20 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
possible, needs and desires for which religion could and would do nothing.”
Next the difference in the attitude of God and Society to man.
In the antique world Society was indifferent to individual welfare.
God was no doubt bound to Society. But
“The compact between the God and his worshippers was not held to pledge the deity to make the private cares of each member of the Community his own.”
“The benefits expected of God were of a public character affecting the whole community, especially fruitful seasons, increase of flocks of herds and success in war. So long as community flourished the fact that an individual was miserable reflected no discredit on divine providence.”
On the contrary the antique world looked upon the misery of a man as proof.
“That the sufferer was an evil-doer, justly hateful to the Gods. Such a man was out of place among the happy and the prosperous crowd that assembled on feast days before the alter.”
It is in accordance with this view that the leper and the mourner were shut out from the exercise of religion as well as from the privileges of social life and their food was not brought into the house of God.
As for conflict between individual and individual and between society and the individual God had no concern. In the antique world:
“It was not expected that (God) should always be busy righting human affairs. In ordinary matters it was men’s business to help themselves and their own kins folk, though the sense that the God was always near, and could be called upon at need, was a moral force continually working in some degree for the maintenance of social righteousness and order. The strength of this moral force was indeed very uncertain, for it was always possible for the evil-doer to flatter himself that his offence would be overlooked.”
In the antique world man did not ask God to be righteous to him.
“Whether in civil or in profane matters, the habit of the old world was to think much of the community and little of the individual life, and no one felt this to be unjust even though it bore hardly on himself. The God was the God of the nationl or of the tribe, and he knew and cared for the individual only as a member of the community.”
That was the attitude that man in the antique world took of his own private misfortune. Man came to rejoice before his God and
“in rejoicing before his God man rejoiced with and for the welfare of his kindred, his neighbours and his country, and, in renewing by