BUDDHIST IDENTITY: A CASE STUDY OF BUDDHIST WOMEN’S NARRATIVES IN NAGPUR CITY

Abstract

Indian women rarely observed as independent identity due to its caste hierachization. Thus a woman identity along with an identity of being lower caste simultaneously makes her a victim of a rigidly imbibed patriarchy and the caste system in our society. Lots of conversion had taken place to transform the life of human beings. But the investigative studies done on these kinds of religious conversions mostly focused on men and gave less importance on its impact on women identity. Among these conversions, Dr. Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism had succeeded to a great extent in providing a new respectable identity to many. Yet the status of Buddhist women, among the Buddhist community, remained the most unexamined part of this conversion. Thus, this paper tries to examine whether the Buddhist identity succeeded to provide a sense of self respect and equal status to Buddhist women or what extent the Buddhist identity stood able to replace their stigmatized identity in public sphere by investigating the narrative provided by the Buddhist women about their own identity.