B. R. Ambedkar, also known as Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, was an Indian jurist, economist, social reformer, and political leader who served as the principal architect of the Indian Constitution. Born into a Dalit community, he endured intense caste-based discrimination, which profoundly shaped his intellectual and spiritual journey. This life experience led him to a radical critique of the Hindu social order and to a search for a religious and ethical framework that could uphold human dignity. His eventual turn to Buddhism was thus not merely a personal spiritual choice, but a considered response to the suffering produced by caste hierarchy.

Within this context, Ambedkar stands as the founder and chief architect of Navayana, literally the “New Vehicle,” a modern reinterpretation of Buddhism. He re-read the Buddha’s teaching through the lens of social equality, rationality, and justice, presenting Buddhism as a path oriented toward the annihilation of caste and the creation of a just society. In this reinterpretation, he rejected or downplayed traditional understandings of karma and rebirth when they were used to justify social hierarchy, and he emphasized the Buddha as a social reformer rather than a figure shrouded in supernaturalism. For Ambedkar, dhamma became an ethical and rational way of life, grounded in the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

Ambedkar’s role was not only doctrinal but also profoundly practical and communal. In a landmark act, he publicly converted to Buddhism in Nagpur, accompanied by hundreds of thousands of followers, most of them Dalits seeking liberation from caste oppression. This mass conversion inaugurated a new Dalit-Buddhist movement, in which religious identity became a vehicle for social transformation. For many of these followers, Navayana functions simultaneously as a spiritual path and a social revolution, offering a dignified alternative to the structures that had long marginalized them.

His written work, especially *The Buddha and His Dhamma*, serves as the foundational text of this movement and crystallizes his reinterpretation of Buddhist teachings. In it, Buddhism is presented as rational, ethical, and oriented toward social justice, with the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path understood as tools for collective as well as individual liberation. Through this synthesis of spiritual insight and social critique, Ambedkar’s Navayana Buddhism invites practitioners to see awakening not as withdrawal from the world, but as a commitment to transform it in the direction of equality and shared human dignity.