The Three S’s of Being: Swayambhu, Skandhas, and Śūnyatā in Ambedkar’s Deconstruction of Caste-Self
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Abstract
This article examines how B.R. Ambedkar deployed three interconnected Buddhist philosophical categories—swayambhu (self-becoming), skandha (aggregates), and anattā (selflessness)—to construct a systematic critique of caste as simultaneously a metaphysical, social, and epistemological formation. While Ambedkar’s political and constitutional contributions are well studied, his philosophical engagement with Buddhist doctrine as a tool for dismantling caste ontology has received comparatively less rigorous analysis, and the epistemological dimension of his critique has been largely overlooked. This article addresses that gap by reading Ambedkar’s writings, particularly The Buddha and His Dhamma (1957), Annihilation of Caste (1936), and Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Ancient India, alongside the Pali canonical doctrine of Dependent Origination (paṭiccasamuppāda), Aśvaghoṣa’s Vajrasūcī, and the classical analysis of the five aggregates. The central argument is that Ambedkar identified a structural homology between the Brahmanical doctrine of an eternal, self-existent self (ātman/swayambhu) and the ideological foundation of caste: both posit fixed, inherent essences where Buddhist analysis reveals only conditioned processes. Crucially, this article introduces three interrelated concepts—epistemic enclosure, epistemic caste, and epistemocide—to name the mechanisms by which the caste system functions not only as a social hierarchy but as a knowledge hierarchy, one that denies Śūdras, untouchables, and women the very status of knowers. By systematically applying the Buddhist teaching that phenomena lack inherent self-nature (svabhāva), Ambedkar reframed caste not as a natural or divinely ordained category but as a contingent mental construction sustained by wrong view (micchā-diṭṭhi). Ambedkar’s reading of the Bhagavad Gita as a “philosophic defence of counter-revolution” is shown to be integral to his deconstruction: the Gita’s attempt to ground caturvarṇa in the theory of innate qualities (guṇas) represents, in Buddhist terms, a paradigmatic instance of wrong view (pāpa-diṭṭhikaṃ)—the reification of contingent social categories into fixed ontological essences. The article traces how this philosophical deconstruction informed Ambedkar’s practical programme of conversion, culminating in the Navayāna movement and the twenty-two vows of 1956, and argues that the Navayāna denomination constitutes an act of epistemic liberation: the reclamation by formerly excluded communities of the right to know, to interpret, and to construct meaning.
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