Pics: Sphoorty Ullal
News: The Hindu

Mangalore, Feb 6: Kancha Ilaya, revolutionary Dalit writer, has dedicated his latest book, “Post-Hindu India”, to the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Karl Marx and Ambedkar, referring to all of them as prophets.

He was delivering the keynote address at a seminar on “Ambedkar and the contemporary Dalit movement in India”, organised by Mangalore University’s Centre for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Studies here on Friday. He said that Ambedkar had influenced a large number of people across a wide area.

Sangham

The Buddha, through his concept of “sangham” or the communitarian, created the first organised religious denomination at a time when Hinduism was disorganised and Islam and Christianity were yet to be born. While the Buddha preached a life of spirituality, Jesus was the first to introduce the concepts of “God” and “all are equal before God” at a time when Israel was a loose collection of hierarchical groups with the Samaritans at the bottom.

Reformation

Muhammad, he said, reformed the Arab world, which was a constellation of tribes before the onset of his philosophy. And Marx managed to capture the imagination of a post-industrialised Europe, where the workers were an oppressed lot.

Ambedkar attempted to breach, what was in his time, the last edifice of oppression in the world by liberating the ‘lower’ castes of the Indian subcontinent. “His liberation of Dalits by encouraging them to embrace Buddhism made him a prophet of equal standing with the rest,” he said.

However, the placing of Ambedkar as a prophet alongside the likes of the Buddha could be a complex proposition for the Dalits in the country who had embraced Buddhism. “After all, there cannot be two prophets within one religion,” he said.

Referring to Ambedkar’s 1936 speech, where he had said that he was born a Hindu but would not die as one, Mr. Illaya said, “I say that Ambedkar was not even born a Hindu.”

Mr. Illaya said that Ambedkar came from an untouchable caste.