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Aug 12, 2026
YagnaSri

The Ambedkar That Today's ‘Ambedkarites’ Don't Quote Part 3

Introduction No figure is invoked more often, by more sides of the SC-reservation debate, than Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Organisations campaigning for the extension of Scheduled Caste status to Dalit converts to Christianity and Islam routinely present their cause as the fulfilment of Ambedkar's unfinished project. This is a serious historical claim, and it deserves to be tested against what Ambedkar actually wrote, said, and did across the two decades in which he thought hardest about exactly this question — the period between his public 1935 declaration that he would not die a Hindu, and his eventual conversion, in 1956, to a religion he chose specifically because it was neither Islam nor Christianity. The Long Deliberation: 1935 to 1956 In 1935, at Yeola, Ambedkar publicly announced that although he had been born a Hindu, he would not die one. What followed was not an impulsive act but a sustained, two-decade intellectual investigation into which faith, if any, could deliver genuine social liberation to India's Dalit communities. He studied Hinduism's internal reform possibilities, Sikhism, Islam, and Christianity in turn, weighing each against a single test he considered decisive for any religion: what mental and moral relief does it actually offer the oppressed and the downtrodden? He seriously considered Sikhism for a period, drawn to its explicit doctrinal rejection of caste. Still, he ultimately hesitated over practical and political concerns about how a mass Dalit conversion into the Sikh community would be institutionally absorbed. Islam and Christianity, the two other major faiths available to him, he examined in considerable depth and in both cases, he ultimately declined to recommend them to the community he led. This was not indecision. It was a considered rejection, grounded in specific findings he set out in his own writing, most extensively in his 1940 work Pakistan or the Partition of India. Ambedkar's Documented Findings on Caste Among Indian Muslims Ambedkar's critique of Islam as a vehicle of Dalit liberation is among the most rigorously argued and today, among the most selectively ignored parts of his corpus. He found that Indian Muslim society had developed its own internal hierarchy, broadly tracked as the Ashraf-Ajlaf-Arzal stratification, and that this hierarchy reproduced patterns of exclusion strikingly similar to those he had spent his life fighting within Hinduism. In his essay "Waiting for a Visa," he recounted a personal episode illustrating the point directly: a person treated as untouchable by a Hindu was, in the specific circumstance he described, treated as untouchable by a Muslim as well. He examined, using contemporary government census data, the comparative status of women under prevailing social practice in Muslim society and found conditions he judged no better on questions such as the age of marriage than those prevailing among Hindus, directly rebutting the then-fashionable narrative, popularised by writers such as Katherine Mayo, that Muslim society was comparatively free of the social evils documented in Hindu society. He was also troubled by a specific political episode: when conservative Hindu leaders sought Muslim support in opposing temple-entry reform for Dalits, several Muslim representatives responded favourably to that alliance, aligning, in Ambedkar's assessment, with reactionary social forces rather than with reformist currents of the kind then associated with Kemal Atatürk's Turkey. On the strength of this record, Ambedkar counselled Dalits to exercise considerable caution before contemplating conversion to Islam, concluding, in the starkest terms he used anywhere in his writing on the subject, that Islamic social practice as he observed it in India showed no meaningful escape from caste-like stratification, and that a Muslim social order, once established, tended toward rigidity rather than reform. These are not marginal or disputed observations recovered from obscure sources. They appear in a book Ambedkar published under his own name, intended as a serious political and sociological argument, and later scholars of his work have extensively documented them. Ambedkar's Reservations About Christianity Ambedkar's assessment of Christianity was less severe in tone but no more encouraging in conclusion. He acknowledged, generously, the real contribution Christian missionary institutions had made to education and healthcare among Dalit communities, and for a period held a genuinely favourable view of the faith as a potential path forward. But his final judgment, reached after extended study, was that conversion to Christianity had not delivered a meaningful change in the social status of Dalit converts on the ground. Missionary institutions could educate and heal; they could not, in his assessment, dissolve the social boundaries that caste-conscious Indian society continued to draw around converts regardless of their new religious label. He therefore declined to recommend Christianity to the community as the path to liberation, for essentially the same reason he declined Islam: a change of religious label without a change in lived social reality was not liberation. Why He Chose Buddhism — And What That Choice Tells Us When Ambedkar finally converted, at Nagpur on 14 October 1956, together with several hundred thousand followers, he chose neither Islam nor Christianity but Navayana Buddhism, a form of Buddhism he himself reinterpreted around its rationalism, its explicit historical opposition to Vedic caste doctrine, and, critically, its Indian origin. Scholars who have studied his final choice, including Columbia University's Gauri Vishwanathan, have pointed to the "foreignness" Ambedkar associated with Islam and Christianity as a significant factor weighing against both faiths in his final decision, a concern distinct from, but reinforcing, his substantive social critique of each religion's practical record on caste in the Indian context. Buddhism, born on Indian soil and doctrinally opposed to the Chaturvarna system at its historical origin, offered him what neither Abrahamic faith could: a religion he judged genuinely, not merely nominally, incompatible with caste, and one that carried no risk of transplanting his followers into a new social hierarchy dressed in different theological clothing. This is the man, and this is the considered, two-decade intellectual journey, that today's advocates for extending SC status to Christian and Muslim converts invoke as authority for their cause. Ironically, it may be very interesting to note that the Buddha’s religion is not without its caste divisions. If anything, it is more backward in its ideas on caste and even on the status of women, for that matter. But that is a point to discuss separately. The Contradiction at the Heart of Contemporary "Ambedkarite" Advocacy Since the 2000s, a range of organisations describing their advocacy as Ambedkarite including bodies such as the National Council of Dalit Christians and allied groups that have petitioned the Supreme Court and successive government commissions have campaigned vigorously for exactly the outcome Ambedkar's own documented reasoning counsels against: treating SC status as a portable entitlement that survives conversion to Islam or Christianity, on the theory that caste-based disadvantage persists regardless of the convert's new religious identity. There is a genuine argument to be had about whether social prejudice does, in practice, persist after conversion; that is a question of fact. It is precisely the question the Supreme Court addressed in Soosai v. Union of India (1985), holding that the burden of proving continuing disability at the same structural intensity as among Hindu Scheduled Castes rests on those seeking inclusion. This burden remains undischarged four decades later. But it is a different matter altogether to invoke Ambedkar's name and authority for a policy conclusion that runs directly counter to his own express, structural clarification in the Constituent Assembly that a person who steps out of the Hindu social system cannot carry the Scheduled Caste label with them and to his own considered, published judgment that neither Islam nor Christianity, as practised in India, offered Dalits a genuine exit from caste-like social stratification. This is not a small tension to be waved away as a difference of interpretation. It is a direct contradiction between what Ambedkar wrote about the persistence of caste-like hierarchy within Indian Islam, what he concluded about the practical ineffectiveness of Christian conversion in altering social status, what he told the Constituent Assembly about the non-portability of the Scheduled Caste label, and what a movement invoking his name today asks the Indian state to legislate. The Twenty-Two Vows: A Constitution for a New Religious Identity The content of the conversion ceremony Ambedkar himself administered at Nagpur in October 1956 reinforces the same point from a different angle. Ambedkar did not simply lead his followers into an existing religious community; he administered a specific set of twenty-two personally drafted vows that his new followers were required to take alongside the traditional Buddhist refuge and precepts. These vows explicitly renounced belief in the Hindu deities Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh, rejected the doctrine of avatars, and committed the convert to reject the belief that Hindu scriptures were divinely revealed, but their affirmative content was equally significant: a commitment to treat all human beings as equal, to follow the Buddha's Eightfold Path, and to reject ritual practices Ambedkar associated with caste-based inequality. Nowhere in this carefully constructed ceremony did Ambedkar direct his followers toward Islamic or Christian theological content, doctrinal loyalty, or institutional affiliation. A man who had spent two decades studying available religious alternatives, and who at the moment of his own historic conversion chose to draft an entirely new set of vows rather than adopt the existing catechism of any faith already established among Dalit converts in India, cannot plausibly be read as having regarded Islam or Christianity as satisfactory vehicles for Dalit emancipation. If he had believed either faith adequately answered the question he considered central what mental and moral relief does a religion offer the oppressed the twenty-year deliberation. The elaborate new-vow ceremony that concluded it, would have been unnecessary. Addressing the Objection: "Ambedkar's Views on Islam Predate Partition and Reflect a Different Era" A serious rejoinder to the argument developed above is that Pakistan or the Partition of India was written in 1940, in the specific and highly charged context of the Pakistan movement and impending Partition, and that Ambedkar's observations about Islamic social practice. This is a fair methodological caution. But the caution now cuts less deeply than it first appears. Ambedkar's central finding at that time was that Indian Muslim society had developed its own internal Ashraf-Ajlaf-Arzal hierarchy reproducing caste-like exclusion; it is not a claim about the political circumstances of 1940; it is a sociological claim about social structure in present-day Indian Muslim society in almost identical terms. The persistence of the very stratification Ambedkar documented, independently attested by a present-day indigenous reform movement with no stake in defending his 1940 text, is better evidence for the durability of his observation than against it, and what has persisted is the underlying social structure Ambedkar was describing. A Test for the Debate in the future None of this forecloses the empirical question that genuinely matters: whether, eight decades after Ambedkar wrote, social conditions for Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims have changed in ways that might justify a different constitutional conclusion. That is a legitimate subject for inquiry; indeed, it is the very question the Justice K.G. Balakrishnan Commission has been constituted to examine. But that inquiry should proceed honestly, on its own empirical merits, and not through the borrowed authority of a historical figure whose own writing, considered in full rather than selectively, points the other way. Any commission, court, or campaign that wishes to invoke Ambedkar's legacy in this debate owes it to that legacy and to the historical record to engage with what he actually concluded about Islam, about Christianity, and about the constitutional meaning of Scheduled Caste status, rather than only with the fact that he was a Dalit icon whose name lends weight to whichever position is convenient. ‘A Patch on the Hindu Religion’: What the Constituent Assembly Actually Decided About Scheduled Castes and Conversion Part 2 https://myind.net/Home/viewArticle/a-patch-on-the-hindu-religion-what-the-constituent-assembly-actually-decided-about-scheduled-castes-and-conversion-part-2

Aug 12, 2026
Avinash Brahmbhatt

The Gujarat Language Model: How a State Turned the Three-Language Formula into Practice

From Narendra Modi’s early education reforms to making Gujarati compulsory across school boards, Gujarat has built a model in which 97.6% of its schools offer students three languages, preserving their linguistic roots while opening doors to national and global opportunities. India has debated the Three-Language Formula for decades. In some states it remains politically contentious. Yet the gap between accepting the idea and actually putting it into classrooms remains wide. According to Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2023–24 data placed before the Lok Sabha, 61.6% of Indian schools offer three languages. The same data shows that Gujarat stands at 97.6%, i.e. 52,357 schools, with 97.6% of the state's students enrolled in schools offering three languages. That is the highest school-level coverage reported among states and union territories. An Old Idea, Unevenly Implemented The Three-Language Formula is much older than the present political debate. It evolved through national consultations in the 1950s (Indian Kanoon) and 1960s (The Nehru Archives), was examined by the Kothari Commission, and received formal national backing in 1968. In 1968, following the recommendations of the Kothari Commission, Parliament adopted a resolution on the National Policy on Education that gave formal national backing to the Three-Language Formula. It envisaged Hindi-speaking states teaching Hindi, English and another Indian language, preferably one from southern India, while non-Hindi-speaking states were to teach the regional language, Hindi and English (Raj Bhasha). By 1995, 27 states/UTs were officially classified as having adopted the Three-Language Formula. Though this does not mean that 100% of their schools actually taught three languages (The Hindu Archives). Yet three decades later, only 61.6% of Indian schools actually offer three languages. Gujarat stands at 97.6%. How did Gujarat get here? Gujarat did not invent the formula. Its distinction is its implementation. A national aspiration that remained uneven across India was gradually turned into a deeply embedded educational practice in the state. The Modi Years: Adding Opportunity Without Compromising Identity When Narendra Modi became Chief Minister in 2001, Gujarat already had a multilingual school framework. His government’s contribution was not to replace Gujarati with English but to strengthen a model in which both could coexist. This language strategy was supported by a much wider educational push. Shala Praveshotsav, initiated in 2003, sought to expand enrollment, with particular emphasis on bringing girls and out-of-school children into classrooms. A multilingual curriculum means little if children do not enter and remain in the school system in the first place. During the tenure of Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki (1980–85), English was reintroduced in Class V, but as an optional subject, so most students didn’t study it. Modi changed that in 2004, making English exams mandatory in Class 5 across the state (Vibes of India). The language philosophy became clearer with SCOPE, the Society for Creation of Opportunities through Proficiency in English - established by the Gujarat Government in 2007 under Modi's leadership. SCOPE's official website says it has enrolled more than six lakh candidates (SCOPE, Government of Gujarat). The clearest school-level intervention came toward the end of Modi's tenure. In 2012, Gujarat decided to advance compulsory English from Class V to the second semester of Class III from the 2013-14 academic year. The important point here is what did not happen: Gujarati was not displaced. English was added earlier to an already multilingual curriculum (The Indian Express). Taken together, these measures reveal a clear philosophy of multilingual education: adding new linguistic opportunities without displacing the mother tongue. Gujarat did not treat English as an enemy of Gujarati. Multilingual ability was treated as accumulated human capital: Gujarati for identity and cultural roots, an additional Indian language for wider national communication, and English for higher education, employment and global opportunity. From Continuity to Universalisation Successive Gujarat governments under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership at the centre then expanded this architecture. Yet one gap remained: while Gujarati was firmly embedded in Gujarat Board schools, it was not necessarily taught in schools affiliated with CBSE, ICSE, IB and other boards, particularly English-medium institutions. The Gujarat High Court later recorded the state's concern that some such schools taught English, Hindi and even foreign languages while Gujarati was absent, leaving children studying in Gujarat without systematic instruction in the state's own language (Indian Kanoon). The Vijay Rupani government moved decisively on this gap through a Government Resolution dated 13 April 2018 (The Times of India). Gujarati was made mandatory in non-Gujarati-medium schools in a phased manner, beginning with Standards I and II and progressively extending to Standard VIII. The requirement was also connected to the NOCs issued to schools seeking affiliation with other boards (Indian Kanoon). Therefore, Gujarati was no longer protected merely because it dominated Gujarat Board schooling. The principle now was that choosing an English-medium, CBSE, ICSE or international education should not require a child in Gujarat to lose formal exposure to Gujarati. In 2023, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel gave this principle statutory teeth through the Gujarat Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Gujarati Language Act, 2023. (The Hindu) The law requires Gujarati to be taught as an additional compulsory language in elementary schools across Gujarat, including private schools, minority institutions and schools affiliated with other boards (Gujarat Act No. 4 of 2023). The Gujarat Model and the Philosophy of NEP 2020 Gujarat's experience also offers an interesting point of comparison with the multilingual philosophy of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. While both the 1968 Three-Language Formula and NEP 2020 recognise the value of multilingual education, the approach to implementation has changed significantly. What has transformed is merely the governance philosophy. Though, many have simply failed to acknowledge the Prime Minister’s contribution to this transformation. The 1968 policy was more about imposition, particularly in non-Hindi-speaking states, Hindi + English + regional language. It was politically centralised and coercive. NEP 2020, under Prime Minister Modi, retains the objective of multilingual education but does it differently. No language will be imposed, States decide implementation, students can choose languages, at least two languages should be Indian, with flexibility in interpretation. That is an important distinction. The lesson from Gujarat is not that every state must teach the same three languages. Rather, it demonstrates that multilingual education can strengthen cultural identity without becoming linguistically coercive, and that protecting a regional language need not come at the cost of English proficiency or an acceptance of a global outlook. Roots, Reach and Opportunity Gujarat has created institutional conditions and an ecosystem in which almost every schoolchild encounters multiple languages while the expansion of English-medium and national-board education has not been allowed to push Gujarati entirely out of the classroom. For too long, India's language debate has been framed as a choice between regional identity and global aspirations. Gujarat's experience suggests another possibility: Gujarati for roots An Indian language for reach English for possibilities Narendra Modi may not have invented Gujarat’s Three-Language Formula. But his contribution was to deepen the educational ecosystem around multilingual capability and successive Gujarat governments widened its reach ultimately providing Gujarati statutory protection. Even as language politics and contentions around the three-language formula continue to dominate the political discourse even today, Gujarat has shown the way on how to make it work practically keeping regional identity, national integration and global interests together. References https://sansad.in/getFile/loksabhaquestions/annex/184/AU3785_CrYSEV.pdf?source=pqals https://indiankanoon.org/doc/96281/?type=print https://nehruarchive.in/documents/meeting-of-chief-ministers-and-central-ministers-10-august-1961-4k5nw https://rajbhasha.gov.in/en/official-language-resolution-1968 https://www.librarydrdl.com/pdf/newspaper/Third%20Language%2C%20THE%20HINDU%2003.04.2025.pdf https://www.vibesofindia.com/business-requirement-modis-quiet-push-for-english-in-gujarat-despite-sanghs-swadeshi-garb/ https://scope.gujgov.edu.in/AboutUs/CEPTViews https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ahmedabad/english-to-be-made-compulsory-from-class-iii/ https://indiankanoon.org/doc/54244447/ https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/gujarati-to-be-made-compulsory-from-next-academic-year/articleshow/62855770.cms https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/gujarat-assembly-passes-bill-which-makes-teaching-gujarati-language-in-primary-schools-mandatory/article66563498.ece https://prsindia.org/files/bills_acts/acts_states/gujarat/2023/Actno4of2023Gujarat.pdf

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