Religion and the Modern Public

Abstract

Abstract In Ambedkar we find a sustained emphasis on the significance of religion in public life. Religion sacralizes life, affirms it, and forbids its violation. The sanctions and interdictions that religion invokes enjoy greater deference than moral codes and laws. Law and morality have little capacity to hold out unless they are grounded in religious sensibility. What religion holds as sacrosanct, however, has undergone mutations over time. In modern times, the religious imaginary revolves around the value of the individual and his/her claim to justice. Such an imaginary tends to subject all existing religions to test. Ambedkar thought that the teachings of the Buddha are in consonance with this imaginary and, therefore, eminently suited to be the foundational basis of modern public life.