Conversion as a Thematic Site: Academic Representations of Ambedkar’s Buddhist Turn

Abstract

Many scholars have written on the conversion of Bhimrao Ambedkar from Hinduism to Buddhism, trying to explain it. In this paper, I argue that a hermeneutics of conversion is needed to understand what this transition means in the larger academic community. Through using the concept of the 'thematic site', a narrative trope that draws on the Lacanian idea of the 'point de capiton' (also known as the 'nodal point' or 'quilting point'), to investigate how the invisible is evoked in the visible of these scholarly accounts of Ambedkar's Buddhism, this paper argues that academic accounts of this conversion rearticulate colonial dichotomies of modern/traditional, mapping them onto the binary of West/East. That is, by tracing common academic representations of Ambedkar's conversion, this paper posits that there is an obfuscated relation that is articulated in the depiction of this event, a connection that invisibly connects Ambedkar's act to colonial constructions of knowledge.

Interpreting conversion in antiquity (and beyond)

“…More recently Audra Simpson (2009) reread the famous tale of Eunice Williams, captivated by Mohawk raiders in 1707 and ultimately refusing to return home to her White, Protestant family in Massachusetts, as a “discursive formation,” “a story of colonial alchemy, of recognition of political subject‐formation” (p. 106–7). Shane Gannon (2011) looked at academic representations of the conversion of Bhimrao Ambedkar, whose move from Hinduism to Buddhism inspired mass conversion of dalit Indians in the 1950s, and disclosed the persistent colonial attachments of academic knowledge production. Gannon deployed his own “hermeneutics of conversion” to argue that “conversions have a meaning beyond the personal, political, and social reasons of the converter” (p. 24).…”

The “untouchable” who touched millions: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Navayana Buddhism, and complexity in social work scholarship on religion

“…Beneath even the bottommost stratum of the chaturvarna (four-caste) schema are the peoples historically called "Untouchables:" non-caste Hindus (avarna) and tribal peoples who are not part of the hierarchy and, consequently, are seen from the standpoint of this system as inherently contaminated and contaminating (Gannon, 2011) (Kumar, 2016); relegation to "physically and ritually dirty jobs that have been used, for generations, to justify their oppression, exclusion, and humiliation" (Coffey et al, 2017, p. 60), such as removing feces by the gallon from toilet reservoirs without the benefit of any protective clothing; and targeting for extreme violence and humiliation, including murders that often go uninvestigated and unpunished, public beatings, and epidemic rates of sexual assault and exploitation (Patil, 2016;Roy, 2017;Sharlach, 2016).…”