6.2 Ambedkar's influence
Through his life work, he became an idol for lower caste people (Queen 1996). He drafted India's constitution, started a civil right movement, founded newspapers, colleges, political parties and initiated the biggest conversion worldwide. He became to be known as "Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar" and was seen as "the second Manu". The Manusmriti (ancient legal Hindu script) privileges and sees Brahmins as inferior, but Ambedkar wrote better "rules" than Manu (whose laws were oppressive toward outcasts) (Queen 1996). In 2008, the Ambedkar Memorial Park was opened in Lucknow, in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
6.2 Ambedkar's orientation of Buddhism
Ambedkar's final project to write The Buddha and his Dhamma had not been completed before his death. His idea was to use the Buddhist philosophy not to explain the origin but to initiate change. There is a great similarity seen with Karl Marx ("That the purpose of philosophy is to reconstruct the world and not to explain the origin of the universe."). According to Ambedkar, the biggest conflicts are found within a country between classes. He wrote:
The conflict between nations is occasional. But the conflict between classes is constant and perpetual. It is…show more content… Converting to Islam or Christianity might likely continue discrimination within in the new community. A social hierarchy is also found within Christianity in India, which sometimes results in conflict. Buddhism allows them to be separated from the Hindu religion, taking a more neutral position and providing a progressive and open path. For Ambedkar, socio-political emancipation and religious liberation were inseparable. Since according to Ambedkar, Hinduism could not provide religious liberation for the scheduled castes, only Buddhism was able to introduce a social-political freeing (Beltz