Rajasthan: Fed up of the caste based violence by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) across India, a group of around 250 Hindu Dalits who were residing in Rajasthan have adopted Buddhism.
One of the newly convert Buddhist Rajendra told media that they were not allowed to visit temples and worship, so they had no reason to follow such a religion as they were not considered as Hindus.
They also floated the idols and pictures of Hindu deities into the Baithali River of the village after taking out a procession. The history of conversion movements clearly shows that Dalits have actively “reject” Hinduism.
The very idea of rejecting Hinduism goes against the Hindu nationalists’ dream of “Hindu Rashtra”, which is fundamentally a concept based on upper caste supremacy.
Although conversion into different religions may not free Dalits from clutches of caste, as upper castes maintain their supremacy in other religions too, the very act of conversion prevents the right-wing from achieving their goal of homogenization.
In 2013, in Gujarat’s Junagadh when around 60,000 Dalits and members of other lowered castes converted to Buddhism, BJP government ordered an investigation and arrested local Dalit- Buddhist leaders. In 2014 in Madhya Pradesh when four Dalits converted to Islam due to caste humiliation and oppression, the police arrested them.
In the first half of the 20th century, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the Indian jurist, economist and social reformer who inspired the Dalit Buddist movement, waged an open and sustained war against Hinduism and the caste system. He once said the Indian history is nothing but a “history of mortal conflict between Buddhism and Brahmanism”.
However, Dalit conversions establish the fact that religion can be a potent tool for subverting and challenging hierarchies of caste, and therefore falsify the Marxian claim of religion being “the opium of masses”. Web Desk
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