536 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
We are fighting for honour and self-respect. We are getting ready to take the human being towards the perfection, for that we are ready for any sacrifice. These newspaper people (indicating them) got on my nerves for the past forty years. How severely they have maligned me till date ! I ask them to ponder over at least now, leave this childishness and be prudent.
Even after conversion to the Buddhism, I am confident, I will get the political rights. (Shouts in the name of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar with thunderous claps). I cannot tell what will happen after my death. For this movement we have to struggle more. What will happen on having embraced the Buddhism if at all there are difficulties, how could those be avoided. For that, what arguments and efforts are to be made, I have thoroughly thought over this. My bag* is with full of solutions. What are those I know fully well. These rights I have obtained for my people. One who obtained these rights, will surely regain them. It I who have obtained these rights and facilities, and I am confident that I will again obtain them. Therefore, now at least you should continue to have faith in me. That there is no truth in the adverse propaganda.
I am surprised at one thing. Everywhere there is debate on large scale. But no one has asked me a question as to why I embraced the Buddhism. Why I embraced only this religion and not any other. This is the basic and important question in the any movement of a conversion. While converting it should be put to the test :Which religion and why it should be embraced. Through a resolution at Yeole in 1935, we started the movement of renouncing the Hindu religion. Long back I had vowed, “Though I am born as a Hindu I will not die as a Hindu” and I proved it yesterday. I am overjoyed, I am exalted. I feel I have been liberated from the hell. I do not want blind followers. Those who wish to embrace Buddhism, they should accept it with comprehension. Their conscious should accept that religion.
- Eye witnesses to the conversion ceremony say that Dr. Ambedkar did not use the word ‘bag’ instead he used the words ‘in the pocket of my coat.’
Evenafter the conversion for some years people used to quote this expression.—Editors.