What Do People Say About You When You Leave the Room?

Ask Westerners to name a paragon of morality, and many will identify Mahatma Gandhi. In terms of reinvention, a less familiar but better example is Gandhi’s contemporary and compatriot B.R. Ambedkar. Gandhi and most of India’s leaders were Brahmins, an upper social caste. But Ambedkar was a Dalit, the lowest caste. Ambedkar endured severe discrimination. Yet he eventually became a leader of India’s independence and wrote the nation’s egalitarian constitution. Because he felt that Hindu beliefs would keep the Dalits from achieving equality, he also led 500,000 Dalits in converting to Buddhism. This mass conversion was the “ultimate rebranding...