from Indian lands in terms of various causative factors, which I will not deal with, as it does not fall under the purview of this essay. The subject matter of this article, on the other hand, tries to develop insights into the process of the re-emergence of Buddhism in the west and northern parts of India in the twentieth century under and after the Ambedkarite movement.

In post-independence India, large conversions of Dalits to Buddhism in Maharashtra and UP have taken place over decades. This phenomenon finds its origin in the message of Ambedkar when he asked the Dalits to leave the exploitative Hindu religion. He declared at the Yeola conference (Nasik) in 1935 that he was born a Hindu but would not die as one. Consequently, he, together with his followers, converted to Buddhism in 1956 at Nagpur. This process of conversion has to be seen in the context of politics through which the Dalits were seeking assertion. The conversion drive in Maharashtra was led by the leaders of the Republican Party of India after the death of Ambedkar, but soon it faced a setback with the emergence of the Dalit Panthers movement, which propounded the alternative idea of an independent Dalit culture. But such was not the case in UP, where initially the RPI leaders propagated Buddhism among Dalits, but later, with the emergence of identity politics in the state, Kanshiram and BSP leaders used Buddhism as part of the symbols of political identity against savarna domination. Thus, with the development of the Bahujan Movement, Buddhism for the Dalits has mostly remained part of the political strategy of assertion within an atmosphere of politically charged intensities. On the contrary, in the socio-religious sphere, Buddhism has remained very less influential among the Dalits, and their religious practices are very much a blend of Hindu, Buddhist, and local traditions.

The case of UP is very interesting because specific circumstances were there to nourish the Dalit-Buddhist adjustment. Right from the medieval period, lower castes in this area have been looking for alternatives in the religious sphere to leave the exploitative Hindu fold and achieve social equality within the caste-based social hierarchy. One such alternative was provided by the Kabir Panth sect, where Kabir criticized orthodox and irrational aspects of Hinduism and Islam; Dalits saw it as a channel through which inequality-based Hinduism could be left behind, and most of the members of the sect were Dalits. Later on, after the 1980s, many of the Kabir Panthis converted to Buddhism, and the sant became bhikkhus. The sects of Gorakhnath and Jaharveer Gogga Pir also have large followings among Dalits in UP till today. In the 1920s, Swami Achyutanand started the Adi-Dharm movement as an alternative before the Dalits against the social exclusion of Hinduism. When Ambedkar shifted his base in 1942 to Delhi, neighbouring UP came under his influence, and with Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism, the message of Buddha reached the masses of UP. From then onwards, the Dalit population in the state has constantly come closer to Buddhism.

UP has nearly 21% Scheduled Castes (SCs) in the total state population, and among the SCs, the single Jatav caste forms 57%. Out of the total Buddhist population of the state, Jatavas constitute nearly 90%. The census data shows that 2,517 Buddhist people were recorded in the census year 1951, which reached 302,031 in the year 2001. Though this is only the official number of people who deliberately recorded themselves under Buddhism, the actual number of people claiming and practicing (though in a modified way) the religion may be too high, as nearly all the Jatavas would accept Ambedkar as their cultural hero and Buddhism as their emancipatory religion. After Ambedkar, the task of propagation of Buddhism was taken up by the organizations established by him: The Buddhist Society of India (BSI) and The Republican Party of India. Initially, the Jatavas of many districts of western Uttar Pradesh (Agra, Aligarh, Meerut, and Pilibhit) started claiming themselves as Buddhists and organized many conversion ceremonies. The BSI was quite active all over UP, and Agra was the main centre of its activities. Two prominent leaders of RPI, Buddha Priya Maurya (earlier Bhagwati Prasad Maurya) of Aligarh and Sangh Priya Gautam (earlier Khan Chandra Gautam) of Bulandsheher, were very important in developing the sense of political implications of embracing Buddhism among the Jatavas of the area.

After a period of respite, from the 1980s, the consolidation of Buddhism with the idea of emancipation and assertion of Dalits reached new heights, and the perception of Dalits about the emancipatory role of Buddhism was also changing. It was the time when the BSP was developing its agenda of making the Dalits the rulers of India, through the means of identity politics, of course. Its founder Kanshiram used to say that the permanent problem of the Dalits in India is cultural, and the solution he brought forth was political. So, according to him, after attaining political power, Dalits could themselves create their independent and respectful culture. As the party claimed to be Ambedkarite, it was obvious that their program was to have relations with Buddhism. For example, many of the party leaders and activists converted to Buddhism with their families and followers, and many of them changed their names, and some even became monks. After forming the government in the state, the very first thing that Mayawati did was to change the names of places in the state to Buddhist names. Government schemes were given Buddhist names. She even constructed a large number of parks and public places having Buddhist icons and symbols. All this has actually brought the core supporters of the Party, the Jatavas, very close to Buddhist symbols, but mostly for political reasons. But things have turned so complex within this atmosphere of politically charged identities that even Buddha and Ambedkar could not have imagined. The sort of religion that Jatavas practice is just an intermixture of Buddhism, Hinduism, and local traditions. They believe in the teachings of Buddha and Ambedkar, but they also worship Hindu gods and local deities. Their marriage ceremonies are done both according to Hindu and Buddhist rituals. It can be said that this amalgamation of Buddhism with other local and popular traditions by the Dalits has to be seen within the context of the politics of adjusting identities. By adjusting identities, I mean the unequal adjustment of various identities to consolidate the process of assertion.

But this Dalit Buddhist adjustment, and the related identity politics of the BSP, has actually proved dangerous for the prospects of Dalit emancipation. This can be explained in terms of two factors. Firstly, the BSP, by claiming to be working on Ambedkar’s ideals and at the same time propagating caste-identity-based Buddhism, has in turn distorted Ambedkarite Buddhism and eventually has punctured its revolutionary changing potential. In Ambedkar’s own words, “Hinduism believes in God. Buddhism has no God. Hinduism believes in soul. According to Buddhism there is no soul. Hinduism believes in Chaturvarna and the caste system. Buddhism has no place for the Caste System and Chaturvarna.” So, his struggle for the annihilation of caste actually matched with Buddhist ideals. For him, a successful political system of India would be dependent on Buddhist principles of associated-life and a caste-less and class-less society rather than merely a functional government. He writes, “The roots of democracy lie not in the form of Government, Parliamentary or otherwise. A democracy is more than a government. It is primarily a mode of associated living. The roots of Democracy are to be searched in the social relationship, in the terms of associated life between the people who form a society”. Thus, he saw democracy and Buddhism as complementary to each other. The politics of the BSP, on the other hand, is based upon the consolidation of politically charged caste identities. The Bahujan was nothing but a majoritarian community based upon the alliance of different castes. There were no programmes at all towards Ambedkar’s ideal of annihilation of caste. On the contrary, their politics has actually contributed to the consolidation of caste.

Secondly, this specific politics has brought the Dalits of the state to such a wretched level that it is very difficult for them to move towards the other alternative anymore, towards class-based politics. The Dalits have been imprinted with the symbols of Ambedkar and Buddha on a caste basis in such a manner that they cannot skip this specific politics. The Buddha, who once was a social revolutionary for Ambedkar, has become nothing but an empty repository of a symbol, looted of all the politically transformative qualities for the Dalits, by associating with whom they foresee their distorted emancipation. Alas! The chimera of political power that Kanshiram had created for the Dalits has not proved fruitful and has certainly made the path more difficult for an Ambedkarite revolution.

In conclusion, the trajectory of Buddhism among Dalits in Uttar Pradesh represents a profound paradox. It highlights the tension between religion as a vehicle for spiritual and social revolution and its co-option as a tool for political mobilisation. The Ambedkarite conversion to Buddhism was envisioned as a radical break—a renunciation of the hierarchical Hindu social order and an embrace of a doctrine premised on reason, morality, and egalitarianism. However, as practiced and propagated within the political crucible of UP, particularly under the BSP’s stewardship, this emancipatory project has been largely subdued. Buddhism has been strategically essentialised into a set of symbols—statues, renamed cities, and public iconography—to cement a particular caste identity (predominantly Jatav) rather than to foster the caste-annihilating consciousness Ambedkar championed. The result is a syncretic, politically convenient identity that allows for symbolic assertion without necessitating a deep, transformative engagement with Buddha’s or Ambedkar’s core philosophical challenges to orthodoxy, superstition, and social stratification.

This legacy presents a formidable challenge for the future of Dalit emancipation. The political instrumentalisation of Buddhism has created a resilient but limited form of identity politics. While it successfully galvanised a community, provided a sense of pride, and achieved episodic political power, it has also built walls. It has potentially isolated Dalits from broader, multi-caste solidarities based on shared economic struggles (class), and it has left the internal hierarchies within Dalit communities and the oppressive structure of caste itself largely unchallenged. The path forward, therefore, requires a critical re-examination. It necessitates reclaiming the radical, social revolutionary core of Ambedkarite Buddhism—its insistence on prajña (wisdom), karuna (compassion), and samata (equality)—from the confines of electoral symbolism. True emancipation may lie not in discarding the political identity forged over decades, but in transcending it; in using the platform and confidence built through identity politics to launch a more profound attack on caste itself, in alliance with all oppressed groups. The “Political Buddha” of UP stands at a crossroads: one path leads to the perpetual recycling of symbolic gestures within the existing game of caste politics; the other, more arduous path, leads back to the Buddha’s and Ambedkar’s original visions—a society founded on genuine associated living, liberated from the shackles of identity and hierarchy. The choice between a politics of representation and a politics of transformation remains the unresolved dilemma of Dalit-Buddhist assertion in India’s most populous state.

Skand Priya teaches history at Shivaji College, University of Delhi. He can be reached at [email protected].