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The Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday, 7 October, submitted a complaint against Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) minister Rajendra Pal Gautam for participating in the Buddha Dhamma Deeksha Samaroh – an event in which hundreds of Dalits from across Delhi-NCR converted to Buddhism.
"We've filed a complaint against Delhi's Minister of Social Welfare (Rajendra Pal Gautam) at the Parliament Street police station. The AAP government must sack him for his attempt to stoke communal tensions and spread hatred along religious lines within the country," said Delhi BJP chief Adesh Gupta.
Earlier, Manoj Tiwari – two-time BJP MP from Delhi – took to Twitter and termed the Dhamma Deeksha event organised on 5 October 'anti-Hindu'.
"Why is AAP against the Hindus? This AAP minister is taking a vow against Hinduism and is also making others take the same vows," wrote Tiwari.
Meena Kotwal, a Dalit journalist and a human rights defender, said that this entire controversy by the BJP is uncalled for. "I don't understand what this brouhaha is all about. The Indian Constitution grants people the freedom to choose the religion they want to follow," Kotwal told The Quint.
While commenting on the BJP's accusation that the vows taken at the 5 October event are "anti-Hindu,' Kotwal said, "Whenever people convert to Buddhism, they take these vows. Even Ambedkar took these vows when he converted."
Meanwhile, Harish Wankhede, Assistant Professor at the Center for Political Studies at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), said that the controversy stoked by the BJP "is a proof of the party's duplicity."
Wankhede told The Quint that those attacking Gautam are "probably ill-informed about the BJP and the right-wing's alignment with the Buddhist conversion movement."
He said, "In states such as Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, the government is always a part of Buddhist conversion ceremonies and festivals in Nagpur. If the BJP in general is opposed to Buddhist conversions, then what will they say about what they do in Maharashtra?"
Another scholar, who spoke to The Quint on condition of anonymity, said that by creating a controversy over the conversion event, a faction of BJP is revisiting the Savarkarite idea of "Virat Hindutva."
On 5 October, hundreds of Dalits converted to Buddhism as a part of the Buddha Dhamma Deeksha Samaroh organised by the Buddhist Society of India and Mission Jai Bheem.
"For centuries the caste system has limited our opportunities. Now we do not need reservation only in jobs, we need our share in land resources and the right to live with dignity," Gautam had said at the event.
The Quint had attended the 5 October event and spoke to multiple people who had come to participate in the ceremony. Many cited generational trauma, atrocities and crime against women as tipping points for wanting to convert.
Nisha, a 38-year-old homemaker from Ghaziabad, had come for the conversion ceremony with her husband and three children. "I saw that children from my community were made to sit on the floor while other children sat on chairs in our society. I don't want my children to face this," she said.
For 17-year-old Dinesh, on the other hand, embracing Buddhism was a "matter of pride". "To embrace Buddhism in itself is a matter of pride. There is no unity among people in other religions. They discriminate on the basis of caste – something which is against the spirit of our Constitution," he said.
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