 Good afternoon all. Thank you for joining us and warm welcome myself Dr. Anirudha Babar from Department of Political Science. I'm a doctor of coordinator as well as a coordinator of Dr. D. R. Ambedkar lecture series which we have been organizing since last couple of months. So I'm really proud to announce to all of you that today we are going to organize a sixth lecture in the series and this lecture will be delivered by delivered by Professor Sampratha Chaudhary who's an associate professor at the School of Arts and Assetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Professor Chaudhary has also authored theater, number, event, three studies on the relationship between sovereignty, power and the truth. Ambedkar and other immortals, an untouchable research program and articles on ancient Greek liturgy, the staging of Ibsen, psychoanalysis, Phule, Nietzsche, Ambedkar and Hegel. Professor Sampratha's latest book is now it's come to distances, notes on coronavirus and Shahin Bagh, association and isolation. First of all I'm really grateful to Professor Sampratha Chaudhary you know for his time as well as his enthusiasm to participate in our lecture series. Well as you know this is a very ambitious project undertaken by Department of Political Science in collaboration of Dot Talks team as well as State School College and in the future also we are going to have many more speakers to come and this lecture series is going to continue in the interest of the college, in the interest of the students and also in the interest of the society at large that is actually the purpose behind this initiative to enlighten the society about the relevance and significance of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar today and tomorrow. So going forward with the lecture series Dr. Sampratha will be speaking on beyond protective discoloration, Ambedkar on Karwajan. So with this word I request Dr. Chaudhary to kindly please take over the virtual stage and please start with the presentation. Sir over to you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can you hear me clearly? Yes sir, you're clear. It's for both the invitation and these kind words and I'm really happy to deliver this lecture as part of the ongoing B. R. Ambedkar lecture series. Today I'd like to speak to you on Ambedkar's relationship to conversion. As we all know that Ambedkar himself towards the very end of his life converted to Buddhism in the year 1956 which was not simply an individual case of individual conversion but a massive mass conversion of lakhs of people from a particular section of society. From a section of society Ambedkar himself came. So this event of conversion in 1956 just a few months before Ambedkar died in December 1956 was something so so momentous and so spectacular that we tend to think that Ambedkar's conversion itself happened in a particular kind of immediate and extremely forceful manner as part of a mass movement of that section of society which was the victim of an age-old Hindu upper caste practice of untouchability and so they were this section of society was at that time almost officially called by the name untouchable. Now it is of course true that after India's independence the very name untouchable is by law a criminal to call anyone an untouchable is a criminal act but at that time despite a lot of legal provisions which even with the colonial British government had been had emerged in relation to the practice of untouchability the name untouchable was still by and large taken as a matter of something to taken for granted in Hindu society and so in 1956 a few years after the independence of India from colonial rule when a whole lot of people who belonged to these untouchable sections of society which is also called castes of untouchable castes of Indian society they converted and they converted to a particular religion which is Buddhism. It was an act of massive significance and it struck the imagination and the attention of much of the upper caste in the society as well as other sections of society who were victims of other kinds of traditional social oppression and marginalization. The very fact that such an act was possible for such a large number of people in one stroke as part of one event seemed to become almost like a call almost like a certain kind of announcement that conversion was possible from Hindu social order and Hindu religion to other forms of religions and social life not just for individuals and groups but as part of a mass movement in that sense with reason you could say that the 1956 event was part of conversion not just as a religious and social act but as part of a political movement or it was a political act so because of the magnitude of Ambedkar and a large number of people from untouchable castes in Maharashtra at that time who converted to Buddhism in 1956 because it was an event of such a like I said massive and spectacular proportion that often we tend to think that conversion was an instantaneous event it happened in a kind of instantaneous spectacular way but actually Ambedkar's relationship to the question of conversion was far more complex in the at least 30 years of his public life and today I'd like to go back a little from 1956 to a kind of middle period of Ambedkar's public life when Ambedkar was already sinking of conversion though he was not actually at that time at least he did not actually announce the name of any particular religion to which he made a call to the untouchable castes to convert so we have to distinguish in Ambedkar's thinking and his own public life we have to distinguish between the actual conversion which could be called Ambedkar's conversion as part of like I said a massive social and political movement that took place in 1956 and Ambedkar on conversion or Ambedkar's thinking on conversion which actually persisted through a long period of time from at least the early 1920s in a particular way it intensified or it became more prominent in public discussions in the year 1935 and 1936 the years 1935 and 1936 and then in 1956 Ambedkar and lacks of other untouchable people from the untouchable castes converted so we can actually divide Ambedkar's relationship to the question of conversion into these three periods or at least not if not strictly periods but at least three stages today for this lecture I would like to talk to you about the second stage of Ambedkar's relationship to conversion but before I do that again we have to be very clear that by and large overall what the three stages consisted in the first stage consisted in Ambedkar's acute realization from at least 1920s when he came back from America and other well foreign foreign universities where he was studying and started actually practicing both a kind of professional life but also eventually a public political life in India in the 1920s Ambedkar acutely realized that the practice of untouchability and all the terrible discrimination that followed from it could only be understood in a deeper way through the particular kind of codification and legitimation that this form of discrimination had gained from what he called the texts of Hindu religion the sacred of great or the legitimizing books and texts of Hindu religion now this does not mean that the origin of untouchability is in a text Ambedkar had very clearly analyzed this question of the genesis or the origin of untouchability as well as caste in Indian society from his earliest great work in 1916 which he presented as part of a lecture seminar presentation during his studies in America in Columbia University a text called Castes in India Genesis Transmission Development so on and so forth not exactly that title but more or less that's the idea Genesis Mechanism Transmission Development something like that in that text Ambedkar had said that the origin of caste does not lie in a text or in a you know Hindu religious book the origin is social the origin is a kind of set of practices which needs to be analyzed and studied very carefully but at the same time texts are great legitimators and not not only are the legitimators of untouchability and caste practices but texts provide a kind of stability a kind of structural grid where these practices can be repeated again and again so that's why texts are extremely important as intermediate stabilizing mechanisms as structures because what they do is they repeat the things that have been happening in the past so that they will now also happen in the future so texts occupy this middle position between the past and the future they become codes of repetition and of course the texts can be of different kinds they can be philosophical texts they can be cultural texts they can be literary texts and so legal texts very importantly legal texts they can be of many kinds but in taken in totality texts provide a kind of stable repeatable structure for society to enact its practices even the texts are not at the origin of those practices anyway that's a different question but the the the question is for Embedkar in the 1920s that these texts hence need to be read in a different way they need to be demystified they need to be read not as sacred religious texts but through those texts the very nature of religion needs to be analyzed and demystified so that the possibility of thinking outside that religious structure becomes possible becomes that possibility emerges for people who otherwise think that the question of religion is something over which they have no power they have no choice this is the most important thing for Embedkar that it is of course a fact in the 1920s just like it is still in a different way a terrible fact that there is caste discrimination violent caste discrimination there is caste atrocity and there is at that time openly and now probably in a more complicated and secret way practices of untouchability of exclusion of physical exclusion that is a fact no one can deny it but what Embedkar was more keen to bring out was that do the people who are victims the question that he wanted to raise before anything else was that do the people who are victims of this practice of untouchability do is it within their power to think outside untouchability because clearly for the oppressors for the caste Hindus for the upper castes it is a matter of something which they enjoy they enjoy the privileges that society gives them from their birth onwards and so it is in their interest to perpetuate the system but clearly for the for the for the for the people who are victims of this very practice it is not in their interest to perpetuate the system it is not in their interest to perpetuate this system but at the same time if they want to in any way exit the system come out of the system that is it within their power forget actually making such an exit possible is it even within their power to conceive to think of this possibility of exit this was Embedkar's main question in that sense it was a political question if politics means to act collectively through our independent collective capacities powers so here politics does not mean simply something which belongs to the province of the state and in a law and so on and so forth that of course is there but more fundamentally politics means something which is which is a capacity a collective public capacity so Embedkar's question in that sense was political is it within is it within the power of the untouchable castes to even think of the possibility of exiting of moving out of this entire system which is what Embedkar called a system of casts this is the question and I'd like to bring out this question in these three parts the first is the early part of Embedkar's public life in around 1920s let's say at that time in the different newspapers in Marathi that he was editing and writing for and other forums public speeches and other kinds of things in some of the representations that he made to the different British for instance the Simon Commission and other kinds of British forums where the colonial government was also trying to amass and systematize information from the different sections of Indian society to produce certain institutions like for instance the institution of the census from where the question of caste census still you know is relevant for us is there a proper caste census or do we need a new caste census today so these kinds of institutions were actually for their own convenience and for their own colonial instrumentality for their colonial you know benefits the British government created for which they amassed a lot of information and they also had several kinds of forums where different sections of society made their representations so Embedkar actually made a lot of representations on behalf of the untouchable castes and Embedkar spoke of the kind of social order to which the untouchables apparently belonged which was a peculiar social order which he called a social order which is anti-social because a social order which both requires a part of its members to provide services to do labour to actually be part of the entire system of organizing the different activities of the totality they are there but at the same time in social life they are discriminated to the point that they are treated as almost non-humans or they are not treated at the same level as social humanity makes that very totality anti-social so that's why Embedkar's characterization of so-called Hindu society was that Hindu society is anti-social by this very logic it is a society which requires people which that society does not treat as part of social humanity hence it is a contradictory society and he made these representations in terms of the actual statistics the actual data the actual the actual numbers that the untouchable castes formed at least at that time in the 1920s and early 1930s eventually of course all of these representations would go into early 1930s when Embedkar would demand on behalf of the untouchable castes as part of a new political form of representation which was electoral representation when the very name untouchable would now eventually institutionally change to what at that time was called depressed classes into a new official name which in a sense already started criminalizing the name untouchable that you could if you use the word untouchable you already did it criminally that is you were already a kind of social criminal even if you are not a you know legal criminal by calling one part of society untouchable so that's why Embedkar spoke of depressed classes as a social category but he wanted depressed classes to have political representation autonomous political representation which led of course to the great quarrel in Indian history between Embedkar and Gandhi during the round table conferences in the 19th early 1930s but you see at that time there was another kind of social movement which Embedkar was part of and yet not at the center of a social movement which was taking place in different parts of the country it was taking place in Maharashtra it was also taking place in Kerala in south of India and that was called the temple entry movement where the untouchable castes one of the key sites of spaces in which untouchability was practiced was the religious space of the temple where these people from certain castes were not allowed to enter or if they were allowed to enter they were allowed to enter in extremely restrictive ways for instance the access to what was called the in Hindu in Hindu terms but in general it is true for all religions the Garbhagra or the sacred sort of the most sacred center of a temple architecture or the temple space so they were extremely restrictive or entirely excluded in this very spatial organization of the temple so movement was initiated by different not just Embedkar Embedkar was not really one of the at the heart of this movement though he did play a part in this movement Gandhi was definitely at the heart of this movement as well as other leaders and other people from other parts of the country where a demand was raised that people should be allowed to enter these temples and take part in all the religious activities that a temple consists in in that sense a kind of religious equality was demanded but of course Embedkar noticed the logical problem there which was that religion was of course the name for something which was a set of ritual practices from where untouchable castes were excluded people from untouchable castes were excluded no doubt but religion was not just the name of a ritual space Embedkar knew by this time very well that religion was the name of society or a social art so the very understanding of religion had to be brought religion was already a social and political affair where people through religion were exercising power over others so discrimination did not only take place within so-called religious codified religious spaces that is the temple here so even if in certain matters there was reform and improvement in the the the religious practices within the temple space so untouchables would be allowed up to a certain point or you know certain restrictions would be lifted all of that might happen but for Embedkar the question remained would this actually have be a real historical intervention in the entire social order which we call Hindu like I said like he said Hindu non-social social order or anti-social social order would it be enough and to that extent a tactical question had to be raised politically that is that would the energies that would be you know expended in in being part of such a movement of temple entry or the right to temple entry would it be worth expending that energy considering the the possibility that the rest of society would still remain by and large discriminatory and governed by the larger precepts of Hindu social caste order so Embedkar was somewhat hesitant about devoting all one's energies to the temple entry movement and eventually Embedkar probably also took a kind of step back from the temple entry movement because for him however much you might try and institute certain reforms within the the the ritual system part of the ritual system and he made a very very pertinent comment here that the practice untouchability was a was not a specialized practice specialized ritual practice it was a total practice it was a practice which consisted in 24 7 365 days all the time while ritual practice remains specialized to the temple space so in that sense what was really important for Embedkar was again to ask this question which is is it within the powers of the people who belonged to the untouchable castes to think not just in terms of specific reform movements which is of course important up to a point but to think structurally to think well theoretically of the possibility of exiting the entire social order that he called Hindu anti-social social order it is in this context that in the middle 1930s Embedkar as part of the cast from which he came he was born into the mahar caste in Maharashtra the mahar caste as part of that caste a whole series of conferences public discussions were being held at that time this was not limited to one caste these were conferences that were held by different forums I mean the so called Hindu Mahasabha at that time was also holding conferences the congress was holding conferences so were the people from depressed classes and the mahar caste in particular held some really significant conferences in this period so there were at least two conferences in 1935 and 1936 which are very important in this context one is the 1935 conference of Yola where Embedkar in his public address actually said something which shocked a lot of people and actually he said something so clear that in a way the stakes of what he was trying to do became absolutely unmistakable for everyone and he said that I was it wasn't it was not up to me to be born where I was born and I was born in a particular social order that is where I occupied a certain place and it was not in my power that place was the place of an untouchable but it is within my power to not and this was the key phrase that he used to not die a Hindu not die a Hindu I will not die a Hindu it is within my power not to die a Hindu even if I I was born a Hindu because I had no control over that this was a very very very striking thing that he said which really shocked a lot of people from all quarters from the upper caste was also from the depressed classes but still then by and large the ambit or the horizon of social movements was that of reform within the caste structure and the social order of Hindu society but for the first time Embedkar said something at a kind of how should one put it existential level within his from his own solitary voice he uttered these words it is within my power not to die a Hindu now there are two things that we notice here one is of course this tremendous declaration of not dying a Hindu in that sense he has to do something to to to you know to to cancel his his his belonging to Hinduism as something over which he had no control because he was born into that particular social order that is one thing but the other thing is of course this very question of like I said power that he could say that it is within my power to do something about my my situation so you see he's saying that you we are born into situations Hinduism is a kind of social situation just like we are born into any other situation whether it's a religious situation or social family nation is also a situation over which we have no choice but is it within our power to do something about our situation and doing something can mean many things it can mean to analyze our situation that our situation is not something which is given to us from some force which is beyond our control in the sense beyond our control to think for instance religion could be understood in a kind of you know in a manner through the through the point of view of divinity which is such an immense power beyond human power that you think that you say that no human beings really can't do anything about religion because it comes from a power above human beings that's one way or you think of it as destiny that maybe my situation in life is very bad but it is a destiny what can I do about it so Ambedkar's question was is it possible to innocence refuse this kind of framework of divinity which is surplus over human beings destiny which is also a kind of fatality which strikes human beings from a place which you do not really understand and it is in this context that Ambedkar actually speaks with that kind of force of the will so in terms of political philosophy I think we can think of Ambedkar as a person who in the most difficult of situations existentially because he belongs to a caste which is physically excluded which has no power in terms of social institutions which is which is humiliated and degraded and everything that we know about untouchability from that very lowest position of you know social existence is it possible to assert one's will once how should one put it subjecthood that I am a subject of my situation or at least in my situation I can force my subjective desire to change the situation so in other words is it possible to think of your situation and be if you are able to think of your situation is it possible to think of the possibility of changing that situation or your relationship to that situation these are very basic but very important questions which Ambedkar innocence forced into the public is at that time first in 1935 in Geyala when he said that he will not die a Hindu from which of course immediately the specter arose of conversion that the only way you will not die a Hindu is by moving out of your religion by willing to move out of Hindu religion and you know probably convert to some other religious fold religion religion and religious and social order and so so this was the first point but the second point was came out in immediately after that in 1936 when as part of these conferences that I mentioned a mahar conference that took place in Bombay in 1936 a resolution was passed by the entire mahar the untouchable people who gathered to think together following from the Yola declaration but this time it came out as a resolution and the the mahar resolution the mahar conference resolved to abandon Hinduism and be open to the possibility of converting to some other religion now you will notice that it was not said they would convert to this religion or that but the very possibility of moving out of Hinduism was something that was officially and collectively stated as part of the resolution of the 1936 mahar conference and Ambedkar himself made a public address again during that conference and again in that conference Ambedkar raised the question of this kind of a collective will to do something about the situation into which they were born because it was not within their power and he actually expressed himself in a very interesting form in this case he didn't only speak in an analytical or in a you know in a discursive way that normally you speak to explain something he actually spoke in terms of a certain kind of a kind of poetic form gave a whole series of prescriptions of declarations of poetic dictates to his people to all the people that were there and some of those dictates are very interesting if you read them and you can read them in you know texts which Eleanor Zelliot has the next you know pioneering work on Ambedkar's life and his work so she has cited the whole series of what she calls public litany you know in a kind of poetic repetitive manner so this idea of an alternative form of life is brought out by Ambedkar but what is the crux of this kind of a prescription this kind of an announcement the crux is that we must think of a religious form of life which is based on reason which is based on a kind of ethical use of reason moral use of reason so actually Ambedkar speaks of two things at the same level it seems one is religion which is a kind of social order a social form of existence which has a strong ritual dimension and of course which has great theological texts to you know support it and at the same time Ambedkar speaks of reason which is a universal human capacity which Ambedkar in another place says is not a Brahmins prerogative it is nobody's monopoly this is Ambedkar's statement it thinking is no one's monopoly which of course you know points towards the Brahmanical the sense of Brahmins having monopoly over the function of thinking the pandits and so on and so forth the textual writers the ones who make texts as codifications of so-called thinking all of that we know so but here it's a practical point that he's making he's saying that we must actually change our situation according to these two principles one is the principle which is a universal principle of reason which is all human beings possessing that capacity and the second is the principle of a social order which he accepts as crucial to social existence which is religion then that sense you can't call him anti-religious ever but at the same time he says that a religion which is not a contradiction of reason which doesn't contradict reason now this is of course a very tricky point that how does one produce a particular kind of form of life which is a collective form of life and yet it is something which is practiced through those very acts of repetition which are habits which are rituals which could also be you know practices organized within certain kinds of values and gods and divinities and so on and so forth all of that on the one hand and on the other hand this kind of this kind of a corporate social order would be seamlessly flowing from universal human reason is it possible because wouldn't a corporate which is basically a local body a single religion claim a kind of superiority over other corporates just like one religion claims that it is better than the other religion just like one society one nation claims that it is a greater nation than the other nation in so far as these are all kind of corporate bodies these are these are separate separated one is separated from the other but human reason is not separate it is inseparable from each and one at each one of us is how is it possible to now both constitute something which is a separate form of a specific religion and at the same time to make that separate form continuous and non-contradictory with the universal principle of reason this was the challenge that Ambedkar actually took up throughout his life from at least that period in 1935 up to the end of his life but in 1936 after the Mahar conference in Bombay Ambedkar actually wrote and I want to just talk about that for a little bit wrote a text which is quite an extraordinary text which I have addressed in my book on Ambedkar which is called away from the Hindus and it is written in the wake of the Mahara solution of both deciding to abandon Hinduism but also to be open to converting to some other religion and in this text Ambedkar writes about the meaning of conversion or the significance of conversion as not simply believing in one religion in so far as you believe in the theology of that religion you believe for instance the idea of God in a particular religion not really as a belief system but it is a theory of conversion which is based on a particular understanding of the place of religion as something which is both a form of fraternity a form of togetherness a form of sociability which you need to constitute a proper society and hence he said you need religion but at the same time he also and this is again going back to the earlier problem of religion and reason also he wants this kind of a religion to provide a particular kind of alternative to the existent social order where religion is unthought so this is the distinction that he wants to make a religion which is to be thought through the capacity of human beings to think so religion is something to choose because it is necessary to have religion but at the same time to choose according to the requirements and parameters of reason of thinking of thinking against a religion which is unthought so this is really his main point that Hinduism is unthought and we and when we are born into something we are born into something unthought this is the main point that is making that simply being born into a society or nation means that we are born into it because we have no choice which means it is unthought we have not thought because there is no way to find a position outside what is in science is called an Archimedean position you know outside that space so we can't think it so people will say this is what it is you have to just live with this good for you know better for us so here he's saying that no we need to make religion rise to the level of thought into the light of thinking in that sense we must both now start thinking about religion this is the main announcement that is making in 1935 and 36 till now religion has been unthought and hence our oppression our our our discrimination our degradation is something which we have experienced but we have not been able to think of our experience in relation to the situation in which we are born because to be born into a situation is not within our power to be born or not be born is not within our power but now the time has come to think of that very condition but to do it we need to find a point outside how does we do it so this is the tricky part that you have to think it but not absolutely like a neutral observer because there is no neutral position yeah so while thinking it you have to actually also move out of the situation but you have to move out of the situation to a point which is thinkable because otherwise you'll be just going from one one thought one unthought condition to another unthought condition so conversion the bad sense of the term or at least conversion understood in the in the mechanical sense but it is something that you know in in modern law and we'll talk about that in the discussion I hope in in in in modern rational law conversion as something which is done forcefully or through inducement is considered illegal why because it is something which you have not thought about so you have not chosen it this is the idea this is the principle that if you choose to convert so it's part of your freedom but if it's unthought then it's not part of your freedom it's mechanical or it's forced or it's induced so Ambedkar is saying that yes we have to now think of the possibility of converting to some other religion but we have to think of that possibility from an outside point which means that at some point we must also move out we have to do both things at the same time we have to both think of that outside point and we have to also sort of you know gamble on some name on some religion to which we must move out to both things at the same time because we don't have the luxury of a neutral so-called academic it's not an academic question so in 1936 he actually produces a text which he calls it's a nice word he uses calls it's an airy text it's an airy text airy in the air why he says this is the kind of strange moment we are in we are neither anymore unthought members of Hindu society or we are members of an unthought Hindu society because now we are we have been able to think of our relationship to Hindu society because Hindu society is structurally textually ideologically and so on and so forth an anti-social social order so we have been able to think of its essential feature so there we have already exercised our freedom as universal thinking beings so that much we have been able to do so once we have been able to do that Ambedkar says now because we haven't actually converted to any other religion this is the time for thinking abstractly of the concept of conversion so he says theory is a kind of airy activity there's something slightly abstract in the air but that airy activity is not purely speculative it's not purely self-indulgent it is happening in that in-between period when you have been able to think of the possibility of moving out of Hinduism but you have not converted to any other religion it is exactly at that time that you can think of conversion as a concept this is the text called away from Hindus now you will notice something extraordinary till now by and large what we know is that texts of conversion are produced great texts of conversion are produced by religious thinkers, propagandists, proselytizers and so on and so forth who actually belong to the religion which is calling out for conversion which is saying that convert to our fold so you'll find you know different kinds of texts like that and there are these monotheistic religions Christianity, Judaism, Islam which in a sense are structurally and legitimately conversional religions so in that sense proselytizing is part of their structure and you have texts along those lines but Ambedkar's text is one of those extraordinary rare exceptions where the theory of conversion is provided by the one who is to convert it is not a theory of conversion which is coming from the religion which claims that it is a greater religion or it is a religion which you know is worth converting to it is actually coming from a particular section of society which is not part of any at least it has not found any desired religion and yet it sees the importance of religion so that's why Ambedkar does two things at the same time which is on the one hand he produces a theory of conversion but on the other hand he also produces a theory of religion itself as a religion of reason which he also sometimes calls a religion of responsibility and if responsibility comes from human freedom you could also say this is a religion consistent with human freedom it is actually coming from the other side the one who is to convert is producing a general universal theory of conversion in religion rather than the usual quarter from which these theories come which is the majority religion or the powerful religion which produce such texts of theology conversion and so on and so forth this is an extraordinary methodological point which we must you know keep in mind anyway so what is the text now here Ambedkar actually makes a very concrete point he says primarily religion is the human being as addressed by an identity religion is a kind of identity religion is something which identifies us or disowns us in which we gain a particular personality a particular figure you know like in like in art if you make a sculpture if you make a painting it has a figure it has a form religion gives us a form and that form has a name so in other words religion is a name this is Ambedkar's main point religion is actually a name so when someone asks us who are we then the answer that we are Christians or Muslims or Hindus or whatever is actually the name from where a whole series of identifications follow in society so religion is a name but the experience of a name can be very different within the same religion for different parts of the religious society or that social order of that religion so that's why he says that the name untouchable is very different from the name it's a Brahmin the name which is you can say touchable though both apparently a part of the name Hindu the name untouchable is by its very nomination a bad name a degraded name it is a name which is criminal eventually today it's criminal and you know we can see why because that name there is something which is degraded and obscene about the name itself and yet it is part of the naming of religious naming of society that some people are us precious or a truth we are untouchable whichever word you use at that time which is not the case with Brahmin or Kshatriya or the other varnas the name Shudra is also like the name untouchable small degraded servant slave whatever so the name Hindu or the religious name itself is a kind of crypt it's a kind of mask for other names or you can call it in my work I've called it name effect there is a kind of name effect so that's why Whitaker says that the untouchable feels the need for what he calls protective discoloration now this of course is a term from zoology from you know the life sciences where certain animals they camouflage themselves when they are in the danger of being attacked threatened by predators so they assume for instance the color of the of the neighboring forest the green the greenery and they assume a color where the the wool for the or the leopard is not able to identify through the color the actual animal that is threatened so this is called in in a kind of language of zoology and ethology you know science of animal behavior protective discoloration so he says precisely in the same way though he doesn't really explain it but it's the the nature of the metaphor is so clear he says that the untouchable has to try and protect herself or himself by discoloring the appearance of figure before whom who is the predator the upper caste Hindu so this is the contradiction is clear while on the one hand you have the distinction between animals which are predators and you know the the the the threatened animals here we are human beings apparently part of the same universal species or the species being of a universal human being but and yet there is a fundamental distinction which is enacted through one part of it being threatened the other part being the predator against which you have to assume some sort of animal tactics so what is the tactic he says well the tactic that a lot of and this is of course a historical point a lot of untouchable castes have assumed is the tactic of assuming new names from within the cultural history or the cultural traditions of India Indic cultural traditions so he gives the example that for instance the mahar castes which is an untouchable name mahar has called itself soka mela why soka mela is the name of a great mahar saint a saint point the bhakti movement and in fact during the temple entry movement there was a whole you know campaign to institute a temple for soka mela which ambedkar did not actually support they thought it was kind of waste of energy so he says that the the the the mahar calls himself soka mela the name soka mela or for instance you have the bhangi the obscene the criminal name bhangi which is enjoined which is you know which is which is forced to undertake degraded manual labor it is called it calls itself walmiki as a new name so he says all these new names are actually not part of some kind of deeper subalternity some deeper desire to go back to some other tradition these are tactical moves like a threatened animal makes a tactical move of discoloring or camouflaging itself against a predator similarly the untouchable caste assumes a new name so that the uh the upper caste are not able to identify you but he says and he goes on further he says something extraordinary he says if they were all away from their locality they would all call themselves christians in 1936 he's saying this if they were all away from their localities they would all call themselves christians the walmiki the mahar soka mela the madhika arunadat all of them would call themselves christians what does he mean is he saying that christianity is the religion to convert to in an ideal way no there is nothing to suggest that he is though of course he has very serious reflections on christianity as a possible option to convert to just like islam and sickism are also there but there is nothing to say that christianity is a preferred religion what he's saying is probably that christianity is the new name which colonialism and british rule has introduced to the indian population which is a new name which has a kind of kind of uh you know universal force at that time it has a tactical position christian means that the possibility of calling yourself by a new strange name and yet a strange name which is through colonial and british you know and missionary uh and there's a whole text called christianizing the untouchables by ambedkar the whole history of christianity far you know beyond colonial rule from early maybe 15 16th century at least the history of christianity in india has been written about by ambedkar anyway but when he says christians here he does not mean this historical you know reality of christianity what he means is christian as a logical possibility as a new name which can act like a mask for the real degradation of hindu social order but he says it is still not possible at this point because you have to be away from your locality which you cannot be you're still too much part of hindu social order you're too much part of hindu society so that's why he's saying that the untouchable castes have to try and find at this point a mean kind of middle place neither christianity which is too much of a of a kind of too much of a conversion so christianity basically means conversion if you call yourself a christian you have converted while if you call yourself a valmiki you're not really converted if you call yourself a soka miller you're not really converted but at the same time you're not absolutely hindu either there is a kind of intermediate position but he says the difficulty is that in the upper-caste village the locality what he calls locality in the actual locality the upper-caste village from where the untouchable is physically sort of excluded to to to a to a you know periphery at that place even if you try out this protective discolorations the hindu runs you to earth he found finds you out by somehow extracting from you your cast name and that's why midgar says it is simply not enough to assume this tactic of protective discoloration what you must do is convert conversion is the next new name not then the intermediate name but a radical new name a new name to totally delocalize your locality now this to midgar is the real question of the theory of conversion that conversion is to convert to a new name such that you are able to delocalize yourself from that locality which is an oppressive locality which is a discriminatory locality which can be the physical locality of the village but also the locality of hindu social order but the question is what will this new name be in other words what will be the new religion with a new name and in a way the entire struggle between 1935 36 1956 was this so I will now conclude now either the new name can be something which is like I you know gave the example of christianity which is a new name to a particular society so if a new religion comes with a new name like christianity at least at a more sort of prominent in a more prominent way with the colonial rule then that particular religion which is a religion totally outside the hindu religion can be considered an option to to convert to insofar as it gives you the power of a new name but a new name which is not a totally new name it is a new name only in the cultural context of the old names but the real question is that does that mean that you actually move into the theology of christianity into the rituals of christianity now interestingly ambedkar had used the christian analogy earlier he had said even in the 1920s that the untouchables must be like the protestant hindus you know like protestant christianity is a break from catholic christianity or dominant christianity in the history of christianity in the same way we must in a sense become protestants vis-a-vis hinduism but that is an analogy here is talking about something far more concrete and literal to become christian does that mean that you move into christian theology of course this is a complicated question i don't have the time to you know discuss this it's a question of monotheism one god and so on and so forth ambedkar does not really interest himself in theology that is you know something we have to be very sort of very very frank about but also very rigorous about he does not really undertake deep theological studies it takes theology as a set of propositions for which a logical reasonable explanation must be found in that sense he's a scientist of even of religion he has a scientific attitude to religion so he is not really worried that much about theology so in that sense the example of christianity is not an example of a new theology in a you know in a particularly sort of revolutionary sense but at the same time he does look for something new in religion something almost revolutionary in religion this is really the question so on the one hand he thinks christianity is the possible new name which the indian the untouchable population of india can assume but if christianity were at the same level with a openly discriminatory social order then of course ambedkar could not in any way subscribe to christianity even as an example or as an analogy so of course gandhi and ambedkar are pretty you know again here they both think that the example of jesus christ is a revolutionary emancipatory example but the difference is gandhi thinks of jesus christ as separate from christian social order gandhi thinks of jesus christ as a kind of pure godly human being ambedkar on the other hand says that jesus christ is inseparable from a new principle of religion which christianity at least partly institutionalized and that is the principle of equality the principle of human brotherhood paternity though of course in the history of any religion even these principles get you know spoiled but that apart it at least has that principle which according to him hinduism does not so again the question of principle and religion comes comes back so you see what happens between 1976 and 1956 by and large is this ambedkar relentlessly searches for both a particular religious name including the name christianity islam sickism these three you know in a very intense way and at the same time he wants to you through all of these historical explorations and researches he also wants to produce a theory of religion itself as a form of reason and if in 1956 he eventually chooses not christianity not sickism not islam but buddhism then of course a whole series of new questions arise and why does he choose buddhism and why does he not merely choose buddhism why does he while choosing buddhism actually produce a text in 1955-56 which he himself writes called the gospel of buddha or the buddha and his dhamma which earlier wanted to call the gospel of buddha very much in line with the gospel in the in the monotheistic book sense the book of religion sense why does he do both things at the same time according to me and i can't demonstrate it here but let me just assert it and end my lecture according to me he does not choose buddhism because buddhism is a indic religion as different from christianity or islam sickism is also indic after all so i don't think that is the critical or the or the or the decisive parameter i think the main question that he wants to address is in which religion do you do you find the rudiments of the principles of reason which include reason of freedom reason of equality and reason of brotherhood or fraternity and at the same time where can these principles be consolidated in a religious form including the form of a religious text as an act of will the same will he and his people embody me and you can only do that with the religion which historically is actually in a state of weakness rather than a religion which is already a kind of strong world religion or even an indic religion islam and christianity are strong world religions sickism is a very powerful indic religion and also world religion why not buddhism is one of the richest world religions with a particular kind of antitheological understanding of things like god and so on and so forth but in a state of decline in the early 20th century it's exactly where a religion is in decline and yet consists of emancipatory egalitarian universal principles of reason can you intervene to produce a kind of autonomous act of willing the religion and embodying that will in a particular set of new a new textual form of you know organizing your thoughts of expressing your thoughts which is ambedkar's book the buddhahandisthama he can only produce a new gospel of an old religion because that old religion is in a state of decline so ambedkar criticizes buddhism for its decline of the organization of sangha but innovates to its advantage because he can then intervene in that very decline and produce a rejuvenated emancipatory egalitarian text which he can you know autonomously call the buddhahandisthama which obviously cannot write a christian bible or a islamic quran or any such thing in that particular conjuncture of the history of those religions to me this seems the most rational explanation for ambedkar's choice of buddhism as well as his own conversion to buddhism which of course also becomes a kind of platform and inspiration for millions of lax of his his people and people as such to convert but that's a story which we need to read very slowly and very carefully and all these you know points that I have raised at the end need to be discussed threadbare so let me end here and thank you again for the invitation and for your attention but I really want to hear your responses and your questions thank you very much thank you professor chargery for your enlightening lecture you have really taken us for a wonderful journey of Dr. Ambedkar's intellectualization of conversion that how we understood conversion in political and social and also in the cultural context now I open the session for the questions so I request the participants to kindly raise their comments or the questions maybe we can have a small discussion small debate professor chargery is is is eager to have your questions if there is any question you can open up your microphone or you can write in the chat box as well so before any question come professor chargery I really like when you said that you know the dislocating the oppressive localities right I mean I really love these words because it has a deep meaning and also the social cultural context and as we all are aware the statement that Dr. Ambedkar made that the religion is for man and man and not man for religion if you want to again self-respect change your religion if you want to organize yourself change your religion so here here he is emphasizing on two facts that is the self-respect and the second is the social organization right so somewhere we can relate it to educate agitate and organize his famous statement but anyway I'm not drawing your attention to this I'm drawing your attention to what Periyar has quoted about conversion Periyar Ramaswamy Naikar so Periyar's views was a little bit different from the views of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar right rather if I'm not mistaken Periyar has advised Dr. B. R. Ambedkar that Babasaheb please don't convert you if you have to fight for the inequality and the social evils of the Hinduism you have to be in the Hinduism right so see that so there has been you know the differences of opinion on these two great minds so how do you see this debate between Periyar and Dr. Ambedkar Periyar's views on conversion and Babasaheb's view on conversion sir over to you sir thank you first of all those those citations quotations from were actually part of the Yola announcement the one I mentioned religion is for man not man for religion yes sir yeah so in each of these these announcements he actually brought out the question of what I call man's capacity to institute a form which is religious rather than religion is something which comes from an area of unthought surplus or power or transcendence which man has to accept as something over which he has no control so this is actually part of his Yola announcement not his sorry sir no no no no not his Yola announcement this is a part of his Mahar that he that he gave yeah there there in 1936 there he actually you know of course he speaks of these things in different places but he actually enunciates them or announces them in a particular poetic manner for everyone to listen to so so yes so this is just a just a historical point now on Periyar and Ambedkar see of course Periyar's own trajectory is very complicated and as we know that he himself took a great favor to Islam towards the last part of his life and at the same time just like Periyar there were other people you know Bansode was there in the in the Mahar movement itself who strongly strongly opposed Ambedkar's move to convert to to conversion and and made the same kind of appeal that Periyar made that within within the fold you have to you have to work and you have to now the thing is we must again understand that Ambedkar was not really speaking only of religion as a kind of ritual order or a religious practices that we call ritual religious practices in society for him religion was really a site of the exercise of power in the in the most granulated in the most in minute sense religion was real a site of a certain kind of legitimation and repetition of power exercised over the bodies of others or the oppressed and the untouchables in a way that couldn't be only localized to the ritual space or the or the or the or the religious practices so in that sense the word religion itself is not reducible to only practices religion includes the books religion includes our acceptance of certain kinds of notions like destiny religion includes a certain sense of our and this is something which is being revived more and more today religion as something sanatan immemorial something which comes before us and will outlast us in that sense religion as the other of history or even the enemy of history or the you know the the the supervisor of history all of these things for Ambedkar needed to be opposed both theoretically and existentially now theoretically of course he had been doing it all his life but for him existentially it was something which needed to be enacted which needed to be embodied in a kind of gesture in an act and that act he he thought would be an act of taking a new name to to to give that new name a new body to incorporate that new name in a whole set of new practices so of course practices came back in Ambedkar so one of the things that you find in Ambedkar's own conversion is that he created so many new practices of the vows of the oaths which were not at all the same as the traditional Buddhist oaths at all the innocence Ambedkar was again trying to embody new practices but embodied them in the light of the enunciation of a new principle which he thought was revolutionary so for him really religion so the differences for pariah and several others religion is a is a place of improvement of reform of correction or religion is something which has to be rejected like Marxist and atheists in their own right reject religion because it's it's mystification it's a kind of it's a kind of imaginary world that is created in the place of the real world and its contradictions for Ambedkar both of these positions were actually not false that there has to be reform correction because there is always religion and at the same time religion as theology religion as doctrine of god is imaginary is a kind of substitution for the contradictions of real of the real world partly at least but at the same time religion itself was something different from these two aspects and that is why Ambedkar is doing something quite extraordinary so he's doing two things which I find exceptional which I don't find usually works in religion whether they be by well-known social reformers or theologians or even you know atheists materialists and those two are to repeat one is that he's thinking of religion from the position of the of the outsider to majority and religions to great religions to world religions he's thinking of religion as a universal possibility of constituting an emancipatory form of life but from someone who's excluded from any universality of historical religions he's thinking as a minor Italian thinker and yet he's trying to you know produce a theory of universal religion that's the first thing second thing what he's doing is even more interesting in buddha is dhamma he's writing a gospel just like you know the bible or the old text of buddha what is a gospel gospel is the truth as it is spoken revealed and that's a format apparently of ambedkar's text also because his text is not at all written like a philosophical text it's written as a narrative but one of the dimensions of that narrative is that buddhism is able to give you a universal theory of rational religion or let's put it this way you want to test buddhism just like any other religion on the on the on the on the on the measure or on the grounds or whether any such religion satisfies the condition of rationality universal rationality universal thinkability so you see it's a strange situation you are doing it in the name of a new name buddhism in this case a new old name of course like i said a new name which must gain a new kind of force a new universal force a new old name buddhism but you're not saying buddhism is the greatest religion simply he's saying that test buddhism including every other religion on the grounds of universal rational religion which is universal which is religion as such of kind of philosophy of religion what kind of a gospel is this because the gospel is meant to propagate but if you're in your propaganda say say to the people but use your reason test every religion including buddhism or ex-religion to which you are apparently you know providing the propaganda test x also on the grounds of universal reason then who knows even x might fail that test test you know so this is an amazing combination of analytical appeal to everyone's intellectual capacity and at the same time to the power of a new name which is buddhism during this conversion so this ambedkarite buddhism is definitely not really at the same level as the history of religion as a historical cultural tradition which then gives a lot of people the scope to say ambedkar's buddhism is a kind of idiosyncrasy it is a kind of you know vim it is a kind of creation something willful while the history of religions will include buddhism as part of indic religions now i find this i find this in a way interesting if you say that because in a way ambedkar indeed wanted to make buddhism consistent with his will not just his personal will but the will of a thinking people the will of a people who are capable of thinking their own freedom their sort of you know their emancipation from oppression rather than sort of relocalizing buddhism within the so-called indic narrative which is of course very i mean which is absolutely all right you can do that a lot of people are doing no problem but i don't think that is ambedkar's point of intervention that's the reason why he will not do it within hinduism because hinduism is already in your own you know what the point that you raised or it's too localized it's too localized and he needs some kind of a delocalizing gesture but that gesture is very complicated it is not a simple gesture so yeah that's my answer interesting well that takes me to another point yeah sir i just want to ask you if i say that dr bear ambedkar's buddha or his buddhist philosophy of religion and he has understood and look at the buddha not only from you know a social perspective but also from the political perspective so basically he was trying to look for a system he was trying to visualize a kind of system and here i want to draw your attention to his teacher and professor from columbia university john doey if i say that he was he was you know he was famous for pragmatism right i mean he was a pragmatic he was he basically written on that so what would that assertion be correct right that somewhere the principles of john doey inspired dr bear ambedkar to construct such a wonderful experiment which has never happened before in human history you know because i really don't want to look at it from the protestant movement which happened in the 15th century you know against the catholic church this is something different this is something different you are basically creating a transformative model so sir reference to doey what is your take on it yeah yeah that's a very important reference that's a crucial reference so in doey you find a pragmatic philosophy pragmatic should not be misunderstood as instrumental or merely practical thinking pragmatic means life pragmatic means something which is lived something where thought is not abstract thought is not disembodied thought is in the same duration or in the same flowing movement as life is so that's why in this text away from the hindu's actually ambedkar speaks of the anthropological subsoil of religion in something which promotes life values it says those religions which produce life values so i should have spoken about it thank you for your question gives me a chance to bring this out it is not just thinking in the abstract disembodied sort of academic sense for him thinking is the same kind of act which and this is a point that comes from doey which is the flow of life forms life values so he says those religions which eventually promote life life as a value life force are the religions which are also more universe and those religions which actually block life values or life force or the value of life as a force are religions which become corrosive and oppressive so just this to me this particular thinking is deeply linked to doey's philosophy i myself am not a doey's so-called specialist in doey that is not important these two thinkers in american history of philosophy doey and william james are actually extraordinary thinkers precisely because for them philosophy was not really a scholastic ivory tower affair at all but philosophy was a kind of public a public an act of public promotion of life values and and for for for a maker indeed the the greatest hope and religion was to somehow be able to create transformation not just in the ideal sense but in the sense of something which is living and which is uh which which is and i have you know used this term in my book which is embodied in new dispositions so this idea of doey is a dispositional idea rather than merely a theoretical or merely an abstract idea of philosophy so yes yes that is a very important thing that this new what is equality equality is the disposition of equality towards towards others not just in principle but in reality in their bodily life in their material life in their very encounters with each other so that's why one of the most beautiful parts of annihilation of caste actually is very close to doey's thinking when mitker says that when is it that we form a kind of new a new subjectivity that could be the subjectivity of a nation that could be the subjectivity of a new a new form of collectivity whatever it is but that subjectivity is when we he says when we experience a new common feeling it is not a personal feeling private feeling and yet it is a feeling a new intensity a new flow of life that moves through each of us and this is very close to doey's own thinking that life is both something which is trans personal in that is literally transformative it it moves through a kind of trans movement it is never something localized to a corporate separation it is always moving through through channels through forms it is itself not exclusive to a single form life is more than one form and yet life is something which is not simply physical not simply material not simply bodily life is also something which is which is the continuous modification of our habits so transformation is also the transformation of thinking that produces new habits new dispositions so yes absolutely I agree with you that this transformative um transformative vision of religion as a kind of universal dispositional life of a people is far beyond any historical religion including Protestant or whatever you know whatever historical local religious name we can take from any religion doesn't matter this is much much greater than that and it is indeed someone would say philosophical more than religious so yes yes absolutely I agree with you and this discourse finally takes us to what happened after Mahaparinirvana of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar right I think within six months he died after conversion now how do you see today's politics of conversion or how do how do you see the journey of those who have then converted with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar I'm simply curious to understand yes what become of them right yeah what happened to them socially as well as politically how do you see that yeah so many many many dimensions of this the the problem of conversion in general as it is being understood and as it is being dealt with by again social and political power like including the state and political organizations today who take up the question of conversion in a certain way that we know and we should talk about it that's one thing and the other thing is following Ambedkar's own conversion what happened to the movement as such well on the one hand a very strong current of what could be called Dalit Buddhist thinking politics as part of the emancipatory transformational politics did you know come into being no doubt and it has a great force even today so the very idea of Bahujan itself would be impossible without the combination in a sense of Dalit and Buddhist thinking but within a particular Ambedkar I discipline it seems to me not in general merely so that is one thing but at the same time I think we have to accept that the great hope that Ambedkar put into Buddhism not just as a religion to convert to but what could also be called a kind of new internationalism or kind of world possibility which is in evidence when Ambedkar made his last fantastic speech marks in Ambedkar sorry marks in Buddha that speech he made in Kathmandu there he actually is thinking of something which is a horizon of a new Buddhist internationalism and a kind of not a not a enemy rivalry but a kind of but a kind of fraternal rivalry with with communism at that time as as possible options of world transformation of world systems and as critiques of capitalist world order that hope in the next several years has definitely only gone into decline if not total disappearance total you know has has to entirely disappeared well for many reasons I don't think we need to go into them but one of the things that we have to keep in mind is one that the the misunderstanding that there can be an essence of religion that there is a kind of essence of religion such that one religion has a better essence than another that is a very dangerous misapplication of Ambedkar I thinking that Buddhism has an essence which is superior to other essences so from that could follow a kind of dogmatic faith in Buddhist Buddhist uh politic souls so it would be really very difficult to sustain such a politics suppose we take the case of Burma today or even Sri Lanka or other states which could be Buddhist states but extremely oppressive regimes in the name of Buddhism you know you could always say that these are perversions of Buddhism and they are who can doubt it but at the same time in so far as they are institutions of a kind of political theology or a kind of theological power in forms of dictatorship and oppression uh I think it it is would be a misapplication or even kind of waste of time to look for an essence of religion in the sense of essence of Christianity or essence of Buddhism or essence of any the case of Hinduism of course Ambedkar again and again showed that that essence is a contradictory essence in any case that is a different discussion uh so so in that sense I think we should be careful about about looking at Ambedkar's inheritance as a kind of Buddhist inheritance I do not quite subscribed to that kind of thinking I mean I've had occasions when in some public discussions some people who have very strongly you know who subscribed to Ambedkar at Buddhism have said don't even mention the word Dalit because after all Buddhism encompasses everything Ambedkar at Buddhism uh kind of new Navabuddhism in Marathi I've even heard one person who was very young at that time who converted with with Ambedkar in 1956 I met him in Nagaloka last year a couple of years back and he did not even like the term Navabuddhs because he thought that is too much of a new name in the sense of a separate name he wanted the old name Buddhism he said everything is Buddhism why talk of Ambedkar at Buddhism for him there was no distinction between Ambedkar at Buddhism and Buddhism though he meant Ambedkar at Buddhism is indeed a revolutionary you know change from just any other religion but he doesn't like the so-called name Ambedkar at Buddhism as something separate he wants just Buddhism a kind of universal name so all these all these interesting fascinating sort of vacillations are there in the in the history of religion including the history of its name uh but by and large we have to we have to accept that all of this if it is limited to a Buddhist inheritance then it is a it is very important but a small inheritance but it is a great inheritance if it is taken as something which Ambedkar himself called called the thinking of the possibility of a new revolution or a kind of revolutionary paradigm of thinking so Buddhism is only part of a revolutionary paradigm if we think of a large revolutionary paradigm then indeed it seems to me between Buddhism and Dalit politics a kind of revolutionary hypothesis or a revolutionary paradigm in the 1960s and 70s post-Ambedkar did did emerge in the history of India to which the present tremendous reaction is a kind of reaction to that force to that force in the 60s and 70s it is not simply an intra-party congress BGP difficulty it is I think a larger social reaction to some tremendous upheavals that have taken place post Ambedkar but as part of Ambedkarite thinking particularly in the late 60s and 70s maybe through Maharashtra but not just limited to Maharashtra so that is a large perspective that I place before you now on the specific problems of today's situation well it seems to me that the the revivalism of which is called garbapasi sort of returned to one's own fold in among among Hindu organizations and so on and so forth which we well know about actually testifies to a kind of pessimism about religion as different from Ambedkar's rational optimism about religion it seems to me that today there are two things about which the great religious sort of you know violently forceful statements that come from religion Hindu religion and so on and so forth majoritarian religion actually are pessimistic about religion why one they are pessimistic because they do not think that there is any great revolutionary change possible within religion they think religion is a matter of exactly what Ambedkar wanted to exit is a matter of fate matter of social fate let us put it like this not divine fate not you know something which actually comes from the heavens but social fate so if you are born a Hindu then it is social fate and so there is no way you can ever call yourself anything else now that the social fate is intrinsically majoritarian because the majoritarian has some benefits to gain from this kind of social fatalism is something which is not difficult to see but the fact that the social fatalism can today work with so much violence but at the same time with some success through the state machinery and so on and so forth is because it is more or less a corrosive social consensus that nothing new can happen in religion nothing new can happen through religion so that is why any conversion any actor will vis-a-vis taking up a new religious identity must be something which is petty there must be some other motive behind it it couldn't be actually religious Ambedkar had the great rational hope that by moving into a new name some kind of a new being would come into being but if that hope crashes or that hope is deliberately killed crushed then indeed you would say that if you want to convert to any other religion from say Hindu being a Hindu then there must be something behind it there must be some power game some other motive one of the motives that we see today is a kind of what is called biopolitical motive but oh some other religion is wanting to play the game of numbers they want to increase their numbers they want to create a population asymmetry amongst what is called communities it is a communitarian understanding of religion where community has nothing to do with fraternity community has something to do with population with the weight of numbers which of course is also translatable into weight of votes right yes sir this to me is is the one of the one of the sort of planks on which this kind of a terrible violence against the very thought of conversion today is is is practiced socially finally I would say that you know it is also something which comes from another quarter which is on the one hand this pessimism about religion and on the other hand this terrible difficulty with modernity with modern ideas of freedom Ambedkar wanted the two absolutely together whether it is possible to think of them together is something we can debate but he at least absolutely frankly publicly put the two together today it seems to me the idea of a kind of modern individual life in a society like India is really something which is now the center of a new contradiction the contradiction of economic corporatism which needs that kind of individualism and social fatalism which absolutely cannot tolerate that kind of individual freedom particularly seen in such things as the freedom to marry the freedom to love the freedom to have a kind of life of one's own life one of one's own choices absolutely intolerable for the pessimistic social fetus and yet it is apparently something that you must you know you must accept as a value if you want what is called development as part of individualist economic prosperity so that contradiction is a is something that we are experiencing with with unfortunate violence right sir well it's almost 445 now and we really appreciate you know the time that you have given to us and the most important thing is the the goodness of this platform or rather the virtue that we try to create is to encourage people to think you know so this is basically a purpose of this platform how could Ambedkarite perspective can help us in understanding this world yours is a sixth lecture as I have already mentioned so this is what we are learning as a student of Ambedkarism or the Ambedkarite philosophy this is exactly what we are learning we are learning to see the model of understanding you know through which we can see the world and that model is Ambedkarism the Ambedkarite philosophy so sir your contribution to our efforts is really appreciated and I'm personally you know very grateful to you that we got an opportunity to learn so much from you sir I also request you to you know whenever possible after this pandemic let's meet personally you come to our college yeah I'd love to but I'm sure there's no one else so because I can see a lot of icons on the on the screen yeah but nobody's asking any question nobody's commenting but anyways it happens yeah but anyway the most important thing is people participated and we had a good number of people and I'm really appreciating for their patience as well I'm very grateful for your invitation and also for your attention also these these extremely interesting questions that you put to me thank you sir thank you so with these words I declare that the program has been successfully concluded and so thank you so much we'll keep in touch and have a great evening ahead and have a great evening ahead to you as well mr dear participants you know for your time and as well as for your patience thank you thank you very much thank you sir