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IT IS CRIMINAL TO COLLECT MONEY IN THE NAME OF RELIGION AND WASTE IT
Inaugural Address by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar M.A.,Ph.D., Bar-at-Law, at All India Sai Devotees Convention held on January 24, 1954 on Zeviyar College ground at Bombay.
He said,
“Many thanks for your invitation to address you a few words on this occasion. I have no claim for it. I do not belong to those who are reckoned as the followers of Sai Baba. I have not had the good fortune of meeting or seeing the Sai Baba. I only heard of him. It would have been better if someone, who knew him better, had been invited to speak to you on this occasion. But, as those who came to invite me insisted that the resolution to invite me was unanimous one, it was not easy to say ‘No’ though in the present condition of my health I could have very easily done so.
As I have said before, my knowledge of Sai Baba is nil and what little I know about him consists of what I have heard about him. The Baba is dead some time ago and I understand that he has left large gathering of followers who are ever growing even though the Baba is dead. He is known to be a Religious Guru to many.
Religion in India has taken various shades. In its original form religion was a matter of personal salvation of a man’s soul. Later on there was a great change in the religious outlook and purpose. It meant not so much the salvation of the soul as the maintenance of a human brotherhood based on moral rules governing the mutual conduct of human beings towards each other. Then came a third stage which led men to worship those personalities who satisfied the wants of their lives. Some wanted children, some wanted gold, some wanted escape from a calamity. If a person satisfied such material wants he became their God and they worshipped him. Then the fourth was to worship a person who performed miracles of one sort or the other, which were beyond the ken of common men, and the miracle-maker became a God. We find in India all these.