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Dr.

Bhim Rao Ambedkar and Karl Marxs Refection on Religion

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and Karl Marx were not contemporaries. Ambedkar was born roughly eight years
after the death of Marx#.

Delineating the difference between the religious practices of antique and modern societies, Dr.
Ambedkar held that in ancient society, religion was a part of the organised social life into which a
man was born and to which he conformed through life in the same unconscious way in which men
fall into any habitual practice of the society in which they live. Men took the Gods and their worship
for granted, just as they took the other usages of the state for granted, and if they reason or
speculated about them, they did so on presupposition that the traditional usages were fixed things,
behind which their reasonings must not go, and which no reasoning could be allowed to overturn. To
us modern religions is above all a matter of individual conviction and reasoned belief, but to the
ancients it was a part of the citizens public life, reduced to fixed norms which he was not bound to
understand and was not at liberty to criticise to neglect. Religious non-conformity was an offence
against the state; for if sacred tradition was tampered with, the bases of the society were
undermined, and the favour the Gods was forfeited. But so long as the prescribed norms were duly
observed, a man was recognised a truly pious and no one asked how his religion was rooted in his
heart or affected his reason. Like political duty, of which indeed it was a part, religion was entirely
comprehended in the observance of certain fixed rules of outward conduct1.

#
Karl Marx died on 14 March 1883 whereas Ambedkar born on 14 April 1891.
1
Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar-Writings and Speeches, Vol. 3, Education and Employment Department,
Government of Maharashtra, Mumbai, pp. 18-19.

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