Synopsis There are at present several crore untouchables in India, the vast majority of whom are underprivileged in every sense of the term. In the course of the last thousand or so years saints and reformers have sought to ameliorate the lot of the untouchables-none of them with any great success. Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, himself an untouchable by birth, who came to the conclusion that there was no salvation for the untouchables within Hinduism and that they would have to change there religion. In October 1956, he and half a million of his followers, therefore, became Buddhist and explains what Buddhism meant to him. Sangharakshita's depth of experience and clear thinking are obvious throughout the book.