The
Dalit Buddhist movement (dubbed as
Navayana by certain
Ambedkerites) is a 19th and 20th-century
Buddhist revival movement in
India. It received its most substantial impetus from
B. R. Ambedkar's call for the conversion of
Dalits to
Buddhism, in 1956, to escape a
caste-based society that considered them to be the lowest in the hierarchy. Ambedkar saw Buddhism as a means to end the caste system in India.