Dr.
Ambedkar considered the foundations of religion to be essential to life and
practices of society. According to him, religion was apart of one's
"social inheritance". He wanted religion, but he did not want
hypocrisy in the name of religion. Religion, to him, was the driving force for
human activity. He remarked, "Man cannot live by bread alone. He has a
mind which needs food for thought." He linked religion with the social
well-being of the people. Ambedkar's journey to Buddhism can be traced over a
span of about forty years. At the age of sixteen Keluskar gave him a copy of
the life of Gautam Buddha. In 1945 he attended a Buddhist conference. On 20th
June 1946, on behalf of People's Education Society, he started a college and
named it Siddharth College. In 1948, he wrote a foreword to L. Narasu's
book--'The essence of Buddhism'. In 1950, he took part in the first Modern
Buddhist procession in Delhi. In December 1954, he took part in the Third World
Federation of Buddhists. It is said that there he made up his mind to embrace
Buddhism. Ambedkar was inclined towards Buddhism openly from May 1956. On 24th
May 1956 he declared on the day of Buddha Jayanti celebrations at Nare Park in
Bombay that he would embrace Buddhism in October 1956. On 23rd September 1956,
he issued a press note announcing that his conversion to Buddhism would take
place at Nagpur on the Dassahra day, October 14, 1956 between 9 and 11 a.m. He
himself preferred Nagpur which was a historic town where the Buddhist Nagas
flourished in ancient times. It is said that he deliberately waited up to the 2500th
birthday of Buddha.
No comments:
Post a Comment