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Irreligion in India

From Wikiquote, the free quote compendium
The Yukthivadi in 1929 was the first atheist/rationalist magazine published in Malayalam.

Irreligion is the absence or rejection of religious beliefs or practices. Atheism and agnosticism have a long history in India.

Quotes by atheist, agnostic and rationalist Indians

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Ancient India

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  • Who knows that the soul exists? Of what use is this knowledge? Who knows that the soul does not exist? Of what use is this knowledge?
  • There is no heaven, no final liberation, nor any soul in another world,
    Nor do the actions of the four castes, orders, produce any real effect.
    The Agnihotra, the three Vedas, the ascetic's three staves, and smearing one's self with ashes,
    Were made by Nature as the livelihood of those destitute of knowledge and manliness.
    If a beast slain in the Jyotishṭoma rite will itself go to heaven,
    Why then does not the sacrificer forthwith offer his own father?

Pre-Independence

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  • Under the guise of religion the Brahmin has his finger in every thing, big or small, which the Shudra undertakes. Go to his house, to his field or to the court to which business may invite him, the Brahmin is there under some specious pretext or other, trying to squeeze out of him as much as his cunning and wily brain can manage. The Brahmin despoils the Shudra not only in his capacity of a priest, but does so in a variety of other ways.
  • When are we to get into the right path of devotion to god? When I ask this, the Brahmins dub us as atheists. Believing these Brahmins and their hirelings, the ignorant people raise the cry against us that god is in danger, religion is in danger! Is behaving in this barbarous way, theism or atheism? Whatever it be, we will not be cowed down by their hindering activities. Whatever we feel right, we will boldly say. We say Hindu religion and gods are dreadful diseases. Unless they are effaced out of existence our people cannot and country would not prosper. We say what we feel.
  • Of all the living creatures man is the most intelligent. It is man who created god, religion, philosophy and spiritualism. It is also said that extra ordinary men have actually succeeded in realising god. Some are said to have become one with god itself. I venture to ask, why even such greatmen have not found out a solution for all these follies of the world.
  • Let us see how I carry on: one friend asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, “During your last days, you will begin to believe”. I said, “No, dear Sir, it shall not be”. I will think that to be an act of degradation and demoralization on my part. For selfish motives, I am not going to pray. Readers and friends, “Is this vanity?” If it is, I stand for it.
  • Religion is bound to be liquidated by science, because scientific knowledge enables mankind to answer questions, confronted by which in its childhood, it was compelled to assume super-natural forces or agencies. If the assumption really answered the questions, then religion would have precluded the rise of science. But religion did not explain natural phenomena. It simply created a new set of problems, which overshadowed the original problems of existence.
  • The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organized religion, in India and elsewhere has filled me with horror, and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it.
  • Religion, as I saw it practised, and accepted even by thinking minds, whether it was Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or Christianity, did not attract me. It seemed to be closely associated with superstitious practices and dogmatic beliefs, and behind it lay a method of approach to life’s problems which was certainly not that of science. There was an element of magic about it, an uncritical credulousness, a reliance on the supernatural.
  • I want ethics to rule and idealism to grow. That can be achieved only when belief in god and fate is done away with and consequently the theistic philosophy of life is changed. In positive terms, I want atheism, so that man shall cease to depend on god and stand firmly on his own legs. In such a man a healthy social outlook will grow, because atheism finds no justification for the economic and social inequalities between man and man.

Modern India

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Born between 1900 and 1945

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  • If the scientist and the Rishi resemble each other in their inspiration, they also differ radically from each other in their conception of truth. Truth for the Rishi is essentially mystic - that is, intuitive, absolute and transcendental. Scientific truth is discursive or rational in structure, empirical in content and secular in character.
  • When I was young, I had to memorise parts of the Bible and perform rituals. It was perhaps this experience that turned me into an atheist. When I grew up, I saw people using religion to earn money and fool others. This made my belief all the more stronger. I don't, however, thrust my beliefs and ideologies on anyone.
  • I lay curled up at night, unable to sleep, trembling with fear, praying to every god I knew to let him live, just let my father come back to us. But he too left, leaving behind only us children. That was when I decided, gods who don’t answer such prayers need not be called again.
  • Science is always humble. It never lays claim to the final word. It is religion that asserts, ‘I have understood it all, I have figured the universe out, now do as I say.’ Science believes in testing objects and incidents, and searching tirelessly for solutions to unsolved problems. Scientists are not to be praised for being right; they are to be praised for trying to state principles rigorously and thoroughly. Science remains objective even while it extends or overturns the work of its own giants.
    • Narendra Dabholkar (1945-2013), social activist, from Jai Vipra (Translator) (1994). Please Think: Practical Lessons in Developing a Scientific Temper. Westland Publications. ISBN 9789388754026. 
  • Life is about exploration: I don’t believe in God; spirituality means nothing much to me. I enjoy exploring things I don’t have answers for.
  • When it comes to the forced inculcation of religion and the resulting abuses of children in the name of religion, the United Nations, all of its affiliated organizations, and almost all national governments remains steadfastly silent.
  • I am an atheist by belief, but I did not come to atheism through rebellion against the Hinduism I was born into. Rather, through the influence of my atheist father, whose particular brand of non-religious rationalism was, I now realise, in keeping with the spirit of the late 19th-early 20th century Prabodhan or renaissance in Maharashtra.

Born between 1946 and 1975

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  • We reject the Hinduization programme in toto for two reasons. One, Hinduism has never been a humane philosophy. It is the most brutal religious school that the history of religions has witnessed. The Dalitbhujan castes of India are the living evidence of its brutality. Second, even if Hinduization expressed a desire to humanize itself in future, there is no scope for this to happen, since the history of religion itself is coming to an end.
  • I am an atheist, but being so doesn't stop me from respecting those who believe in religion. Every individual has the right to lead his or her life according to their wish and I respect that. I don't try to influence anyone or force my opinion on them. Also, my beliefs cannot be influenced by anyone.
  • I'm not overtly religious, but I do bow my head and offer my respects everytime I pass a holy place. My dad always said more than learning any form of organised religion, it was essential to be a good human being first. I'm not an atheist, I'm more of an agnostic.
  • My father raised me without a religion and to question everything. When you are raised without a religion who automatically question everything. He never told us don’t believe in God, we just imbibed what we saw. It was more about questioning thing and trying to apply logic or scientific evidence to things. Those things are important because something has to be provable before you can say that it is a fact otherwise it is a theory. Billions of people get by on faith and it is strange the comfort the people who have faith have, it is very difficult for people who don’t have faith to get that.

Quotes about Irreligion in India

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  • The Indian atheist activists with whom we have spent time - as opposed to those often characterized dismissively by activists as metropolitan-based ‘talking shop’ humanists or ‘armchair atheists’ - do not simply ‘believe’ in materialism. They seek to debunk or ‘expose’ what they consider to be pernicious supernatural beliefs via skilled deployments of materials.
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