BENGALURU: On this day, 62 years ago, BR Ambedkar , publicly converted to Buddhism years after he had been advocating that Buddhism is the only way out for the oppressed sections of the Hindu community.Just seven weeks after his conversion on October 14, 1956, Ambedkar died (December 6, 1956), but that did not stop lakhs of his followers from embracing Buddhism, even as crores of other oppressed people continue to fight from within the walls of Hinduism, using the Constitution as their shield.While Ambedkar felt Buddhism was the way out, at the same time of his conversion, a group of oppressed citizens in Japan, were fighting discrimination by not just those practising Shinto, but also those following Buddhism, which was officially introduced in Japan in 552CE.And even today, just as the Dalits in India, this community – the Buraku - continues to fight against discrimination. This community was an outcaste in the now-defunct caste system that existed in the Edo Period (1603-1867). Buraku is a Japanese word referring to a hamlet. According to the Buraku Liberation League (BLL), which has been the face of the Buraku struggle, “The Burakumin are the largest discriminated-against population in Japan. They are not a racial or a national minority, but a caste-like minority among the ethnic Japanese”. They are generally recognized as descendants of outcaste populations in the feudal days, who were assigned social functions such as slaughtering animals and executing criminals, and the general public perceived these functions as ‘polluting acts’ under both Buddhist and Shintoist beliefs.In fact, about a decade before Ambedkar’s death, the late Jiichiro Matsumoto, a Buraku leader had met with him to discuss common paint points and way ahead. And decades later, the two communities still work shoulder to shoulder.On September 22 and 23 this year, the BLL and the Ambedkar International Mission (AIM), together hosted a convention in Fukuoka, Japan, and as some participants there feel, there is still a lot to learn.“The Dalit movement in India is still primarily confined to the logics of gaining state power or fighting for state subsidized resources. That is why it keeps relying entirely on the state model that is inherently oppressive. BLL, on the other hand, has liberation in its very name and has identified with liberation as its status and working conditions, which is something the Dalit movement can borrow,” Suraj Yengde, a post-doctoral fellow at the Shorenstein Center for Politics, Media and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School told STOI.The convention—4th BR Ambedkar International Convention—was organized jointly by AIM, Japan, BLL and the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination (IMADR), Japan.Sushant Godghate of AIM Japan, who has lived the last 18 years in Japan, says that AIM and BLL have been jointly working for more than a decade. “This convention was a step forward to bring together the marginalized communities from different parts of the world and the objective was to discuss global human rights related issues in the 21st Century,” he said.Sen-Inchi Moriyama, member of the BLL chief executive committee, said in a video interview to Suraj that the kind of discrimination, and the status of Dalits in India is not too different from the Buraku people in Japan even after all these years. BLL President Shigeyuki Kumisaka, argued that at a time that the world is moving towards becoming more and more nationalist, it is more important to fight for communities kept out of the system.As their goodbye, the organizers sign off with the words, “Jai Bhim Jai Burakumin!”