Counter-Discourses of Religion in India: From Ashoka’s Dhamma and Bhakti Praxis to Ambedkar’s Navayana

Abstract

This paper offers a historical and philosophical analysis of the discourse of religion and power in Indian history, as well as of the traditions of resistance that emerged against it. It argues that the devotional practices of Kabir, Ravidas, and Mirabai were not merely expressions of spiritual inwardness or mystical transcendence; rather, they were deeply embedded in social, cultural, and gendered struggles over dignity, identity, and emancipation. Their Bhakti functioned as a form of praxis, that is, a unity of theory and action, through which they challenged Brahmanical varna-based religious privilege and envisioned an alternative ethical and universal conception of religion.

By bringing together the theoretical insights of Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, Judith Butler, and Kimberlé Crenshaw with Dr.B.R.Ambedkar’s indigenous epistemological framework, this paper demonstrates that the discourse of equality in India is not derivative of Western liberal modernity. Rather, it possesses a long and autonomous intellectual genealogy within Indian history itself. Ambedkar is presented as a thinker who not only deconstructed Brahmanical meta-narratives but also reconstructed a new universal and emancipatory ethical order through constitutionalism and Navayana Buddhism. In addition, the paper highlights the feminist implications of Mirabai’s performative defiance and Ambedkar’s structural critique of caste and patriarchy. It concludes that Ashoka’s Dhamma, medieval Bhakti traditions, and Ambedkar’s Navayana together constitute a continuous and radical lineage of universal religion against hierarchy, exclusion, and domination.[1]

Key words: Ashoka’s Dhamma, Bhakti Praxis, Anti-CasteThought, Universal Religion,Navayana Buddhism, Brahmanical Hegemony, Counter-Discourse, Social Justice, Constitutional Morality.