Organised Atheism in India: An Overview

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the history and the aims and activities of organised atheism in India. Most of the contemporary atheist, rationalist, and humanist groups form part of a larger movement, despite the different labels used. Most of the groups have direct forebears in nineteenth-century England and in the social and religious reform movements of nineteenth- and twentieth-century India. Drawing on a year of ethnographic fieldwork and using the example of the Atheist Centre in Andhra Pradesh, I compare the current aims and activities of atheistic groups in India with those of like-minded groups in the West. I argue that the distinguishing characteristic of the Indian atheist movement is its strong engagement with social and political activism.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank Björn Mastiaux, for sharing some of his forthcoming findings on members of secular organisations in Germany and the United States, and Ahmed Nabil, for proof-reading my English text. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Contemporary Religion for their supportive and helpful comments. The research upon which this article is based was funded by grants from the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) and the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes). I completed the article while working for the Cluster of Excellence “Asia & Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows” at the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Notes

1. The article is in TNR; therefore, one word (jyōtiṣ-śāstra) looks strange because TNR does not feature the letter ‘ṣ’.

2. The terminology is, of course, older, but in ancient Rome, devout Christians were labelled ‘atheists’, which demonstrates how radically the meaning of the term has changed.

3. Besides Atheism in India, three other books by Hiorth were published by the Indian Secular Society (ISS): Introduction to Atheism, Introduction to Humanism, and Ethics for Atheists. Hiorth's Naturalismus was published in German.

4. Ramendra Nath is the author of Main Hindu Kyon Nahin aur Main Buddhiwadi Kaise Bana (‘Why I am not a Hindu and How I became a Rationalist’, published also as Why I am Not a Hindu) and Kya Ishwar Mar Chuka Hai? (translated as Is God Dead?).

5. There is a brief section on atheism in India in historian Gerald A. Larue's Freethought across the Centuries and there are entries on Indian atheists and their organisations in the Dictionary of Atheism, Skepticism & Humanism (Cooke) and in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief (Flynn).

6. For details on Derozio, see Thomas Edwards's classic Henry Derozio, Pallaba Senagupta's Derozio, which focuses on his poetic work, and the chapter on “Derozio and Young Bengal” in Susobhan Sarkar's On the Bengal Renaissance and on many related groups and organisations (Prakash; Mukherjee).

7. The weekly newspaper Vartaman, also known as Budhavaryun, was started by Alexander Kinloch Forbes in 1849 in Ahmedabad and had such an impact “that thereafter for quite some time newspapers were called Budhavaryun in Gujarat” (Chavda 211).

8. ‘Dev’ is usually translated as ‘God’, but the society translates it as ‘excellence’.

9. See Hiorth (Atheism 5, 257, ch. 3), whose characterisation of the Dev Samaj is primarily based on S. P. Kanal's Secular State and Religion and Atheism in North India. The Dictionary of Atheism, Scepticism & Humanism (Cooke) also describes the Dev Samaj but seems to draw its information from Hiorth (Atheism in India 146). See also Helmuth von Glasenapp Religiöse Reformbewegungen im heutigen Indien (‘Religious Reform Movements in India’) and their self-understanding as a “science grounded religion” (see http://devsamaj.net and www.devdharma.com, access date: 18 June 2011).

10. The notion of ‘scientific temper’ was introduced to Indian public discourse by Jawaharlal Nehru. Under the government of his daughter Indira Gandhi (during the period of Emergency Rule), the Indian Constitution was amended with article 51–A, entitled ‘Fundamental Duties’, of which section 51–A(h) states that all Indian citizens have a duty “to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”, as stated in the Forty-second Amendment Act of 1976.

11. The most well-known challenge of this kind was probably set by James Randy. The James Randy Education Foundation will pay US$1,000,000 to anyone who is able to prove supernatural powers under “satisfying scientific conditions”. The use and value of such challenges is, however, debated within the rationalist and sceptic movement (see Sofka 20–1).

12. A more detailed comparison between Indian rationalist organisations and like-minded groups could address the importance of politics (see Royle, Victorian 4), the centrality of the charisma of their leaders (ibid 199, 202), and the importance of the quality of their lectures (ibid 213).

13. Ayodhya is an Indian city which has been famous since 1992 when the Babri Mosque was destroyed by Hindu fundamentalists who claimed that it had been built on the foundations of a temple marking the birthplace of the God Rama. The verdict on 30 September 2010 was controversial because one judge had argued that the disputed land was indeed the birthplace of Lord Ram, as Hindus believe (see e.g. the article in the magazine Frontline, “In the Name of Faith” 27.21, 9–22 October 2010: 7–10).

14. Basava Premanand published several books and pamphlets on Sathya Sai Baba, including the voluminous collection of articles and documents in Murders in Sai Baba's Bedroom. (See also “Sai Baba: Special Number” of the Indian Rationalist Association's magazine Freethought and Lawrence Babb's chapter “Sathya Sai Baba's Saintly Play” in John Stratton Hawley's Saints and Virtues).

15. In 1976, Hosur Narasimhaiah (40), at the time vice-chancellor of Bangalore University, had founded, with colleagues from the fields of natural sciences and medicine, the ‘Committee to Investigate Miracles and other Verifiable Superstitions’.

16. Abraham Kovoor (1898–1978) was the son of a priest in the Syrian Christian Church in Malabar in Tiruvalla, Kerala. With his wife Jacqueline Kovoor, he founded the Sri Lanka Rationalist Association in 1960, serving as its president until his death. For details about his life, see V. Menon's foreword to Begone Godmen, “Dr. Kovoor—the Militant Iconoclast”; Premanand's Dr. Kovoor: Octogenary Souvenir; Hariharan Poonjar's foreword to Gods, Demons and Sprits, “Dr. Kovoor—a Profile”; Cooke (308); Nath's chapter on Kovoor. Many of Kovoor's books appeared in several editions in India (see references).

17. Given the heterogeneity of the atheist, humanist, and free-thinking movements in Western countries and various regional and cultural differences, the comparison proposed in this article has to be understood as illustrative rather than methodological. A methodologically sound comparison would require the study, description, and contextualisation of specific like-minded Western groups in much greater detail in order to make an adequate comparison with the more nuanced, specific data on atheist groups in India.

18. The papers by the other Western atheists either do not address the topic at all or do so in rather abstract terms. Bill Cooke (International Director of the Centre for Inquiry, New Zealand) reflects on the notion of ‘progress’, as well as on the philosophers Schopenhauer and Aristotle; Roy Brown (IHEU, Switzerland) compares different political contexts of secularism and focuses on compassion and the role of doubt in human progress; Keith Cornish (Atheist Foundation of Australia) discusses definitions of atheism, reasons why religion does not ensure ethical behaviour, and problems within the Australian juridical system; Bobbie Kierkhart (President of Atheist International, USA) describes how the US departed from its secular path; Rene Hartman (IBKA, Germany) takes a global perspective on atheism; Frank R. Zindler (American Atheist Press, USA) writes about a utopian world without religion; Jim Herrick (Literary Editor of the New Humanist, UK) provides a literary review on human suffering; Volker Müller (Germany) writes about Ludwig Feuerbach; Diana Rookledge (British Humanist Association) deals with the status of women in different countries. (The details in brackets refer to the individuals’ positions they held at the time of the conference.)

19. See the two controversial classics: John Draper's monumental work History of the Conflict between Religion and Science and Andrew White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.