Ishwardatt Medharthi

In 1933, Medharthi took up the charge of the school established by his father.[9] The school was named Sri Dayanand Bharatiya Vidyalaya after Dayananda Saraswati (the founder of the Arya Samaj), and named its locality Munshipuram after Swami Shraddhanand alias Munshiram (the founder of Gurukul Kangri).[11] Ishwardatt modeled the school after Gurukul Kangri, teaching physical education, handicraft, science, and languages to students from lower castes. It was the only school in Kanpur where lower caste students could learn Sanskrit. The school emphasized social equality, mandating students from all castes to participate in various activities. The students were addressed by their first names, and were not allowed to disclose surnames indicative of their castes.[12]

Medharthi promoted religious universalism, believing that all religions preach non-violence, equality, and compassion. He conducted the school's' morning and evening prayers in the Arya Samaj tradition, but took prayers from Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, and Islam, besides Arya Samaj. He called representatives of different faiths for the morning prayer service. He became attracted to the teachings of the 15th-century weaver-saint Kabir, and wrote a booklet praising Kabir's anti-Brahmin views. He invited a Muslim weaver to teach spinning to his students, thus discarding the anti-Muslim stance of the Arya Samaj. He also came under the influence of Buddhism, and named his five favorite students after the first five disciples of the Gautama Buddha.[12]

Swami Shraddhanand, the founder of Gurukul Kangri, did not hold Buddhism in high regard, considering its focus on non-violence as inappropriate for dealing with Muslim and colonial invaders. Nevertheless, the school had Buddhist teachers, including a Ceylonese Buddhist monk who taught Pali to Medharthi, and the Buddhist leader Anagarika Dharmapala visited the school in 1914. Such Buddhist teachers appear to have introduced Buddhism to Medharthi during his student life.[6]

Initially, Medharthi criticized the caste system without criticizing Hinduism, and considered the Vedas to be "the mother of all religions".[13] In 1935, he conducted the marriage of the Dalit Chamar leader Jagjivan Ram and Indrani according to the Vedic rituals.[14] However, in the 1930s, as a result of his veneration for Kabir, he stopped revering the Vedas.[12] Gradually, he was attracted to Buddhism, seeing it as a universal and non-discriminatory religion,[15] although it is not clear when exactly he became a Buddhist.[14] After turning to Buddhism, he changed the name of his school to Bharatiya Ved Vidyalaya and the name of its locality to Buddhpuri (or Buddha-puri).[11]

In his 1939 booklet Bharat ke Adivasi-Purvanjan aur Sant Dharm ("The Primitives and Ancestors of India and the Sant Religion"), Medharthi wrote that the members of the low castes were the original inhabitants of India, and the Aryan invaders had enslaved them. According to him, these original inhabitants followed "Sant Dharm" ("the religion of saints"), the actual sanatana dharma ("eternal religion"), which was orally transmitted and preached equality, morality, and compassion. He portrayed the Vedic religion ("brahmani religion") as the oppressive religion of who had enslaved the original inhabitants of ancient India. He came up with creative etymologies to explain the Sanskrit terms such as asuras and rakshasas, used by the ancient Aryans to describe demons, claiming that these terms referred to the original inhabitants of India. For example, he claimed that "asura" referred to those who did not drink wine (sura) as opposed to the Aryans who ate meat and drank wine; and "rakshasa" referred to those who saved (raksha) others as opposed to the violent Aryans. Medharthi tried to reconcile Buddhism with the "Sant Dharm", stating that Gautama Buddha was actually a follower of the "Sant Dharm". The booklet became very popular among the Dalits of Kanpur.[16]

Medharthi became acquainted with the anti-caste activist and Dalit politician B. R. Ambedkar, probably through mail correspondence,[11] and developed a close relationship with him.[17] He had dedicated his 1933 book to Ambedkar, describing him as a "fearless leader of the youth". He was aware of Ambedkar's burning of the Manusmriti at the Mahad Satyagraha in 1927, and like Ambedkar, blamed Manu for promoting caste-based discrimination. In the book, Medharthi noted that Ambedkar intended to convert from Hinduism to another religion,[5] although Ambedkar publicly announced his intention to convert to another religion only two years later, in 1935, at the Yeola Conference.[13]

He was known as an Acharya ("teacher"),[2] and taught Ambedkar Pali, a language of several Buddhist texts. He became Ambedkar's Pali teacher when Ambedkar held the Labour portfolio in the Viceroy's Executive Council (1942–1946), and regularly visited Delhi on the weekends to teach Ambedkar.[15]

On 5 September 1945, Ambedkar wrote a letter to the Governor of the United Provinces, asking him to appoint Medharthi as a representative of the Backward and Scheduled Castes on a 11-member committee formed to reorganize Sanskrit studies in the state.[14]

Two European Buddhist monks - Lokanatha and Gyan Keto (alias Peter Schoenfeldt) - visited Medharthi's school, likely in 1937.[18] Lokanatha gifted the school a brass Buddha statue, and Gyan Keto gifted it a marble one.[11] In 1943, Ambedkar visited Medharthi's school, and donated a cement Buddha statue for its entrance.[19]

Medharthi, along with his disciple Bhoj Dev Mudit, attended Ambedkar's conversion to Buddhism in Nagpur, on 14 October 1956.[20]