Ambedkar’s Perspective On Buddhism And Other Religions

Introduction

Methodology

In the beginning of the dissertation the topic has been specified and its limit has been set out.

To introduce these works of research the researcher had adopted scientific method of noting, reporting, observing facts and events, analyzing and exploring them and being objective as much as humanly possible during stating the facts and formulating the hypothesis. Thus the methods of investigation and evaluation is objective. However there have been certain constraints of avoiding detailed examination of the subject matter and suppressing much of the data to illustrate certain point of argument or the essence of circumstances on the part of the researcher.

While research in social sciences in general and comparative religion in particular is extremely sensitive and scientific objectivity in its methodology is hardest thing to get the task is not quite next to impossible given firmness and sharpness of mind and use of hermeneutic techniques.

Before undertaking this research project the researcher had undergone the training of objective looking through the courses of Vipassana techniques under various international Vipassana Academy, Igatpuri; Late Dr. Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan, Nagpur: Achan Thong, Thailand; Bhikku Buddhadasa, Chayya, Thailand and others. After mastering this technique the researcher has managed to practice it during his career’s activities as teacher, learner, speaker and writer. So this much can be verified that objectivity part of this study has been taken care of. However the author does not claim infallibility to his words and acts and he firmly believes in law of improvement at every point of theory and practice.

Having said this let me now discuss the suggestions given by Prof. D.L. Ramteke, who examined my Ph.D. level research work and had rendezvous with the researcher in the department of Pali and Prakrit at 11/30 a.m. on 14th November 1994 as under.

A discovery of new facts: It was certainly a new thing for any one living in cloistered region to find that a certain way of life, say, Buddhist way is not confined to one particular place but it is seen observed and lived up to by millions of people Ambedkar’s Perspective on Buddhism and other Religions in hundreds of countries in the world, and this certainly enlarges one’s horizon of vision in the subject discussed.

A fresh approach towards the interpretation of facts: In fact each man is a unique person not as outward bodily mass but as mental culture also. Naturally the present writer’s perspective was an accumulated vision of his own efforts, his environment, his company, his background, his life and experiences, which are bound to be not very identical with nor very different from any other person but it may be just as fresh as the current study is a fresh approach towards the topic handled.

Although the above work embodies the result of researcher’s own observations it is open for verification for anyone and everyone either to ascertain the facts or disapprove of them and correct the investigator of this project.

The investigation made in the subject is objectively undertaken and its result is recorded as findings of the subject. That may add to the existing status of knowledge as a new perspective, new interpretation, new discovery, analogy and methodology or it may not add anything new to existing knowledge but still it is useful to confirm the status quo as no change. However the later aspect cannot be held in the light of universally recognized law of improvement at each and every point of thinking, saying and acting in life.

In brief the above book containing this research is thus rightly captioned as “Ambedkar’s Perspective on Buddhism and Other Religions” at the time of its publication ten years after the award of the Ph. D. Degree was conferred on researcher by the University. It may serve as guide to comparative religion and Ambedkar’s vision in historical and analytical perspective to students, professionals and commoners alike. It discovers such facts as are and have been unknown to the investigator and many like him and thus it is a discovery of new facts also as long as those facts are corresponding to actual instances of life.

Some people may raise the query as to the lengthy body, ambiguity, drawback say as demerits of the book and in response to their such query it is suffice to an ideal of perfection is yet to be achieved and it is just lifting of the leg to take first step towards it and keep on improving as and when necessary.

I hope the above explanation will recall to my mind Dr. D.L. Ramteke at whose behest I have incorporated it in this prologue and his memory to which I pay my humble gratitude.

Having said this, the judgement on the success of dissertation is left into the hands of the readers and the writer accepts all such errors or omissions as might have remained in the work due to an oversight. I express my thanks to all who helped me during my work of dissertation and M. Phil examination.

Beginning of Religion

The Buddha was the greatest proponent of man and humanism in the sixth century before Christ. His gospel was revived in India again by the Bodhisattva Dr. Ambedka in the twentieth century or in the 2500 years of the Buddha Era.

Man lived under savagery in Africa and in Palestine from 1,750,000 years to 3000 years.

The oldest village that was found in Iran dated back to 6800 B.C

Men of Livestock travelled along the Mediterranean Coastline and migrated into Europe first and then into Russia during the period between 4500 BC. and 2500 BC

Farming began under the woman for the first time before the Male began to dominate society and religion.

Copper civilization was known in North America and Turkey before the civilizations of Mesopotamia between the Euphrates and the Tigris, of Summer on the Nile, of Mohenjo-Daro and the Harappa over the Sind and Punjab Indus Valley, and of China and Greece.

The development of articulate speech was the first thing which divided man from the brute.’ The discovery of the Bow and Arrow was the greatest achievement of primitive man. The transition from savagery to barbarism was marked by the discovery of pottery. To domesticate wild animals and the art of smelting iron were advanced by barbaric man. The art of making ideas tangible by means of graphic signs marked off barbaric people from civilized people. This is how civilization began.

Religious consciousness was born with the emergence of man.’ Primal Religions

Primal Religions are prior to the ‘Universal religions’. There are about 200-300 million tribal peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania, whose religions are termed as ‘Heathen ‘Savage’, ‘Primitive’, ‘Superstitious’, ‘Animistic’, ‘pre-literate’, Traditional’, ‘Ethnic’, ‘Magic’, and ‘Tribalism’.’

The savage knows nothing about the laws of nature, for whom death is killing of an angry god. When told that his gods do not exist the savage merely laughs in wild wonder at such an extraordinary observation being made.*

Takahito Mikasa said “Early men were actors rather than thinkers”.

Primal religion is spiritualism or a belief in ‘bodiless spirits’. This belief has given rise to much speculation and superstition despite the fact that ‘our body is material but we are not matter’.”

Primal religions are generally dealt with as theist religions by most writers. But was the early man theist and was his religion simply a surrender to god, to soul, or to any other thing? Was theist belief compatible with the primitive world of hunting and farming?

Professor Gora said “Real living requires man’s active mastery over his world of hunting or farming. Mastery is anti-theistic.”

Professor Ajnat states “Atheism is as ancient as theism”.

Tribal religion has no written language and no literature, no history, no conscious progress. No change unless the existing social order has been changed into something higher.

What is the most essential aspect of primal religions? According to Freud the most essential to Primal religions is its ‘totemic origin”. To Darwin it is evaluation to monotheism. Taylor underlines animism. To Spencer it is ancestor worship’. And

Frazer stressed “magic in primal religions.”

Dr. Ambedkar observes in the religion of the savage two things. First, the performance of rites and ceremonies, the practice of magic or taboo and the worship of fetish or totem. The second, connection of the above with certain occasions of death and war worked out for the performance of rites and ceremonies, the use of human life such as birth, attaining manhood, reaching puberty, marriage, sickness, magic and the worship of the totem.

Dr. Ambedkar criticized the students of the origin and history of religion by saying that ‘they sought to explain the origin and substance of religion by reference to either magic, taboo and totem and the rites and ceremonies and deemed the occasions with which they are connected as of no account. Consequently we have theories explaining religion as having arisen in magic or as having arisen in fetishism, Nothing can be greater error than this.

The principle things in the religion of the savage are the “elemental facts of human existence such as life, death, birth, marriage, etc. Magic, taboo, totem, fetish etc., are not the ends. They are only the means. The end is life and the preservation of life” o 10/

This is what Max Muller (b. 1823) said about the basis of divine religion. He wrote: ‘The supernatural or divine religion is one which has been produced on natural basis itself”. “

This is suffice to understand the two roots of theism and atheism in primal religions.

Let us now turn to the recorded history of the New World which started from the birth of the Buddha but is calculated since the Christ’s birth.

Evolution of Religions

Long long time ago man was just one of the physical entities in the nature. Since he developed his consciousness and speech, and art of writing, he began to conquer the nature and time. He saw within and without. He found moral law working in and natural law working out. The outer was his God. The inner was his Soul. Recognition of this fact was religion.

Later generations of men discussed how the religion came into being and still later as to why there are so many religions in the world. Is the God one and the Soul other or are they both the same? How did the matter evolve or who created it? How did the mind come into being or what is its nature? Is man subordinate to religion or is he the maker of all?

Questions like these were discussed by the religions of the world. There are as many religions as there are answers to them. PRIMAL religions see nature in its variety and they developed a variety of beliefs about the life as a whole. Atheism claims its anciency as much back as the stage of human struggle for existence.

VEDISM was the way of living with the stark nature. BRAHMANISM was the priest-made religion of mantra’ elevated to the godly status of Brahma with acts of bloodshed of sacrifices for flesh-eating and soma-drinking in communion with God by his worshippers that surpassed the Vedic simplicity. Brahmanism was just another name of supremacy of priest-class in India. JAINISM initiated revolt against and rejection of sacrificial slaughter of living beings and things so that it practically recognised the nature as the animated existence. BUDDHISM not only denounced the Brahmanism for degrading man to the worst condition but also did elevate him to the position of a maker of all good in his nature morality, rationality, liberty, fraternity and equality for all, especially the fallen men and women.

The Aryan tribe of Iran and the Indo-Aryans were living together and they spoke the same language, and practised the same religion as the contents of the Vedas and that of the Avesta evidently show. Later they separated from each other and migrated thence into the north-west India one after another. There they came into contact with the Naga tribes of the Shramana or Recluse culture of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, the superior culture in respect of mental and moral development compared to other parallel cultures of ancient world. ZOROASTRIANISM developed its doctrine of Dualism of moral and immoral forces manifest in man and nature from its contact with the superior Shramana culture. At the same time it gave impetus to the moral consciousness of JUDAISM. But it retained certain elements of Brahmanism such as caste divisions and names of the gods due to its prior association with the Indo-Aryans.

Morality was spread in the world first by the wanderings of the Naga tribes belonging to Avedic Shraman Culture, then by the missionary Buddhist Sangha members sent into the Western, Southern, Eastern and South-eastern quarters of the world by the world’s greatest democratic monarch emperor Ashoka of India 219 years after the demise of the Buddha (483 B.C.) and more than 228 years before the birth of the Christ.12

In the regions surrounding the river Jordan was inhabited the semitic race descending from Abraham of Ur. Their tribal God was known as Jehovah. The Hebrews were His chosen race. He first appeared and declared his name to Moses, who then rescued his lot from the Egyptian bondage to the place called mount of Sinai. There they broke the holy covenant and as a result they had to keep on wandering for forty years until they reached the promised land of Canaan, where their ancestor Abraham also went earlier. The Hebrews, after their exodus from Babylonian captivity and the second destruction of their temple at Jerusalem, came to be known as the Jews. Since the advent of Christ the Jews began to be called the Christians. Christianity dissociated itself from the Old Testament and rested itself on the New Testament. It recognised the Christ as the only Son of God vested with the divine authority. ISLAM recognised that God is one and he is Allah. It believed that the last prophet was Mohammed and that the God’s perfect revelation is contained in the Quran. The Kaaba at Mecca in Arabia is its holiest centre. There Ambedkar’s Perspecti were many crusades waged amongst the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims similar to Mahabharata war and French and Russian Revolutions.

In the medieval period during the Moghul rule India was immersed into the Bhakti Cult and Islam was busy with annihilating the Buts (idolatry). This Sant tradition saw the rise of lower caste saints wandering across the country to preach that the abode of God is in the inside of man and formalism of religion was futile. In the 1600 A.D. Guru Nanak came and founded Sikkhism based on the teachings of

these saints leading to devotionalism and Islamic monotheism.

In Greece religion began to be discussed philosophically since the days of the Buddha. It influenced the theological and philosophical thinking of the West. In the wake of new enlightenment of scientific discoveries and social revolutions in Europe, religion was found to have crossed its nationality and come across all nations of the world.

The three were recognised as the World religions: Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Buddhism went West while retaining its hold in the East, the Southwest Asia. and reviving itself in India in number of population and in the form of Indian Constitution fathered by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. While it being so, Christianity came to India, first to trade and then to rule under the Britishers. Parsees fled from Iran under Islamic persecution and took shelter in Bombay and Gujarat. Islam went East.

Conversion from one world religion to another began. Rational criticism was applied to religions. Merits were explored in their scriptures and their worths were valued by the scientists of religions. The Discipline of Comparative religion held all religions as equal in worth. But the philosophy of religion does not. It was the problem to explore which religion best answers the problems of the present conditions and which religion stands the test of reason and humanism. Karl Marx rejected all religions and established his ideology of economic world order. Krantiveer Jyotirao Phule followed the tradition of Buddha and Kabir and brought about social change in the life of the Shudras and women. In the same tradition. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar looked at religion from the angle of the masses, critically valued the Indian religions and came to the conclusion that judged on the criterion of reason ‘Buddhism alone is the religion of universal love and humanism.’ He embraced Buddhism and recommended it for others also. Thus he established the Human World Order.