BHIMAYĀNA | भीमयान

Overview: The Religion of Buddha is a religion of principles. A religion based on doctrines, not institutions. However, Buddhism is a sort of organised religion.  Buddhism believes in organising a religion, whereas the Religion of Buddha organises people. It's a religion of liberty, equality, and fraternity and rationale. Introduction: Political thought cannot be implanted in people by making them aware of various political theories. Neither can they be taught political science. To organize people, social and political thought should come from their religion. That's why Ambedkar insists why there a need for religion. And by religion, he means religion of principles that will also prove to be the basis of political thoughts of the masses. For this purpose, he converted to Buddhism. However, nowhere in his work, Ambedkar means Buddhism by traditional Buddhism. His meaning of Buddhism lies in the religion of Buddha, which is in stark contrast with conventional Bud...

Bhimayāna is Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's version of Buddhism.  Ambedkar since his childhood was the victim of caste system. He had seen how tyrannical, inhuman and barbaric caste system was. He initially thought of reforming hindu society by getting rid of caste system, which was completely devoid of his ideals of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity. But soon he realised that it was almost impossible to reform the hindu society(which according to him never existed in the first place).  He kept warning about the dangers of caste system and insisted the only solution lies in annihilation of caste.  Meanwhile he was also determined that Hinduism can never be the right religion for the oppressed masses.  Ambedkar never believed in the religion of orders, rules, decree etc. But he imagined of a religion of principles: liberty, equality and fraternity.  He was in the search of a religion which has his ideals subsumed in it. Finally, he came across Reli...