1st Edition
Classical Buddhism, Neo-Buddhism and the Question of Caste
Foreword: caste in classical and contemporary Buddhism
GAIL OMVEDT
Introduction
PRADEEP P. GOKHALE
PART I Classical Buddhism and caste
1 Buddha’s attitude towards the caste system as available in Pāli texts
BIMALENDRA KUMAR
2 Caste in classical Indian philosophy: some ontological problems
PRABAL KUMAR SEN
3 Epistemological foundations of caste identities: a review of Buddhist critique of classical orthodox Indian realism
AJAY VERMA
4 Casting away the caste: a Buddhist standpoint in the Vimalaprabhā commentary on the Kālacakra tantra
SHRIKANT BAHULKAR
PART II Neo-Buddhism: Ambedkar on caste, class and gender
5 Buddha and Ambedkar on caste: a comparative overview
MAHESH A. DEOKAR
6 Neo-Buddhism, Marxism and the caste question in India
GOPAL GURU
7 Ambedkar’s critique of patriarchy: interrogating at intersection of caste and gender
PRATIMA PARDESHI
PART III Hinduism and Buddhism: interaction, conflict and beyond
8 Buddhism and Hindu society: some observations from medieval Marathi literature
SHRIKANT BAHULKAR
9 The Buddhist past as a cultural conflict: Ambedkar’s exhumation of Indian history
UMESH BAGADE
10 Gandhi and Ambedkar on caste
VALERIAN RODRIGUES
PART IV Religion, modernity and Navayāna Buddhism
11 Social solidarity or individual perfection: conceptions of religion in Ambedkar and Radhakrishnan
KANCHANA MAHADEVAN
12 Religion, caste and modernity: Ambedkar’s reconstruction of Buddhism
P. KESAVA KUMAR
13 Ambedkar and modern Buddhism: continuity and discontinuity
PRADEEP P. GOKHALE
Appendix I: Vajrasūci
SANGHASEN SINGH
Appendix II: Vajrasūci and its reverberations
R. C. DHERE
Biography
Pradeep P. Gokhale is Honorary Adjunct Professor at the Department of Pali, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India. He has 31 years of postgraduate teaching and research experience in Philosophy at Savitribai Phule Pune University, and was Dr B. R. Ambedkar Research Professor at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarnath (Varanasi) for six years. He has written in diverse areas such as Indian epistemology and logic; the schools of classical Indian philosophy such as Buddhism, Lokāyata, Yoga and Jainism; Indian moral and social philosophy; Indian philosophy of religion; contemporary Buddhism and Ambedkar studies. His research interests have focused on the interface between orthodox and heterodox Indian thought, including between Nyāya and Buddhist logical thought. His published works include Inference and Fallacies Discussed in Ancient Indian Logic with Special Reference to Nyāya and Buddhism (1992) and Lokāyata/Cārvāka: A Philosophical Inquiry (2015), apart from six books in Marathi and the edited volume The Philosophy of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar (2008).
