The “untouchable” who touched millions: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Navayana Buddhism, and complexity in social work scholarship on religion

. 2020. The “untouchable” who touched millions: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Navayana Buddhism, and complexity in social work scholarship on religion. Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, 39(4), pp. 474-492. ISSN 1542-6432 [Article]

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Dr. B. R. Ambedkar was a twentieth-century socio-political and religious reformer whose activities impacted millions of lives, especially among India’s Dalit community. This article illustrates his lifework and its lessons for social work scholarship on religion. Using the examples of Ambedkar and Navayana Buddhism, I discuss three sources of complexity for social work scholarship on religion: 1) religion may function as both oppressive and emancipatory; 2) religion is malleable, not monolithic; and 3) religion is situated in and interactive with contexts. I conclude with suggestions for how social work scholarship on religion may account for complexity.

Item Type	Article
Additional Information	“This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in 'Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought' on 4 July 2020, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/15426432.2020.1784071. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.”
Keywords	Ambedkar; Navayana Buddhism; India; Dalit; caste; social justice; religion
Departments, Centres and Research Units	Social, Therapeutic & Community Engagement (STaCS)
Date Deposited	14 Dec 2023 10:28
Last Modified	14 Dec 2023 15:37