Ambedkar

[Guest]

It could be neo-Buddhists. Otherwise it could be general Ambedkarites. (Not all Ambedkarites are neo-Buddhists as Koenraad Elst had indicated. Some are generally anti-Hindu groups that just sided with Ambedkar on certain issues like conversion out of Hinduism. They often conceal that Ambedkar was greatly opposed to Islam, Christianity and that he knew of Islam having been the cause of Buddhism's disappearance from India.)

http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch12.htm <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Christian “liberation theologians”, Islamic missionaries, assorted separatists and like-minded anti-Hindu or anti-India activists are still highlighting the AIT </b>in order to:
1) Mobilize lower-caste people, supposedly the “subdued natives” forced into the Apartheid prisonhouse of caste by the invaders, against the upper-caste people, supposedly the progeny of the “invading Aryans”. <b>All this propaganda is carried out in the name of the low-caste leader Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, eventhough Ambedkar himself had strongly rejected the AIT </b>and the notion that caste status has a racial origin: “European students of caste (…), themselves impregnated by colour prejudices, very readily imagined it to be the chief factor in the Caste problem. But nothing can be farther from the truth, and Dr. Ketkar is right when he insists that ‘all the princes whether they belonged to the so-called Aryan race or to the so-called Dravidian race, were Aryas. Whether a tribe or a family was racially Aryan or Dravidian was a question which never troubled the people of India until foreign scholars came in and began to draw the line.’”32 <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books...ya/ch9.htm <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->There are also Dalit fringe groups who demand a separate Dalitastan or Achootistan. <b>Some of these groups are militantly atheist (like the Dravidian movement), some are Christian-or Muslim-leaning, some profess Buddhism of the Ambedkarite variety. </b>The one thing that all these separatist movements without exception have in common at the ideological level, is their hatred of Hinduism. <b>Every separatist movement in India is an anti-Hindu movement</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
But separatism is anti-national (so it is no longer limited to anti-Hinduism). Ambedkar was against separatism:
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books.../notes.htm <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->238 <b>Ambedkar was a nationalist</b>, and he saw through the anti-national, colonial inspiration of the Aryan Invasions theory (which the British called the furniture of Empire). It is because of his nationalism that <b>he refused offers to convert to the predatory religions that continued their invasion of India. He also declared that the choice of Buddhism for mass conversion was the one least harmful to the country.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Although he was a nationalist, he was anti-Hindu. As stated on the same page: "It was a political conversion, just like the mass conversions his grandson has been leading in late 1990." <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->228 When Ambedkar led several lakhs of followers into mass conversion to Buddhism, he extracted from them 22 promises, essentially to break with all Hindu practices. This is <b>totally un-Buddhist, as was pointed out at the time by experienced Buddhists from Myanmar and Sri Lanka</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/wiah/ch11.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Unlike the Dalai Lama, who emphasizes the closeness of Hinduism and Buddhism before his Indian hosts, the <b>Ambedkarite tendency in Buddhism is overtly anti-Hindu and tries to maximize the separateness of Buddhism</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> A Taiwanese (Buddhist) friend of mine noticed this too when a special Buddhist occasion was organised at university (some years ago now). She said that Buddhists of India (she was speaking of neo-Buddhists, not those of Ladakh or the Tibetans) seem to have no knowledge of Buddhism, but dislike Hinduism. She told me they objected to some Hindu Gods that are also considered Buddhist (in Taiwan and elsewhere). At the time I thought it might have been a few vocal neo-Buddhists. I'm not so sure anymore. It's a shame if it were true that all or even many neo-Buddhists know but little of their chosen religion.

http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/wiah/ch1.htm <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->And the contrast with Ambedkar’s Dalit movement persists when we study the long-term results: “The legacy of Narayan Guru is a society elevated, in accord, the lower classes educated and full of dignity and a feeling of self-worth. The legacy of Ambedkar is a bunch screaming at everyone, a bunch always demanding and denouncing, a bunch mired in self-pity and hatred, a society at war with itself.”<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->