What did Ambedkar like about Buddhism? April 13, 2021, 8:25 PM IST
By Pranav Khullar
Even as Mulk Raj Anand was etching out the character of Bakha, the untouchable boy, and articulating the exploitation of the less privileged classes in his novel ‘The Untouchable’, another man was beginning to envision a radical restructuring of India’s socio-economic religious fabric. Ambedkar’s articulation of the oppression of untouchables stemmed from his view of religion, which he laid down as being for man, not man for religion.
Ambedkar’s anguished spiritual-reformist radicalism puts him in a long lineage of writer-rebels, from Valmiki to Maharishi Vyasa and to the saint-poets of the Bhakti pantheon, from Namdev to Eknath to Tukaram. He finally anchored himself in the all-embracing humanist vision of the Buddha, which, he felt, alone could break these deeply embedded prejudices, which divide each man from the other.
Opinion: International travellers made to feel like untouchables calgaryherald.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from calgaryherald.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Cedric Dover. | Credit: Yale University Library Archives.
In 1948, a case came up for hearing in the California supreme court that challenged one of the very bases of racial segregation. The case was of Andrea Perez, a Mexican American woman. Perez, who was legally considered white because of her Spanish heritage, had been denied the right to marry Sylvester Davis, an African American, because of California’s anti-miscegenation law. An indignant Perez petitioned the supreme court, demanding a marriage licence. The court agreed. It struck down the miscegenation law as unconstitutional by a verdict of four to three. Justice Jesse Carter, one of the judges in the majority, wrote a 3,565-word judgement explaining the decision, in which he chose to cite a book written by Cedric Dover, an Anglo-Indian born nearly 8,000 miles away in Calcutta.
Mulk Raj Anand, (born December 12, 1905, Peshawar, India [now in Pakistan] died September 28, 2004, Pune), prominent Indian author of novels, short stories, and critical essays in English, who is known for his realistic and sympathetic portrayal of the poor in India. He is considered a founder of the English-language Indian novel.
The son of a coppersmith, Anand graduated with honours in 1924 from Punjab University in Lahore and pursued additional studies at the University of Cambridge and at University College in London. While in Europe, he became politically active in India’s struggle for independence and shortly thereafter wrote a series of diverse books on aspects of South Asian culture, including
ਜੱਲ੍ਹਿਆਂਵਾਲਾ ਬਾਗ਼ ਦੀ ਵਿਰਾਸਤ: ਕਾਲੀ ਨਾਥ ਰੇਅ ਤੇ ਵੀ ਐਨ ਦੱਤਾ punjabitribuneonline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from punjabitribuneonline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.