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Untouchables embrace Buddha to escape oppression

· Lowest caste Hindus in mass conversions
· UK and US monks attend ceremonies in India

Randeep Ramesh in Hyderabad
Saturday October 14, 2006
The Guardian


In the small one-room house on the edge of the rice bowl of India, Narasimha Cherlaguda explains why he is preparing to be reborn again as a Buddhist.
As an untouchable, the 25-year-old is at the bottom of Hinduism's hereditary hierarchy. "The [local] priest tells me if I was a good dalit in this life, then in my next life I can be born into a better part of society. [I say] why wait?"

Like tens of thousands of other untouchables - or dalits - across India today, Mr Cherlaguda will be ritually converted to Buddhism to escape his low-caste status. The landless labourer points to a picture of Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god, on his wall and says it will soon be gone and replaced by an image of the Buddha.

He will not be alone. More than 70 people from the village of Kumarriguda, 40 miles outside Hyderabad, the capital of southern India's Andhra Pradesh state, will leave the Hindu religion. There are plans for a Buddhist temple and money set aside to hire a Buddhist priest - probably the first in the area for 1,500 years - to conduct prayers as well as marriage and death rites.

"We want to be equal to upper castes. Being a dalit in Hindu society means this is not possible. Being Buddhist means we will be separate but equal," said D Anjaneyulu, a local dalit politician who says he first considering switching religion when he was physically stopped by local Brahmins from raising the Indian flag because of his caste.

"Untouchability" was abolished under India's constitution in 1950 but the practice remains a degrading part of everyday life in Indian villages.

Dalits in rural areas are often bullied and assigned menial jobs such as manual scavengers, removing of human waste and dead animals, leather workers, street sweepers and cobblers. Reports surface in newspapers of untouchables being barred from temples.

The sometimes intense violence has led to a migration to the cities, where caste is easier to submerge. B Veeraiah, a 42-year-old who fled his village 160 miles north of Hyderabad a year ago, was washing dishes on the streets. He ran away after being tied up with his mother and clubbed for a night by an upper caste neighbour for allowing his goat to wander. "My mother died of her injuries. I ran away to the city. Here I am safe."

The mass conversion of dalits takes place on the anniversary of one of India's most controversial religious events. Sixty years ago BR Ambedkar, the first untouchable to hold high office in India and the man who wrote India's constitution, renounced Hinduism as a creed in the grip of casteism and converted - with more than 100,000 of his followers - to Buddhism.

Today almost double that figure will embrace a new religion and repeat the 22 oaths Ambedkar mouthed. They include never worshipping Hindu gods and goddesses, never inviting a Brahmin for rituals and never drinking alcohol. Attending the ceremonies are monks from America, Britain and Taiwan.

In Hyderabad the first person to convert will be KRS Murthy, 70, who was the first dalit recruited into the state's civil service in 1959. Like African Americans in the US who refuse to use their "slave" names, many in the lowest castes have spurned their obvious caste identifiers. Mr Murthy says he long ago dropped his caste name - Kondru - but this has not stop people sensing for signals to his origins.

"I have hidden my roots. But often on trains people ask about my background, what my father did, where I am from. When I tell them my caste they stop asking questions. In fact they stop talking to me. Buddhism means I can simply say I am not a Hindu. I do not have a caste."

Many dalit thinkers say that what is happening in India is a "religious rebellion" against a hierarchy that condemns them to a life of suffering. "Look we make up 150m people of India.

"Yet where are the Dalit news anchors, the entrepreneurs, the professors? We are neither seen nor heard. Changing religion makes us visible," says Chanrabhan Prasad, a dalit writer.

The Hindu right has become increasingly wary of Buddhist conversions, seeing its call for equality as exerting a powerful pull on the lowest castes. The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government in the western state of Gujarat controversially amended an anti-conversion law to classify Buddhism and Jainism as branches of the Hindu religion, denying them status as unique religions.

"Dalits should concentrate on illiteracy and poverty rather than looking for new religions. In fact we think that there are very few differences between Buddhism and Hinduism," says Lalit Kumar, who works for a Hindu nationalist welfare association in Andhra Pradesh.

__________________
"A generation of people who refuse to be themselves.
The philosophy of 50 cent has them hook, line and sinker.
The young black men become like a sacrifice.
They love it; they living in a fool's paradise."
-Brother Valentino

I understand the politics and the symbolism behind the conversions. I don't think they did it because all of them honsetly believe that the other faiths have no class or caste-consciousness, they all do one way or another. But it is the act of openly rejecting Hinduism because of its apartheid system of varna (which means 'colour' as well as 'caste') in favour of these other that is designed to make a bold political statement.

__________________
Create your own university; develop and encourage a culture of critical thinking and action

good enough reason for me

Why are there so many religions?
Different religions are differing forces in the economy of God; all working for the good of mankind; as we cannot destroy any force in nature, so we cannot destroy any of these spiritual forces. Different faiths are necessary to suit the diversity of human temperaments. Some men are emotional, some rational, some introspective, some active; again, there are those who wish to contemplate an abstract ideal, and those who wish to worship through concrete symbols. If there were only one religious discipline, there would be no hope for those who did not respond to it. Hence it is fortunate that there are many religions instead of only one, as many would prefer to have it. The greater the number of religions, the more chances people will have to satisfy their spiritual hunger.

If there are different restaurants in a city, everyone will have an opportunity to choose the food that is most suited to his taste and requirement. People can get the same nourishment from rice, bread, or potatoes; the same illumination comes from lamps of different shapes, and the same white milk from cows of different colours. Religion will not have fulfilled its mission until every man has evolved his own religion, revealing to him his unique relationship with its Creator. If only one religion remained in the world, religion would be dead; variation is the sign of life, and always will be. Thinking beings must differ; difference is the first sign of thought. A thoughtful person prefers to live among other thoughtful persons, for the clash of thought stimulates new thinking. The very fact that all the great religions have survived till today proves that their utility is not gone. The religions of the world are not really contradictory or antagonistic; they are complementary. There is, in fact, no such thing as your religion or my religion, your national religion or my national religion; there is only one universal religion, of which all the so-called different faiths are but different manifestations. God is often described in Hinduism as the wish-reflecting gem. In Him everyone finds a reflection of his own ideal of truth, goodness, and beauty.

The different religions emphasize different facets of the supreme reality. Islam, perhaps more than any other religion, stands for the brotherhood of men among its own devotees. With the Moslems there are no social distinctions. It is inspiring to read about the pilgrimage of the Moslems to Mecca. There hundreds of thousands of the faithful discard their differing dress, whether of prince, ordinary citizen, or beggar, put on the seamless white garment which makes the chieftain indistinguishable from the shepherd, and proceed to the holy shrine to declare their surrender to almighty Allah. Before God all Moslems are equal.

With the Christians the central idea is: ‘Watch and pray, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ – which means, purify your minds and be ready for the coming of the Lord. And one cannot but admire the love of God, which innumerable Christians show through love of men, to whose service they devote their time, energy, and material resources. The idea of ‘sharing’ is perhaps the most striking feature of Christianity in practice.

Judaism has clung to the idea of God’s power and justice, and the Jewish people with dauntless patience have faced the ordeals and sufferings through which they have passed for two thousand years without losing their faith in God’s power and justice.

Buddhism teaches how to attain peace through renunciation and service. In these days of selfishness and competition, it is a joy to see Buddhist monk serving people with infinite love and infinite compassion, as taught by their prophet.

Hinduism makes the realization of God, who is both within and without, the central fact of life. Thousands of Hindus are willing, even today, to renounce everything- including the world itself- to experience the reality of God.

Thus the different religions are like different photographs of the same building from different angles; but all of them are genuine pictures. Though people with vessels of different sizes go to a lake and carry away water, which takes the form of the vessels, it is all the authentic water of the lake. And after all the vessels have been filled, the lake still appears to contain the same amount of water. None can exhaust the infinite power, beauty, love, and goodness of God.