Dhammachakra Pravartan Din: the day of Ambedkar's turn to Buddhism

Ambedkar was born into the Mahar caste, a Dalit community treated as untouchable, and for him the question of religion was tied to equality. At a conference at Yeola in October 1935 he announced that he would leave Hinduism: in the words his followers often quote, he had been born a Hindu but would not die one. Twenty-one years later, on 14 October 1956, he and his wife took the Three Refuges and Five Precepts from a Buddhist monk at Nagpur, and he then gave the vows to the crowd of followers gathered around him. Their number is given variously: Ambedkar himself spoke of about 400,000, and the Wikipedia articles on the event give from about 365,000 to some 500,000, one adding 220,000 more on the next day.

Ambedkar added twenty-two vows of his own for the new Buddhists, recited after the refuges and precepts. They are carved in marble at the approach to the Deekshabhoomi stupa and are recited again every year. He explained the choice of Nagpur himself: it was, in his words, the home of the Nag people, who had embraced Buddhism and spread it across India. Two days later he held a second ceremony at Chandrapur. He died on 6 December 1956, less than two months after the conversion.

The name of the day means "turning the wheel of the Dhamma", the traditional name of the Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath.

The 1956 ceremony fell on Vijayadashami, the Dussehra day, and Ambedkarite Buddhists call it Ashoka Vijayadashami, after Emperor Ashoka, who in Buddhist tradition turned to the Buddha's teaching after the bloody war in Kalinga. The main gathering therefore follows the lunar calendar and moves each year between late September and late October: the next one is on 9 October 2027. The calendar date of the ceremony, 14 October, is also marked at Deekshabhoomi as a second, smaller day.

Dussehra is a public holiday in the central and Maharashtra lists, so the day is a holiday in Nagpur in any case. The Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Smarak Samiti, which manages Deekshabhoomi, announces the programme in September. Dhammachakra Pravartan Din is a different festival from Buddha Purnima, the full moon that marks the Buddha's birth, awakening and passing.

Deekshabhoomi, "the ground of ordination", is in central Nagpur, on South Ambazari Road. Its stupa follows the design of the great stupa at Sanchi but is hollow: inside is a large hall with a Buddha image. The stupa was inaugurated in 2001. Beside it grows a Bodhi tree raised from three branches of the sacred tree at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, brought by the monk Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan.

The programme runs over several days. In a recent year the flag was raised and a Dhamma Parishad held on the eve; on the main day the twenty-two vows and a mass Buddha Vandana were recited at 09:00, and the main function began at 18:00. Through the day monks chant, the crowd answers with "Namo Buddhaya" and "Jai Bhim", and many people, a large share of them dressed in white, walk in from all over Maharashtra and beyond. Thousands take the vows themselves: 67,543 people did so in 2019.

The grounds and the roads around turn into a fair of books: stalls sell works on the Buddha and on Ambedkar in many languages, and songs about both play from loudspeakers. Organisations run free food stalls and medical camps.

Dhammachakra Pravartan Din is first of all a religious and civic day for Ambedkarite Buddhists; visitors are welcome, and everything at Deekshabhoomi is free: the stupa, the morning vows, the evening function and the book stalls.