In these scarring last months of Hindutva’s blood-blazed march in a notional constitutional democracy, Indians are finding there is tiny space in their public consciousness for one of the most marginal of their minorities if we view them as an ideology, an intellectual persuasion, a way of being: I am speaking of India’s multifarious non-believers, atheists and agnostics.
In the movement against the CAA-NRC-NPR, the agitations against the violence at Jamia Milia Islamia, Jawaharlal Nehru University and north-east Delhi, there has been a spectrum-crossing conjoining of Muslims, Sikhs, the Bhim Army, Christians, people of many and no genders and some non-believers under one ark. Herein, the ragtag of non-believers has made a quiet re-entry into public life on a livewire issue. But, some unpacking first.
As Hindutva advanced in this era, the atheists became lightning rods for fanatics. They were organized opponents of religious extremism but weak on wherewithal. In societies like ours, such folk don’t get sustained mass support (lest the ‘whatabouters’ rise out of the swamp and flog this essayist with the whip of partisanship, let me add the customary caveat: India isn’t alone in embattling religious extremism. Pakistani and Bangladeshi dissenters have been slayed for blasphemy. Sri Lankans, including monks, who rebuked Buddhist extremists have been attacked).
In the 2010s, under Congress state governments, individuals like Narendra Dabholkar, MM Kalburgi, Govind Pansare and Gauri Lankesh were threatened and then assassinated. Collectively, it’s been long since these murders took place. There are updates in the press. But if we seek out tangible justice, there’s been little headway in the investigations yet. The information trickles and the case transfers from one agency to another. One wonders if the Establishment has left these in a vacuum.
In a way, their killings signpost the social acceptance of religious violence in this era. These people were at the frontline of the fight in the hinterland against obscurantism, superstition, fanaticism, false history. In the 2010s, the attacks on the rationalists paralleled those against Muslims and caste minorities: These processes have been ongoing for long. In this setting, and as we have seen till now, all our fault-lines have dreadfully relapsed. Delhi and Uttar Pradesh look like war zones. But there’s an unarticulated upshot.
This essayist finds it numbing that the many gurus, pontiffs, mahants and leaders of the major temples, sects and denominations within Hinduism haven’t said much over the bloodshed or the militarisation of their faith (only Narendra Modi’s hosts at Belur Math were irate when he turned a non-political aegis into one about citizenship). Does their collective silence show their political bent? In contrast, some non-Hindu leaders of other faiths have stepped in to engage, converse, argue with the government and its votaries.
Lynch mobs, cow vigilantes, “outsider” rioters in Delhi: Have we ever seen such an extrajudicial panoply? Chants of greeting as war cries; an amiable god, remobilized on car trunks, as a bellicose warrior. If one is a true imbiber of religious values, how can such violations be vindicated? Finger-pointing at the weaponizing of other religions can’t be their justification. Is mimicry the only pushback?
Hinduism is rich in irreligion. Sramana, Charvaka and Nastika are schools of thought that venerate atheism, reason. For long, these have been muted, kept away from the public eye. They beg to be recalled, remade, re-presented. The atheists have a great chance to steer a set of Indians (not just Hindus) who may be born into a religion but are put off by religiosity or its extremists.
For this to happen, they will need to face up to their past. If they are to pitch their world view, they will be probed on how the Age of Reason led to imperial colonialism; how agrarian collectivisation led to the mass killings under Stalin; or Mao’s Cultural Revolution; or the sins of the Left in West Bengal or Kerala. They will have to be honest; and still hold their own.
Societies like ours, overdosed on religions, nary become irreligious overnight. Some sections, parts, regions might, but not en masse. Organized religion is revered, since the subcontinent’s nation-states fail to provide the basics of human life for the masses so often. Thus, a middle path to non-belief is salutary. The onus for this is on the atheists. They ought to fight off their alienation from the body politic of India and reinstate it as a legitimate way of being.
Communist Cuba, now sending aid to hyper-religious Italy to fight Covid-19, made that switch. The Castros, reared in an orthodox society, fought against Catholicism while in power, but made peace with the Vatican. Contemporary subcontinental society craves for this balance, where it may keep its faiths but on many public matters accord primacy to irreligious reason.