“It is a matter of debate whether my lack of belief in the existence of an Omnipresent, Omniscient God is due to my arrogant pride and vanity”
Why I am an atheist is an article written by the legendary freedom-fighter and revoluionist Bhagat Singh on October 5-6, 1930 in Lahore Central Jail. He was motivated to write the article when on October 4 1930, Baba Randhir Singh, a religious man and member of Ghadar Party, met Bhagat Singh and tried to convince him that God exists. Bhagat Singh did not change his stand on the topic. Randhir Singh said: “You are giddy with fame and have developed an ego which is standing like a black curtain between you and the God”. The article was written as a reply to Randhir Singh’s comment.
The point of view of Bhagat Singh about God is based on logic, rather than on age-old beliefs. He strongly believes that his disbelief in God is not due to unnecessary pride or vanity. If a person’s disbelief in God is because of vanity, only two things are possible: either a man deems himself to be in possession of Godly qualities, or he goes a step further and declares himself to be a god. In both these states of mind, he cannot be an atheist in true sense. In both the cases, he accepts the existance of some kind of supernatural power responsible for working of universe. So in both the cases, he is a theist, a believer. An atheist is the one who completely rejects the existence of an Omnipresent, all powerful, all knowing God. And atheism is not bacause of excessive pride or vanity.
Bhagat Singh rejects the allegations that his atheism was due to vanity. People said that after Delhi bombing and Lahore Conspiracy Case, he rocketed to fame and that this fact has turned his head. He counters the allegations by saying that he was an atheist even when he was an unknown figure. Although he agrees that he was not completely atheist in his college time. That was due to the fact that his father gave him the environment of theism as he was a staunch Arya Samaji and an Arya Samaji can be anything but never an atheist. During his stay in the National College, he began thinking over the religious polemics such that he grew sceptical about the existance of God.
We meet a lot of people who don’t have enough courage to openly declare themselves atheist. People tend to be pendulous on the topic. As a leader of the Revolutionary Party said: “You may believe in him when you feel like it”. Such people think they are atheist but then in the hardships they start to believe that God exists with a hope that he would help them. Beliefs make it easier to go through hardships, even make them pleasant. Man can find a strong support in God and an encouraging consolation in His Name. If you have no belief in Him, there is no alternative but to depend on yourself. “In difficult times, vanity, if it remains, evaporates and man cannot find the courage to defy beliefs held in common esteem by the people. If he really revolts against such beliefs, we must conclude that it is not sheer vanity; he has some kind of extraordinary strength”.
People tend to go againt creative thinking. That’s maybe due to mental insipidity. You cannot go againt popular feeling. You have to believe what the majority of the community believes, or else either you will be considered unfit for living in the community, or you just will be ignored and will not be answered rationally. You will either be considered vainglorious, or an insane. “Merciless criticism and independent thinking are the two necessary traits of revolutionary thinking.” A man with enough reasoning powers always tries to understand the life and people around him with the help of facts and reasons and where some concrete facts are lacking, philosophy creeps in. “philosophy is the outcome of human weakness.” People of the old time had a lot of time to think about the mysteries of the world, its past, its present and its future, its why and whereofs. But having been terribly short of direct proofs, everyone came up with their own versions of the solution to the mystical problems. That’s the reason why we find wide differences in the fundamentals of religious creeds. We find differences in Oriental and Occidental philosophies. In Asian religions, the Muslim religion is completely incompatible with the Hindu faith. In India itself, Buddhism and Jainism are sometimes quite separate from Brahmanism. Then in Brahmanism itself, we find two conflicting sects: Aarya Samaj and Snatan Dheram. Charwak is yet another independent thinker of the past ages. He challenged the Authority of God. All these faiths differ on many fundamental questions, but each of them claims to be the only true religion. This is the root of the evil. Instead of developing the ideas and experiments of ancient thinkers, thus providing ourselves with the ideological weapon for the future struggle, – lethargic, idle, fanatical as we are – we cling to orthodox religion and in this way reduce human awakening to a stagnant pool.
Reasoning is a powerful tool. It gives a man the power to be thoughtful about the world. Such a person always tend to find arguments in favour of this beliefs and comes to a conclusion only after thinking. Belief, or I must say blind belief is disasterous. People tend to just accept the age-old beliefs without even considering to think about it even once. “Our ancestors were not mad, if they came to a conclusion and if they believe in something, there might be a reason for that”. This is the reply I get from the most. But when I ask what’s the reason they’re talking about, they go blind. Blind belief is the devil. If there is a reason for age-old beliefs, then where are the reasons to believe them? Challenging such age-old beliefs doesn’t make isn’t due to my vainity, or it’s not that I’m insane but I am realistic and reason drives my beliefs.
In the article, Bhagat Singh goes on and asks the theist a few questions:
If, as you believe there is an Almighty, Omnipresent, Omniscient God, who created the earth or universe, please let me know, first of all, as to why he created this world. This world which is full of woe and grief, and countless miseries, where not even one person lives in peace.
Pray, don’t say it is His law. If He is bound by any law, He is not Omnipotent. Don’t say it is His pleasure. Nero burnt one Rome. He killed a very limited number of people. He caused only a few tragedies, all for his morbid enjoyment. But what is his place in history? By what names do we remember him? All the disparaging epithets are hurled at him. Pages are blackened with invective diatribes condemning Nero: the tyrant, the heartless, the wicked.
One Genghis Khan killed a few thousand people to seek pleasure in it and we hate the very name. Now, how will you justify your all powerful, eternal Nero, who every day, every moment continues his pastime of killing people? How can you support his doings which surpass those of Genghis Khan in cruelty and in misery inflicted upon people? I ask why the Almighty created this world which is nothing but a living hell, a place of constant and bitter unrest. Why did he create man when he had the power not to do so?
So, as Bhagat Singh asked these questions, I’m sure most of my theist friends would say that it is to reward the sufferer and to punish the evildoer in the hereafter. So how far do you justify a man who first of all imflicts injuries to your body and then applies soft and soothing ointment on them?
“That is why I ask: Was the creation of man intended to derive this kind of pleasure?”
He goes on in the article and says
“You, the Hindus, would say: Whosoever undergoes sufferings in this life, must have been a sinner in his previous birth. It is tantamount to saying that those who are oppressors now were Godly people then, in their previous births. For this reason alone they hold power in their hands. Let me say it plainly that your ancestors were shrewd people. They were always in search of petty hoaxes to play upon people and snatch from them the power of Reason. Let us analyse how much this argument carries weight!”
Bhagat Singh also states that the theory of Purnas(transmigrations) is nothing but a fairy-tale. The most cursed of all is the poor. What is the fault of a person born in a poor family? Poverty deprives a man of education, of pride and of life. Poverty is a sin, a punishment. Now supposing the poor commits a sin, who shall bear the consequences? God? Or he himself who already is facing the ultimate punishment of being poor? Or the learned people of that society? He goes on and says that all these theories have been coined by the privileged classes. “They try to justify the power they have usurped and the riches they have robbed with the help of such theories.”
“I ask why your Omnipotent God does not hold a man back when he is about to commit a sin or offence. It is child’s play for God. Why did He not kill war lords? Why did He not obliterate the fury of war from their minds? In this way He could have saved humanity of many a great calamity and horror. Why does He not infuse humanistic sentiments into the minds of the Britishers so that they may willingly leave India? I ask why He does not fill the hearts of all capitalist classes with altruistic humanism that prompts them to give up personal possession of the means of production and this will free the whole labouring humanity from the shackles of money.”
The theists would now argue on how the universe was born. They will ask for the expaination of the origin of the world and origin of the man. This topic is concerned with Biology and Natural History. It’s a phenomenon of nature. Charles Darwin tried to throw the light on the subject. Sohan Swami’s “Commonsense” gives some explaination. The Big Bang Theory states that the origin of this universe started with a big explosion and then it took a very very long time for the universe to be what it is today. Collisions of particles at the optimum conditions is merely a coincidence and a chain of such coincidences over a very very long period of time gave us the world as we know it now. There’s nothing to be surprised on the fact that the chain of coincidences we say was just perfect for humans to evolve. It’s not that all went right in the universe. But 13.8 billion years is a very long time. So the coincidences we say can be considered ‘hit and trail’ over a very long period of time.
Now comes the ‘bhramastra’ of theists: If God does not really exist, why do people come to believe in Him? To answer this, I would like to ask them why do people believe in ghosts? Evil Spirits? Do they exist? The only difference is that God is almost a universal phenomenon and well developed theological philosophy.
Bhagat Singh says, on the origin of God:
“As regard the origin of God, my thought is that man created God in his imagination when he realized his weaknesses, limitations and shortcomings. In this way he got the courage to face all the trying circumstances and to meet all dangers that might occur in his life and also to restrain his outbursts in prosperity and affluence. God, with his whimsical laws and parental generosity was painted with variegated colours of imagination. He was used as a deterrent factor when his fury and his laws were repeatedly propagated so that man might not become a danger to society. He was the cry of the distressed soul for he was believed to stand as father and mother, sister and brother, brother and friend when in time of distress a man was left alone and helpless. He was Almighty and could do anything. The idea of God is helpful to a man in distress.”
Once, one of his friends asked him to pray. When informed of his atheism, he said, “When your last days come, you will begin to believe.” I said, “No, dear sir, Never shall it happen. I consider it to be an act of degradation and demoralisation. For such petty selfish motives, I shall never pray.”
Bhagat Singh was hanged to death along with Sukhdev and Rajguru in the Lahore Conspiracy Case. The last words that came out his mouth were Inquilab Zindabad (Long Live the revolution).
The man had no fear of God. He was a legend who fought for the freedom of India and sacrificed his life for the same cause.