Justpeace Prospects for Peace-building and Worldview Tolerance:
A South Asian Movement’s Social Construction of Justice

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at George Mason University

By
Jeremy A. Rinker Master of Arts
University of Hawaii, 2001
Bachelor of Arts
University of Pittsburgh, 1995

Director: Dr. Daniel Rothbart, Professor of Conflict Resolution
Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution

Spring Semester 2009 George Mason University
Fairfax, VA
Copyright: 2009 Jeremy A. Rinker
All Rights Reserved

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DEDICATION
This dissertation is dedicated to the many named and unnamed dalits who have endured the suffering and humiliation of centuries of social ostracism, discrimination, and structural violence. Their stories, though largely unheard, provide both an inspiration and foundation for creating social justice. It is my hope that in telling and analyzing the stories of dalit friends associated with the Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangha, Sahayak Gana (TBMSG), both new perspectives and a sense of hope about the ideal of justpeace will be fostered.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank all those that provided material, emotional, and spiritual support to me during the many stages of this dissertation work (from conceptualization to completion). The writing of a dissertation is a lonely process and those that suffer most during such a solitary process are invariably the writer’s family. Therefore, special thanks are in order for my wife Stephanie and son Kylor. Thank you for your devotion, understanding, and encouragement throughout what was often a very difficult process. I will always regret the many Saturday trips to the park that I missed, but I promise to make them up as best I can as I begin my new life as Dr. Daddy. To my parents: your inspiration goes much deeper than the financial support that you have provided me throughout this long journey. Your lives serve as an inspiration to me and I remain thankful that I have been blessed with such caring, supportive, and dedicated activist parents.

While it goes without saying that my dissertation committee has been a driving force behind the successful completion of this document, many others have also played important roles in the intellectual and spiritual development necessary for the completion of the following work. To the late Dr. David Chappell, thank you for your friendship, inspiration, and introduction to both engaged Buddhism and the work of TBMSG. To Mangesh Dahiwale and all those at the Manuski Center, thank you for your spiritual friendship along the way, without it I am not sure that this work could have been completed. To all those that I met through the TBMSG movement, thank you for your patience, eagerness, openness, and dedication to assist in collecting the data needed to complete this work. To many unnamed colleagues at GMU (you know who you are), thank you for the comments, guidance, and sense of community that you provided. Finally, I also wish to thank my brother Matthew and his family (Stacy, Paige and Garrett), as well as, my sister Natalie and her family (Harry and Liam) for their support and encouragement along the way. Undoubtedly I have forgotten many important individuals, but in asking that you forgive this oversight I rest assured that your collective hurt does not compare to the continued suffering of the many dalits living under oppression today. I ask that you please forgive any oversights and keep those less fortunate in your hearts and minds.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………vi List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………..vii Chapter 1: Introduction.................................................................................................…1 Chapter 2: Literature Review..........................................................................................67 Chapter 3: Research Methodology................................................................................115 Chapter 4: Exposing the Reality – Preliminary Analysis of Leaders’ Narratives .......163 Chapter 5: Working the Ideal – Preliminary Analysis of Activists’ Narratives ...........244 Chapter 6: Making the Ideal Real – Comparative Analysis of Chosen Narratives ......311 Chapter 7: Implications and Conclusions .....................................................................362 Appendices …………….……………………………………………………………..397 References...……..……………………………………………………………………439

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LIST OF TABLES

• Table
• Page

Table 1: Broad Assumptions and Key Assumptive Postulates………………………...64 Table 2: Stages of Research Design......................................................................……131

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LIST OF FIGURES

• Figure
• Page

Figure 1: Basic Taxonomy of Justice..........................................................................…82 Figure 2: Levels of Analysis.........................................................................................152

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ABSTRACT
JUSTPEACE PROSPECTS FOR PEACE-BUILDING AND WORLDVIEW TOLERANCE: A SOUTH ASIAN MOVEMENT’S SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE

Jeremy A. Rinker, PhD George Mason University, 2009 Dissertation Director: Dr. Daniel Rothbart

This dissertation is an attempt to understand the meta-narratives of justice

operating within the Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangha, Sahayak Gana (TBMSG), a dalit

Buddhist social movement active in Maharashtra, India. The movement, a vestige of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s 1956 conversion to Buddhism, is actively fighting for dalits rights by exposing atrocities and rights abuses against dalits, as well as, advocating an identity for dalits as newly self-aware Buddhists. Such a social action approach has supported both inclusive and exclusive conceptions of social justice, and this dissertation is intended to develop an understanding of the dialectics involved in the various conceptions of social justice within the movement. With the broader aim of explaining how such understanding can inform conflict resolution practitioners engaged in peace-building practice among marginalized populations, this dissertation is based on a social constructionist epistemology.
In analyzing the justice/injustice narratives routinely produced by movement activists and leaders, this dissertation takes an action science approach of helping the group make better use of the deployment, limitations, and contradictions of the narratives it weaves. The aim of the present work is to build upon theories that address the nexus between conflict resolution and social justice in developing an epistemological framework for understanding, in theory and use, actors’ normative commitments to justice. By unpacking the social justice commitments of TBMSG members, this dissertation exposes the rationale for understanding how, in practice, narratives are produced and deployed, as well as, constructive of movement members’ conceptions of social change. In short, this dissertation is a peeling away of layers of reality inherent in movement members’ justice/injustice narratives in order to begin to understand the implementation of social justice as an ideal.
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
The teaching of the Buddha is through and through goal-oriented (teleological). It is entirely dependent upon its goal of freedom from suffering and ultimate frustration. And the Buddha’s concern is not discussion. It is not pondering or mulling things over. It is action.¹

Sameer Taware, an energetic young dalit² (ex-‘untouchable’) activist, is quite comfortable expressing his emotions. If asked his identity, he will readily express himself as a dalit, while more reservedly proclaiming himself a Buddhist. Both engaging and deliberative in character, Sameer exemplifies the thoughtful and astute fruit of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s historic movement to uplift and educate dalit communities in India. In his mid-to-late-twenties, Sameer is an Ambedkar Buddhist activist working in the “interrelated projects”³ that are implemented from the Manuski Center, a program of the

Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangha Sahayaka Gana (the TBMSG), the Indian wing of a

worldwide Buddhist sangha (community) aimed at creating a “Dhamma revolution.”⁴ In June 2008, Sameer had just been hired by the Manuski Center to utilize his education and experience as a Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS) Masters of Social Work graduate.

¹ Williams (2000), 36. ² The word ‘Dalit’ means ‘broken’ or ‘downtrodden’ in Sanskrit and was “used as far back as 1931 in journalistic writing” [Michael (1999), 99]. ³ http://www.manuski.net/ ⁴ Sponberg. A. (1996) “A Dhamma Revolution in Contemporary India” in Queen, C. and King, S. eds. Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia. New York: SUNY Press. Dhamma is the Pali equivalent of Dharma in the Sanskrit and in Buddhism has many meanings, the most common of which is a referent for the Buddhist teaching or tradition.

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This chapter will, through both recounting and analyzing the stories of activists like Sameer, as well as, providing some historical background to the Ambedkar Buddhist movement in Maharashtra, highlight the critical features of the modern Indian caste system⁵ by underscoring the work that a particular movement of Ambedkar Buddhists, the TBMSG, is doing to recreate low-castes’ place in both history and modern society. In turn, this introductory chapter begins to reveal TBMSG’s on-going struggle to construct a pragmatic vision of Indian society that is guided by a commitment to social justice,⁶ both in its attention to a myriad of problems that face Indian society today and in its ideals for a better tomorrow. It is this vision - both pragmatic and normative - and its

⁵ The definition of ‘Caste’ is one that is multi-faceted and contentious, but an important concept to define nonetheless. The term was probably first used by the Portuguese settlers (in 1563) on the Northwestern Indian coast to describe the economic associations of the Indian people that they encountered [Hutton (1946)]. As Hutton (1946) further details: “The truth is that while a caste is a social unit in a quasi-organic system of society, and throughout India is considered enough to be immediately identifiable, the nature of the unit is variable enough to make a concise definition difficult. If it be enough to define the system, the following formula is suggested – ‘a caste system is one whereby a society is divided up into a number of self-contained and completely segregated units (castes), the mutual relations between which are ritually determined in a graded scale” (Hutton, 50). The Indian caste system is typically explained using the chaturvarna framework, in which Indian society is divided into four castes which represent different body regions of the cosmic first man, who is named Parusha in Brahminical sources. In this chaturvarna framework the Brahmin (priests) make up the head and mouth of this cosmic being while the Kshatriya (warriors) make up his arms, the Vaishya (merchants) make up his thighs, and the Shudra (servants/peasants) make up his feet. ‘Untouchables,’ or what have become know as dalits or scheduled castes, fall outside this system and are, thus, seen to be ritually impure. ⁶ Social justice, being a key conceptual frame of this dissertation, requires some definition. Despite the fact that even “among those that support it, it is not at all clear what the idea means” [Miller (1999), ix], I believe that social justice can be given some broad definition. Here it will suffice to say that social justice is a social context in which fairness, equity, and justpeace reign and violence as a hindrance to any person or peoples’ potentiality does not exist [see further references to Galtung (1969) and Schirch (2004), among others, for a broader understanding of such a difficult concept as social justice].

2wide-ranging potential and impact that are the subject of this dissertation.⁷ In analyzing and explaining TBMSG’s social justice vision, the need for not only individual selfreflection but also collective self-reflection becomes pre-eminent. TBMSG’s struggle for a casteless society is more than just the opportunistic power struggles of the dispossessed, but is representative of a pragmatic epistemology of social justice that blends political discontent with pluralistic religious commitment. This is the story that this first chapter of this dissertation begins to frame. It follows that TBMSG’s narratives, as both collective expressions of justice and peace, present an ideal lens with which to explore the role of justice in peace-building.
Though at first sight the TBMSG movement’s goals do not seem politically radical, and their foundational concern is in spreading knowledge of Buddhist practice, their privileging of social justice betrays an equally primary concern for addressing past injustices. Such injustices as economic/occupational discrimination, structural inequalities, and social oppression at the hands of ruling Brahmin elite are a ubiquitous set of experiences for the Ambedkar Buddhist membership of the TBMSG. It is such all encompassing injustice that the dalits of India experience in every sphere of their daily existence and which the TBMSG is determined to fight and overcome. Through following Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s favorite mantra, which he co-opted from American labor

⁷ One might notice the mix of the theological and practical similarities between TBMSG’s engaged Buddhism and the Liberation Theology of Latin American Christian movements of the 1970s and 1980s [see Gutiérrez (1988) for a discussion of the complexity of Latin American Liberation theology and Smith (1991) for an explanation of the broad social movement that Gutiérrez’s, as well as, other Christian thinkers ideas inspired post Vatican II]. Many more good resources for exploring liberation theology can also be found at http://www.liberationtheology.org/.

3movements of the 1920s, followers of the TBMSG have vowed to “Organize, Agitate, Educate.” This means that they collectively understand the need to work within dalit communities to empower these communities to develop the means to eradicate the sources of injustice – here it may be a corrupt police chief; there it might be a Brahmin dominated panchayat (local government administration). Whatever the source of this injustice, their goal of its eradication is seen as complimentary to the spread of Buddhist dharma.
This dissertation employs ethnographic methods (interviews, participant observation, and participatory action research in the form of formal and informal movement dialogues on caste injustice and motives for joining the movement) to unpack the layers of the Ambedkar Buddhist worldview prevalent in the TBMSG. In examining the justice/injustice narratives routinely produced by movement activists and leaders (collectively called members herein), it is my aim to help the group make better use of the deployment, limitations, and contradictions of these narratives and assist its members as they progress toward the co-extensive conflict resolution goal of justpeace. The intention of the present work is to build upon theories that address the nexus between conflict resolution and social justice in developing an epistemological framework for understanding, in theory and use, actors’ normative commitments to justice. The chapters that follow will repeatedly reference the stories told to me by TBMSG leaders and activists. At times I will reconstruct informal conversations and at other times I will analyze transcribed narratives taken from formal interviews or members’ writings. The choice of narratives and method of analysis is not random but rather aims to highlight the
4complexity of both TBMSG discourse and narrative. Narratives were chosen as the unit of analysis because, as more manageable constituent parts of wider discourses, narratives provide an ideal means to access movement meaning and learning and to expose actors’ normative commitments. My own role as a doctoral candidate and researcher in conflict analysis and resolution, though alluded to throughout, has been minimized in order to focus on giving voice to respondents that often do not have voice in their society. Where necessary, my own positioning vis-à-vis the movement is mentioned in order to provide important context and effect.
Over lunch at the Manuski Center one day in June 2008, Sameer solicitously asked me “What can conflict resolution do about caste discrimination?”⁸ This question was not intended to be a critical affront to my chosen field of expertise, conflict resolution, but rather a pragmatic and heartfelt inquiry, an inquiry that he hoped would help him as he began his new job at the Manuski Center by providing him some replicable tools. Sameer, like others at the Manuski Center, are continually looking for answers to India’s endemic caste-based structural violence.⁹ He was not looking for simple answers – TBMSG members readily admit there are none of those - but practical techniques that he could employ in both his new occupation, as well as, with personal acquaintances. This pragmatic approach to the creation of social justice not only marks

⁸ Informal interview with Sameer Taware at Manuski Center, June 29, 2008. ⁹ Structural violence is a crucial concept to understand, as it is the sometimes invisible hand of structural violence that dalits feel and higher castes deny, thus causing tension between caste groupings. Galtung (1969) defines structural violence as “violence without [subject-verb-object] relation” (171). Such violence is “built into the structure. Thus, when one husband beats his wife there is a clear case of personal violence, but when one million husbands keep one million wives in ignorance there is structural violence” (171).

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TBMSG as a fascinating case study of religiously-based social movement organization, but also exposes the on-going struggle for a unified conception of a TBMSG social justice ideal. Like the marginalized anywhere, dalits want change yesterday! But, beyond discontent with the status quo, TBMSG’s pragmatic worldview exposes an ongoing attempt to realize social justice. It is such processes of justice’s social construction that illuminate the capacity of conflict analysis and resolution methodology to combat discrimination and the destructive normative creations of ‘others.’
Sameer’s question was typical in the sense that TBMSG activists are engaged in an on-going process of reflection on past injustices as a means to negotiate future approaches that will consistently create a wider impact on the oppressive social structures they face. Though TBMSG leaders’ and activists’ analysis of the caste situation always leads back to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s thought, it is a pragmatic engagement with the world that continually re-negotiates TBMSG’s conception of social justice. What made Sameer’s query special was that my own response to it led him to a place where he felt comfortable to informally open up. A cathartic release of pain and emotional suffering, which he was obviously struggling to express, followed my supportive response that conflict resolution, if done right, can provide opportunity for the voiceless to have voice. TBMSG activists’ and leaders’ construction of social justice lives in the negotiated space which such spontaneous social interactions create. It is in this story-telling process and structure that reflective learning and the transformational re-positioning of self in society

6can take place.¹⁰ With my own simple response, Sameer, unprompted, began to give a rationale for why he had asked this question. First he lamented about two high-caste friends with whom he felt he could not discuss caste issues. “They do not want to hear this stuff. They think that caste is no longer an issue in India.”¹¹ It is these people with whom Sameer strived to dialogue and, yet, they did not even want to engage. What does conflict resolution offer in such a case?
Next, Sameer launched into a story that Erik Erikson might describe as persisting
“from stage to stage [of the life cycle] as a foreign body seeking outlet or absorption.”¹² It is a story meant to further justify his initial query, but it is also telling of TBMSG activists’ complex understanding of social justice and the ways to achieve it. As a first year student at the TISS, Sameer began dating a classmate. By all accounts everything seemed to be going well. Sameer spent every available moment with this girl and had become quite friendly with her father, who, upon visiting his daughter at the university, would first stop to check on Sameer. The relationship with this girl’s father was so good that Sameer admitted “he seemed to be more interested in my education than his own daughter’s.”¹³ One day while sitting in their core freshman social work class, Sameer and his classmates whom by this point in their first semester had become a very close cohort,

¹⁰ It should be noted here that the public space for the storytelling of caste discrimination and social justice is lacking in democratic India. As a dalit friend taught me as he gave his reaction to the first ever U.S.- based Dalit Studies Conference held recently at the University of Pennsylvania: “such reflective public space is not even available in India” (Informal interview with a dalit participant at the Dalit Studies Conference, University of Pennsylvania - December 5, 2008). This is a common refrain of complaint among the dalits I have engaged with during this research. ¹¹ Informal interview with Sameer Taware at Manuski Center, June 29, 2008. ¹² Erikson (1969), 98. ¹³ Informal interview with Sameer Taware at Manuski Center, June 29, 2008. Statements like these in India are not uncommon and indicate that marriage is a distinct future possibility.

7were interrupted by a school administrator. Speaking over the din of students, this administrator began to read an announcement about an open scholarship opportunity. As the students quieted, the administrator continued by explaining that the scholarship was open for Scheduled Castes (SCs)¹⁴ only. After reading the full announcement, this administrator then proceeded to read the names of all the eligible SCs in the class. This last act, whether intentional or unintentional on the part of the administrator, caused shock and turmoil in the class. Both the girl Sameer had been seeing, and many of his newfound ‘friends’ were shocked to hear his name read out on this list. Once the administrator left, they began asking Sameer if this was true – was he an SC? Sameer, not having faced such questions before and feeling he had no reason to hide anything, readily admitted that he was from a SC community. As students filed out of the classroom at the end of class, Sameer could overhear them asking each other in disbelief: “How can Sameer be a Scheduled Caste?... It cannot be…”¹⁵
From that day forward Sameer’s relationship with the girl he had been dating, as well as with many others in his class, changed. The girl would not return his calls, and indeed, after that day he never again spoke directly to her. He was angry and hurt that