How a Buddhist-inspired high school is boosting Hungary’s Roma
Classes begin with a gong, not a bell, at the Dr. Ambedkar School.
Each morning, 125 students in grades nine through 12, all from the local Romani community, enter the school grounds beneath a brass plaque embossed in both Hungarian and Hindi. The text marks the life of the school’s namesake, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, India’s first post-independence minister for law and justice.
The inscription finishes by invoking the school’s religious mission: “[Dr. Ambedkar] is a Buddhist saint,” it reads.
Dr. Ambedkar never set foot in Hungary, much less in the provincial northwestern city of Miskolc where the school was established in 2006. But members of Hungary’s Roma community learned about Dr. Ambedkar’s transformative work, in which he helped outlaw India’s caste system last century and improved the lives of his
