01Vijayadashami, 1956
At Yeola in 1935 Ambedkar had told a conference of the depressed classes that he was born a Hindu but would not die one. He took twenty years to choose. He settled on the Buddha’s Dhamma, a path born on Indian soil, and on Nagpur, which he said was the land of the Nagas who had once carried that Dhamma across Bharat. On the morning of 14 October 1956, the day kept as Ashoka’s Vijayadashami, he and his wife Savita took the three refuges and five precepts from the senior monk Chandramani of Kushinagar. He then gave the diksha himself, with twenty-two vows he had framed, to a crowd counted in lakhs. Seven weeks later, on 6 December, he died in Delhi.
02The stupa on the ground
A memorial committee took charge of the four-acre ground after his death. Work on the stupa, designed by the architect Sheo Dan Mal on the lines of the great stupa at Sanchi, began in July 1978 and went on for more than two decades; President K. R. Narayanan opened it on 18 December 2001. Unlike Sanchi it is hollow, a domed hall with an image of the Buddha given by Thai students of Nagpur University. A Bodhi tree grown from cuttings brought from Anuradhapura stands beside it. Every year on Dhammachakra Pravartan Din, the anniversary of the diksha, the ground fills with pilgrims from across Maharashtra and beyond.
The life of this place
- 13 October 1935At Yeola, Ambedkar announces that he will not die a Hindu.
- 14 October 1956Ambedkar takes and gives the Buddhist diksha on this ground.
- July 1978Construction of the stupa begins.
- 18 December 2001President K. R. Narayanan opens the stupa.
Open daily; the anniversary crowds come on Ashoka Vijayadashami and on 14 October, so go on another day for a quiet visit.
