Abstract: In 1956, B. R. Ambedkar publicly converted to Buddhism raising questions about his turn from constitutionalism to religion. The answer to these questions lies in the nature of Buddhism itself. In the late colonial era, the struggle to produce an appropriate Buddhism for a nation-in-the-making reveals a secret history foundational to modern India. Thinkers, activists, reformers, pilgrims, and monks from around South, Southeast and East Asia discussed universalism, nationalism, modernity, democracy and caste radicalism and advocated an Indian return to Buddhism and the Buddha. My talk will explore this genealogy through the Buddhist itineraries and political projects of figures like Anagarika Dharmapala, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, V. D. Savarkar, Rahul Sankrityayan and Ambedkar, to reveal how Buddhism came to occupy a special place in a landscape of re-imagined religions, as the very dhamma of democracy itself. 

Bio: Gitanjali Surendran has taught history at Jindal Global Law School since 2013. She has degrees from Harvard, Oxford and JNU. She is the author of Buddhism as the Dhamma of Democracy in South Asia, c.1890-1956 (Cambridge University Press, July 2024).