Untouchability: Buddhism in India

The Buddha accepting a request for ordination from Sunita, an Untouchable (Image: Buddhism in Pictures, the Buddhist Information Center, Sri Lanka).

Lifting the Curse of Untouchability

Ken and Visakha Kawasaki

Poverty is not news in India. The crush of people, the crush of destitute people, is numbing. Nearly 260 million of India's more than 1 billion people live below the poverty line. India is the world's largest democracy, but more than half a century after independence from British colonial rule, its entrenched caste system aggravates persistent economic troubles and makes a travesty of the ideals of justice and equality.

"Discrimination suffered by women, the lower castes, and tribal groups is a crying denial of the democracy that is enshrined in our constitution," President K. R. Narayanan said recently.

What are the origins of the caste system? Nearly a thousand years before Buddha’s birth, nomads speaking an early form of Sanskrit entered the Indian subcontinent from the north-west, probably through what is now Afghanistan, slowly spreading down through the Punjab into north-central India. They settled into villages and merged with the local population

In this caste-bound society, there were some homeless dropouts called samanas [Sanskrit Shramanas, "wandering ascetics"] who played little or no part in the economy as either producers or consumers. They devoted themselves to the search for religious truth, but they did not follow the prevailing religious orthodoxy, the Brahminical religion based on the Vedas. They were highly individualistic and engaged in a variety of practices. Most samanas were celibate wanderers, without families or other social ties. They could travel freely even from kingdom to kingdom. Being respected by all levels of society, they were given food and hospitality.

Some were teachers -- arguing their philosophies of materialism, nihilism, determinism, and eternalism. Listening to such debates was actually a popular form of entertainment. Many samanas sought to develop psychic powers. Some were naked and unbathed, others wore loin clothes and bathed three times daily. Some followed bizarre rules and practices.

From these forest wanderers came new strains of mysticism as well as the organized religions of Buddhism and Jainism. The culture wars of the 1st millennium B.C.E. set the Brahminical tradition against the Samanic one. The Samanic faiths were almost as pluralistic as today, but what they had in common was their refusal to accept the authority of the Vedas and the brahmins. More>>

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Poster of the Buddha and Dr. Ambedkar, displayed in many homes of new Buddhists in India (brelief)