I am an atheist.

Let me say it again.

I am an atheist.

The renowned scientist Stephen Hawking is a confirmed atheist. In India too we have a rich tradition of atheism that goes back 2,000 years. Sadly, few people are aware of this

There’s a reason why I say this, why I repeat this declaration with pleasure and pride.

For there are societies where you cannot say this.

Pakistan is one among seven countries in the world, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Maldives, where a confession to atheism can attract capital punishment.

In neighbouring Bangladesh, atheist bloggers are hacked to death in full public view, and with alarming regularity.

Death threats are issued and carried out.

The message is unambiguous.

If you are a declared atheist, then leave Bangladesh, apply for asylum to Norway, but don’t think of staying ‘here’.

We will get you.

Not so in secular India.

You have a right to follow a religion, you also have a right to not follow any, and do so openly.

In fact the 2011 census, the details of which were made public recently, was the first to include a ‘non-faith category’.

2.87 million Indians ticked that box.

The actual numbers are probably much higher.

Murder

It’s not that atheists haven’t been murdered in India.

Two years ago, on 6th August 2013, activist and rationalist Narendra Dhabolkar, an avowed atheist, was murdered.

But he was not murdered for being an atheist.

He was murdered because he ran a campaign against fraudulent and exploitative religious practices.

He helped draft the Anti-Jaadu Tona Bill (Anti-Superstition and Black Magic Ordnance), which targeted godmen and gurus.

In the early 20th century atheism took firm root in Tamil Nadu, primarily because of the efforts of E V Ramaswamy or Periyar, as he was popularly known.

The legacy continues to this day.

Dravidian parties like Dravidar Kazagham and the DMK boast of thousands of members who eschew religious belief.

The history of atheism in India goes back 2000 years.

We have had a glorious tradition of atheism stretching back to ancient times, to the 2nd century BC. Many schools of Indian philosophy were explicitly non-theistic: Carvaka (also known as Lokayata), Mimamsa, Samkhya (the atomists) and Buddhism.

Still, even though figures like Buddha and Mahavira ignored the gods, they were not thoroughgoing atheists; they admitted to the existence of “supernatural beings of strictly limited powers” (A L Basham), and subscribed to the theory of transmigration of souls.

The first true-blue atheists were the Carvakas.

They were the first to say that there is no god, period, (i.e. no external agent or efficient cause); that we don’t need god to explain how the planet came to be, how we came to be here, and what happens in the after-life.

They were the first to stick their necks out and say that the goal of human existence, if there was one, was to be sought out and achieved in this world (loka).

And no, these ‘heretics’ were not burnt at the stake.

They were always invited to important philosophical debates, where they were free to propose and defend their doctrine of pure materialism – the material world is all that exists.

Man consists of four elements - earth, water, fire and air - and returns to them at the time of death.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

The self or soul or consciousness is a byproduct or epiphenomenon of the human body (and not an independent entity floating around), and perishes when the body ceases to function as a living organism.

Much of what we know about the Carvaka worldview comes to us from Madhavacharya’s 14th century compendium of Indian philosophy, Sarva-darsana-samgraha.

These pithy and provocative aphorisms and maxims are self-explanatory.

Vedic rituals and beliefs are relentlessly and ruthlessly lampooned and criticized.

“The Agnihotra (fire sacrifice), the three Vedas, the ascetic’s three staves, and smearing oneself with ashes, were made by nature as the livelihood of those destitute of knowledge and manliness.”

Afterlife

There is no afterlife: “If a beast slain in the Jyotistoma rite will itself go to heaven, why then does the sacrificer not offer his own father immediately?”

“If a sacrificer would reap the reward of heaven after the sacrificer himself, the sacrificial act and the implements of sacrifice are long gone, the trees that were consumed Stephen Hawking, one of the world’s best minds in thereotical physics, is a confirmed atheist. In India too we have a rich tradition of atheism that goes back 2,000 years. Sadly, few people are aware of this. by a forest conflagration would as well bear fruit.”

“There is no other hell than the mundane pain, produced by purely mundane causes such as thorns.”

Instead of renouncing worldly pleasures we should actively seek them out, because the here and now is all we have.

The Kamasutra attributes a series of statements to the Carvakas: “A pigeon today is better than a peacock tomorrow.”

“A certain silver is better than a doubtful gold.” (Modern translation: “A Tinder date today, is better than the promise of 72 virgins in Paradise.”).

Renaissance

The Carvakas were the first Indian atheists, skeptics, hedonists and rationalists. Unfortunately, nowadays, they fall between stools.

The Hindu right has its own notion of a glorious past, which consists of flying chariots, plastic surgeries performed in forests and invisible/ mythical rivers like the Saraswati.

Many westerners are deeply attached to the romantic conception of Indian philosophy as essentially spiritual in nature.

The Carvakas are not seen as being interesting enough to warrant more attention, either scholarly or popular.

Therein lies the tragedy of ancient Indian atheism in contemporary times.

Still, as Richard King writes in Indian Philosophy: “Indian materialism has clear resonances with contemporary cultural and philosophical trends in modern, urban, western culture. In this context one might expect to see a renaissance of interest in Carvaka philosophy.”

One hopes that this happens.