PERSPECTIVES
Ambedkar’s Non-violence
Sreejith Sugunan
It is very tempting to reduce
Buddhism to a religion that
propagates non-violence. And,
it needs to be made clear at the
outset that it is not the moralistic
non-violent tenets underpinning
Buddhism that attracted
B R Ambedkar to it. Rather, the
arguments put forth by Ambedkar
for his conversion to Buddhism
are much more nuanced. If we
contemplate on these nuances
and provide room for a creative
reading of his need to embrace
Buddhism, it opens up some
interesting questions for our study
of political theory, particularly
concerning our understanding of
violence and non-violence
in politics.
Sreejith Sugunan (sreejith.sugunan@gmail.com)
is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Political
Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi.
32
T
his article specifically focuses on
Ambedkar’s arguments regarding
his preference for Buddhism over
other religious or political projects as
outlined in his short text “Buddha or
Karl Marx” (1956; Round Table India
2010). Though this article is less con-
cerned with Ambedkar’s justification for
religious conversion, the reasons for
which were both strategic and moral, it
nevertheless serves as a good starting
point to begin our discussion.
Conversion as Collective Praxis
Ambedkar believed that religious con-
version is a mode of collective political
action. In his May 1936 speech in Dadar,
Mumbai elaborating his decision to
denounce his Hindu identity, Ambedkar
remarked that the question of conver-
sion is intertwined with questions of
emancipation and advancement for a
section of humanity in India, referring
to the Dalits (Round Table India 2012).
Ambedkar told those who had gathered
to hear him that the matter of conver-
sion needs to be viewed through both
the material and spiritual lenses. In his
material analysis, Ambedkar under-
stood the act of conversion of individu-
als in the Dalit community to another
religion as an intervention to the prob-
lem of class struggle in India. In the
same speech, Ambedkar pointed out
that he understood the problem of unto-
uchability as one of class struggle, as one
between caste Hindus and the untoucha-
bles. As it is a question of class struggle,
in a move that is reminiscent of Marx,
one can see Ambedkar highlighting the
tactics through which the oppressed can
deal with the oppressor. A pragmatic
Ambedkar pointed out to the crowd that
the Dalit community was in fact a mi-
nority in this struggle. This was further
compounded by the fact that the com-
munity was unorganised and scattered,
and Ambedkar concluded that they were
JUNE 8, 2019
not a fighting force to face the tyranny
of casteism. Ambedkar saw religious
conversion as a mode of enhancing the
support base, relying on existing support
or strength from the outside community
to the fold to which the Dalit community
would attach.
Since his speech calling for conver-
sion in 1936, it took Ambedkar over 20
years to finally complete his conversion
to Buddhism in 1956. During this period,
Ambedkar not only investigated other
religions he could possibly convert to,
but it was also during these years that he
engaged in party politics in India. Ambe-
dkar’s first political party, the Independ-
ent Labour Party, fought the elections in
1937. As Eleanor Zelliot (1986) pointed
out in her writings on Ambedkar, the
party was founded on a “socialistic cen-
trist ethos” and was not only formed to
meet the needs of the untouchables, but
to also advance the welfare of the work-
ing class. Five years later, in 1942,
Ambedkar also founded the Scheduled
Castes Federation with an aim of uniting
untouchables all over India, which again
aligned with socialists. Ambedkar’s last
organised intervention in party politics
was the formation of the Republican
Party of India, which he formed in 1956.
And it was only about two months
before his death that he finally set in
motion the religious conversion move-
ment, when he converted to Buddhism
in 1956. Following this, Ambedkar gave
a speech titled “Buddha or Karl Marx” at
the Fourth Conference of the Buddhist
World Fellowship on 20 November 1956.
It is interesting to note here that Ambed-
kar felt it necessary to compare Marx,
the architect of a political ideology, along-
side Buddha, a religious figure; seem-
ingly two incommensurable figures at
the outset. However, Ambedkar did not
feel anything odd about this compari-
son. This was because, for Ambedkar,
both Buddhism and Marxism were rep-
resenting “just social ends” and entailed
a political project within themselves that
is concerned with the emancipation of
the exploited (Round Table India 2010).
In Ambedkar’s interpretation, eman-
cipation from poverty and exploitation
vol lIV no 23 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

was at the root of both Buddhism and
Marxism. And, both these ideas concer-
ned themselves with formulating the
“means” to end this exploitation or pov-
erty of humans. For Marx, it was private
property that was the root cause of all
poverty and exploitation. Buddha used a
different vocabulary to interpret the
world and saw the world as one filled
with dukkha, that is, poverty and suffer-
ing. In Ambedkar’s reading, Buddha is
someone whose ideas maintain a close
affinity with those of Marx’s, primarily
in their understanding of “possessions”
as being at the heart of exploitation or
dukkha. In Ambedkar’s reading, it is be-
cause of this understanding of suffering
that Buddha told the Buddhist sangha to
never own property, and live as a pari-
brajak or a displaced person. Thus, for
Ambedkar, both Buddhism and Marx-
ism held the universal truth about the
world being ridden with conflicts, and
both these ideas aimed to bring about a
just society, one devoid of exploitation or
dukkha. In order to choose one over the
other, it was important to consider which
among the two ideas relied on better
means to bring about these just ends. And,
it is through an evaluation of the means
employed in these ideas that Ambedkar
rejected Marxism for Buddhism.
Evaluating the Means
For Ambedkar, Marxism prescribed two
strategies to bring about its desired
ends: violence and the dictatorship of
the proletariat. Buddhism, on the other
hand, prescribed means that aimed at
changing people’s moral disposition to
move away from an existential plane of
living a life riddled with exploitation of
others. It was not that Ambedkar pre-
ferred a moral solution to this problem,
but his pragmatism convinced him about
the dangers of embracing a Marxist
vision. This danger had less to do with
an absolute rejection of violence and
more to do with Ambedkar’s lack of con-
fidence in a dictatorship society, one
bound by a top-down enforcement of
norms and shrouded by unwritten rules
of wielding power.
It needs to be qualified here that
though Ambedkar’s preference for Bud-
dhism over Marxism may come across
Economic & Political Weekly EPW JUNE 8, 2019
as a partiality for a moral non-violent
means over a violent one, his method of
analysis points us towards another rea-
soning. For Ambedkar, there is no need
to abhor violence as a form of political
action. In fact, Ambedkar reads violence
as being a constitutive element of any
secure social order. Ambedkar writes
that no society can dispense violence
altogether as enforcing justice requires
some force, something that even Buddha
would have agreed to, in his reading.
Such violence is not an expression of
himsa as it is concerned with bringing
justice, security, or safety. Rather, in
Ambedkar’s understanding, it is the self-
ish reliance on violence as a means to
further one’s ambitions or make gains
that must be shunned. For example, an
act of vengeance is a selfish use of vio-
lence in Ambedkar’s interpretation.
Thus, in his framework, violence can be
seen to be at times legitimate as well as
illegitimate. Hence, there can be no ab-
solutes in the use of violence in politics.
Violence, for Ambedkar, is an expression
of force. And, to judge the legitimacy of
violence, one needs to look at the pro-
cess involved in wielding this force as
well as attempt to understand its effects.
And, for such assessments, Ambedkar
suggests that the best way to evaluate
the use of force is in terms of it “not deni-
grating the available possibilities” (Round
Table India 2010). He calls such use of
force as “creative” and called it “force as
energy.” To quote Ambedkar,
the achievement of an end involves the
destruction of many other ends, which
are integral with the one that is sought
to be destroyed. Use of force must be so
regulated that it should save as many ends
as possible in destroying the evil one (Round
Table India 2010).
Buddhism over Marxism
Political theory is fraught with the prob-
lem of violence and the whole discipline
can be considered as an attempt to think
about securing the conditions for estab-
lishing a safe social order. The solution
has been to constitute a sovereign that
wields legitimate authority and main-
tains a monopoly over the use of vio-
lence, through which it maintains order
and brings into force just ends. Both
Marxist and liberal ideologies would
vol lIV no 23
PERSPECTIVES
agree with the necessity of establishing
such a political authority. Ambedkar
agrees too. In fact, Ambedkar appears to
be most supportive of a liberal argument
of having a sovereign constituted
through parliamentary and constitu-
tional procedures.
It is this belief in constitutional mora-
lity and parliamentary politics that Amb-
edkar found in Buddhism, and which, in
his opinion, Marxism lacks. Ambedkar
finds this democratic ethos etched in the
ancient Buddhist practice of bhikshu
sanghas and realised that the process of
settling differences in a Buddhist vision
concerned less with the decisions of the
enlightened leader and more with the
codification of procedures and practices
which the partaking stakeholders would
abide by in order to settle differences.
This is what Ambedkar was most attracted
to in Buddhism. The Buddhist “means,”
in Ambedkar’s reading, had to do with
the codification of the rules of engage-
ment between the ruler and the ruled. The
establishment of such terms and condi-
tions, this article argues, is sacrosanct
for Ambedkar. This set of codified terms
and conditions, which is the Constitu-
tion, not only establishes the legitimacy
and longevity of the ruling regime, but
also prescribes the conditions that allow
for the use of violence. Ambedkar saw
the Marxist mode of political action
lacking both. It was ambiguous on how
long the dictatorship of the proletariat
was to go on, and hence became ambig-
uous on how long or in what ways it
tends to use violence. Ambedkar ap-
pears to be of the opinion that a govern-
ment that tends to use violence to stay in
power because it is capable of carrying
out the enforcement of good ends is not
by itself an argument that legitimated
the use of violence.
Thus, it appears that Ambedkar reje-
cted Marxism because he realised that a
Marxist regime is less concerned with
codifying rules of political practice, which
he feels is the lynchpin for engagements
in the political. Ambedkar shares with
the liberals a scepticism of the ambiguity
expressed in the Marxist reliance on
violence, dictatorship of the proletariat,
and the fascination with a strong leader,
which borders on a fan following that
33
PERSPECTIVES
often may lead to dictatorships. Ambed-
kar shares a deep scepticism for the
Marxist project of revolution itself.
Constitutional Morality
The idea of non-violence has been cen-
tral to the practice of politics in modern
India. In fact, the Indian national move-
ment under the leadership of Gandhi
is often considered to be a non-violent
movement. But, if we are to recall our
earlier discussions, one can sense here
the problem Ambedkar finds with Gan-
dhian non-violence. If violence is about
denigrating the available possibilities,
and if non-violence can be interpreted
as preserving these possibilities, Ambed-
kar would have sensed violence in Gan-
dhi’s non-violence. In Ambedkar’s read-
ing, Gandhi’s non-violent tactics entail
some form of psychological coercion,
the best example involving Ambedkar
being Gandhi’s fast unto death that led
to the signing of the Poona Pact in 1932.
And, the consequence of such psycho-
logical coercion is that it results in mini-
mising the available possibilities, just like
violence would have. In this vein, Ambed-
kar would argue that Gandhi’s methods
destroyed the good ends along with the
evil ones through an act of psychological
coercion. This is because, in Gandhi’s
non-violence, there is less of a differen-
tiation between means and ends unlike
in Ambedkar’s. For Gandhi, means justify
everything. For Ambedkar, there is room
for ends justifying the means employed.
In his last speech at the Constituent
Assembly in 1949, after framing the Con-
stitution, Ambedkar said the following,
The first thing in my judgement we must do
is to hold fast to constitutional methods of
achieving our social and economic objec-
tives. It means we must abandon the bloody
methods of revolution. It means that we
must abandon the method of civil disobedi-
ence, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When
there was no way left for constitutional meth-
ods for achieving economic and social objec-
tives, there was a great deal of justification
for unconstitutional methods. But where
constitutional methods are open, there can
be no justification for these unconstitutional
methods. (Round Table India 2016)
Ambedkar termed these unconstitu-
tional methods the “grammar of anarchy”
in this speech. This may be because
Ambedkar sensed in this grammar of
34
anarchy an illegitimate expression of despite fundamental differences, negoti-
violence or psychological coercion. ating and coming to a decision that req-
As Pratap Bhanu Mehta pointed out in uires compromises from all parties, and
one of his essays, Ambedkar sensed in nurturing and participating in institu-
constitutional satyagraha a form of vio- tions and traditions that will establish
lence, which Mehta termed a “narcissi- an enabling framework for making new
stic belief in one’s own truth without possibilities. One can read in this an ech-
acknowledging the reality of difference” oing of what Ambedkar earlier called
(Mehta 2016). One can locate this unwa- the creative use of force, or “force as
vering belief in truth in a metaphysics of energy,” as a mode of action that does not
morality that this truth seeker or satya- denigrate any possibilities. Constitutional
grahi is supposed to uphold at all times. morality, for Ambedkar, is this creative
In this sense, Mehta is right in reading and energetic use of non-violent force to
Ambedkar expressing a radical mode of create conditions for all possibilities.
non-violence, which is different from and
in disagreement with Gandhian non- References
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conduct is, then, about working together Deutsch (eds), New Delhi: Sage Publications.
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