"I like the religion that teaches liberty, equality and fraternity"
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Ambedkar isn’t praising religion so much as putting it on probation. “I like the religion that teaches liberty, equality and fraternity” reads like a preference statement, but it functions as a hard political filter: any faith that can’t produce democratic ethics doesn’t deserve allegiance. Coming from the architect of India’s Constitution and a lifelong critic of caste, the line carries a quiet threat. Religion, in his telling, is not a private consolation; it is a social technology with measurable outcomes. If it reproduces hierarchy, it fails.
The phrasing matters. “I like” sounds almost casual, even polite, but the standards he lists are the French revolutionary triad repurposed for an Indian battlefield. Liberty and equality are the obvious demands of an anti-caste struggle; “fraternity” is the shrewdest inclusion. Ambedkar knew rights on paper collapse without social solidarity, without people seeing one another as peers rather than pollutants. Fraternity is the missing ingredient in reformist rhetoric that asks the oppressed to wait patiently for the privileged to grow a conscience.
Context sharpens the intent: Ambedkar was moving toward the conviction that Hinduism, as historically practiced, was structurally incompatible with equality. His eventual conversion to Buddhism wasn’t a spiritual aesthetic choice; it was an exit strategy from a religious order that sanctified graded inequality. The subtext is clear: keep your gods, rituals, and scriptures if you want, but if they can’t teach democracy at the level of daily dignity, they’re just ideology with incense.
The phrasing matters. “I like” sounds almost casual, even polite, but the standards he lists are the French revolutionary triad repurposed for an Indian battlefield. Liberty and equality are the obvious demands of an anti-caste struggle; “fraternity” is the shrewdest inclusion. Ambedkar knew rights on paper collapse without social solidarity, without people seeing one another as peers rather than pollutants. Fraternity is the missing ingredient in reformist rhetoric that asks the oppressed to wait patiently for the privileged to grow a conscience.
Context sharpens the intent: Ambedkar was moving toward the conviction that Hinduism, as historically practiced, was structurally incompatible with equality. His eventual conversion to Buddhism wasn’t a spiritual aesthetic choice; it was an exit strategy from a religious order that sanctified graded inequality. The subtext is clear: keep your gods, rituals, and scriptures if you want, but if they can’t teach democracy at the level of daily dignity, they’re just ideology with incense.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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