On the Editions of Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s The Buddha and His Dhamma
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/23210230231166190 |
| Author | Chiangmong Khiamniungan |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
On the Editions of Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s
The Buddha and His Dhamma
Chiangmong Khiamniungan1
Abstract
This article seeks to outline the history of the addition of references to what is often considered
Dr B. R. Ambedkar’s magnum opus, his posthumously published The Buddha and His Dhamma (1957).
It discusses the original edition, the 1961 Hindi translation by Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, which
was the first to add references, the 1992 reprint of the original edition as Volume 11 of the collec-
tion Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches published by the Government of Maharashtra, and
the 2011 ‘critical edition’ edited by Aakash Singh Rathore and Ajay Verma and published by Oxford
University Press. Through a critical appraisal of these editions, the article aims to press the general need
turned urgent for scholars of Ambedkar to produce competent scholarly editions of Ambedkar’s texts,
especially his later writings, which were left incomplete and unpublished during his lifetime.
Keywords
B. R. Ambedkar, The Buddha and His Dhamma, Vasant Moon, Kausalyayan, critical edition
Introduction
This essay was born out of a certain frustration I felt as I examined the various editions of Dr B. R.
Ambedkar’s The Buddha and His Dhamma (BHD). Despite this text being hailed as Ambedkar’s mag-
num opus, despite the fact that this text already has a ‘critical edition’, and despite the fact that academic
recognition and reception of Ambedkar have increased tremendously both in quantity and quality in the
past decade or so, the versions of this text available to the serious scholar are unsatisfactory at best. It
will be the burden of this essay to demonstrate this by providing a critical examination of the existing
editions of BHD.2 However, I do not wish this essay to perform only the negative task of criticism.
1Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
2 I will be quoting BHD based on the following divisions: Book.Part.(Section)Chapter(Subsection).Verse(s). So, 3.5.(3)2.10–16
refers to verses 10–16 of chapter 2 of Section 3 of Part 5 of Book 3, whereas 3.3.1(i).8 refers to verse 8 of subsection (i) of chapter 1
of Part 3 of Book 3. Only the divisions book, part, and section are named as such in the text. The others are mine. Unless specied,
the pagination refers to the BAWS edition (which is the same as the original edition as the BAWS edition is a reprint). For the
‘critical edition’, only page numbers are provided as the edition has removed the elaborate divisions and the versication.
Original Article
Studies in Indian Politics
11(1) 85–101, 2023
© 2023 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
Article reuse guidelines:
in.sagepub.com/journals-permissions-india
DOI: 10.1177/23210230231166190
journals.sagepub.com/home/inp
Corresponding author:
Chiangmong Khiamniungan, Doctoral Candidate Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad,
Hyderabad, Telangana 500046, India.
E-mail: wuishiu394@gmail.com
86Studies in Indian Politics 11(1)
I shall therefore recount and document the history of the addition of references to BHD, a task that,
ideally, the editors of the ‘critical edition’ should have undertaken. Towards this end, I discuss the first
edition published by the People’s Education Society (PES) in 1957, the 1961 Hindi translation by
Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan published also by PES (cited in text as BHD Hindi),3 the 1992 edition,
which was part of the collection of volumes titled Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches,
published and still being published by the Education Department, Government of Maharashtra4 and,
finally, the ‘critical edition’ edited and annotated by Aakash Singh Rathore and Ajay Verma and pub-
lished by Oxford University Press in 2011 (cited in text as BHD CE).
The general issue I wish to press through this exercise is the need for scholars to produce and have
access to competent editions of the texts they are studying. The task of producing such editions requires
patient reading, deep immersion and assiduous documentation of not only the text in question but also
the other texts that inspire, converse with and surround it. This unenviable task is neither glamorous nor
quick. But that task cannot be bypassed. This issue is especially urgent and relevant to the study of
Ambedkar today, when the number of scholarly volumes being published on Ambedkar and his thought
at the hands of reputed scholars by reputed publishers—in other words, by the mainstream—continues
to increase while the state of Ambedkar’s texts themselves, not just BHD, leaves much to be desired.
I wish to make it clear that I am speaking here of scholarly editions of Ambedkar’s texts—the few that
have come and the many, one hopes, that are yet to come. In myriad forms and in innumerable translations
and editions that can scarcely be taken stock of, Ambedkar’s words and thoughts have been disseminated
and memorialized by his followers and admirers for many decades. These popular editions constitute a
separate domain that lies outside the purview of my remarks, and they must not be assimilated into the
scholarly domain. They may be the object of a scholarly inquiry, but they themselves should not be held
up to scholarly standards or expectations. In saying so, I am not suggesting the superiority of the scholarly
viewpoint or scholarly editions. I am not even suggesting the importance or necessity of seeing BHD or
any of Ambedkar’s writings, for that matter, as scholarly interventions. As we shall in fact see in what
follows, BHD was not compiled as an academic exercise. And in this regard, but also and especially for
the text’s intended audience, who continue to read and recite it with veneration, it matters very little what
mainstream scholarship is doing to or with the text now, after many decades of unjustified silence.5
Yet, to the extent that academic scholarship has taken cognizance—as it should and even if only
recently—of Ambedkar and his thought, it must do so with the specific forms of rigour, seriousness and
sensitivity that the discipline demands. Such compelling scholarly engagement with a writer and his
texts is highly contingent on the quality of the texts available to scholars. Properly edited texts do not, of
course, automatically result in compelling analyses, nor am I saying that the less than healthy state
of many of Ambedkar’s texts has precluded compelling interpretations. The point is that the study of
Ambedkar and his thought will be much facilitated and the quality of studies will be much elevated
by better editions of his texts. It seems to me that it is this area that—in an unfortunate inversion of
priorities—has been neglected even as Ambedkar’s stature and visibility as a significant thinker, indeed
an indispensable philosopher for modern times,6 and with it, the number of scholarly tomes about him
and his thought, have increased. The ‘critical edition’ of BHD is a telling illustration of this neglect.
3 There are translations of the text into other languages: among others, Marathi (1970), Telugu (1994), Tamil (1996) and Bengali
(2000). However, none of these include references.
4 This collection will be cited in text using the abbreviation BAWS with the volume specied.
5 Even in mid-1990s, Upendra Baxi (1995, p. 122) could speak of the ‘studious theoretical silence’ that had ‘disarticulated
Babasaheb Ambedkar’.
6 For some recent statements, see Kumar (2015, pp. 23–24), Rodrigues (2017) and Choudhury (2018, pp. 24–25)
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