Abstract:
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.
