B. R. Ambedkar Quotes
Religion and slavery are incompatible.
Ambedkar, B. R. "Philosophy of Hinduism." Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. 3, Education Department, Government of Maharashtra, 1987.
Baron Brougham and Vaux
Fitzhugh was a Southern iconoclast whose view of Northern labor was much like that of Karl Marx but who was an enthusiastic supporter of slavery. Fitzhugh was of the opinion that slavery would be reinstated in the North and his treatise agues for that. More and more intellectual opinion was coming to the conclusion that slavery must be abolished or made universal before Lincoln’s famous statement in his debate against Douglas. Although Northerners and Southerners had come to agree on this point, they disagreed about which alternative would and should prevail.
Brown was the richest man in Rhode Island and made much of his money in the slave trade. This quotation shows that slavery was not completely a North verses South split. Northerners like Brown for whose family Brown University was named, was as virulent supporter of slavery as the most ardent Southerner.
He is often referred to as “of Lahore.” He was a much better theologian than a historian. His credit of Islam with the principles that would end slavery, ignored the fact that just as American founding fathers espoused equality and freedom yet some owned slaves, likewise Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was a slaveholder. Historically, long after most of the world had abolished slavery, it still existed in the Islamic nations. They were forced out of the African slave trade by the European powers in the 19th century. But slavery was legal in Saudi Arabia as late as the 1960s. Slavery was still practiced in Sudan in 2005 with Muslims attacking Christians and Animists and taking them as slaves despite the official laws banning such practices. The government itself aided the slavers. Also, although Islam is credited with a major assault on slavery, it was not slavery per se that Muhammad banned. It was the slavery of another Muslim. Sharia and the Koran allows slavery so long as the slave is an unbeliever.
This is a memorable historical quotations because it shows the extreme level of hypocrisy and lack of logic of which man is capable of when his way of life and world view is threatened. In this case Gordon sees the right to own slaves as a basic civil right. He does not see that the right of possessing slaves totally denies virtually all civil rights to the slave. In his and other Southern views, to assure a man’s liberty he had to have the right and freedom to deny freedom to others, torture others at will, destroy families and remove all hope and aspiration of some people.
He was making a generalization based on his historical study of nations and societies.
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, also known as Babasaheb Ambedkar ([bʌbəsɑheb ɑmbɛdkɑə]), was an Indian jurist, economist, politician and social reformer, who inspired the Dalit Buddhist movement and campaigned against social discrimination towards the untouchables (Dalits). He was British India's Minister of Labour in Viceroy's Executive Council, Chairman of the Constituent Drafting committee, independent India's first Minister of Law and Justice, and considered the chief architect of the Constitution of India.
