The struggle for liberation from caste and gender: representations of Dalit women in the neo-Buddhist movement

This dissertation analyzes the representations of Dalit neo-Buddhist women in literature, iconography, and media, and situates these representations in a religious context. It fills a gap in the existing research by bringing together three areas of study, all of which are interdisciplinary in themselves and all of which intersect: religious studies, women's studies, and postcolonial studies. A central feature of the contemporary Dalit movement is its response to B. R. Ambedkar's founding of a new sect of Buddhism in 1956; this sect is popularly known as neo-Buddhism. Ambedkar founded this sect as a means to counter casteism and sexism in India. This dissertation proposes that religious experience is central to the neo-Buddhist movement, to the experiences of women within that movement, and to the production of representations of Dalit women.

This dissertation situates neo-Buddhism as a religion which engages with the intersection of gender and caste, and considers the impact of the text The Buddha and His Dhamma as scripture. It also situates neo-Buddhism in the context of historical responses to the caste system in non-Hindu traditions, and the contemporary practice of casteism and sexism in those traditions. It argues that in his founding of neo-Buddhism, Ambedkar drew on both indigenous and foreign models in order to challenge both Hindu and colonial oppression. Non-Dalits, Dalit men, and Dalit women all respond to Ambedkar and neo-Buddhism. This dissertation argues that Dalit men's representations of Dalit women tend to reinforce upper caste Hindu concepts of womanhood through the idealization of self-sacrificing devotion, domesticity, and purity. In contrast, in their self-representations, Dalit women participate in Buddhist feminist theology through engaging with concepts of religion, rationality, and the polluted body. The dissertation concludes that Dalit women's engagement with casteism and sexism both follows Ambedkar's example and provides a stronger means of countering casteism and sexism in their Dalit communities, and in Indian culture more broadly.