Attack on reason: Desperate attempt

A genuine believer never hates non-believers, rather he tries to convince and accommodate them.

Russian thinker Vissarion Gregoryevich Belinsky said, ‘Tyrants fear ideas more than guns.’ It is true of obscurantists who are scared of ideas and so, are wielding guns to silence the ideas, not knowing that ideas can never be silenced. The dastardly killing of Sahitya Akademi award winner, writer and rationalist M M Kalburgi is a desperate attempt by threatened Hindu fundamentalist forces to foist their viewpoints.

Devoid of the intellectual wherewithal to convince others about their beliefs, they resort to swords as their pens are dumb. Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, and now Kalburgi. Who next- K S Bhagwan? Yes, he is on the hit list. It is heartening that Hindi writer Uday Prakash has decided to return his Sahitya Akademi award in protest.

Obscurantist forces are on a killing spree in Bangladesh reminding of the Black Night (March 25, 1971) which marked the beginning of Operation Searchlight under which pro-liberation Bengali intellectuals were executed systematically by the Pakistan Army and their local collaborators, including Al-Badr among others.

A genuine believer never hates non-believers, rather he tries to convince them and also tries to accommodate them. When Mahatma Gandhi said, “God is Truth”, Gora (Goparaju Ramachandra Rao) challenged him and wanted to know where was the place of atheists in his (Gandhi’s) scheme. Gora asked him how could a person believe in truth if s/he did not believe in God. Gora believed in truth but not in God.

After a long debate with Gora in November 1944, Gandhi rephrased it as “Truth is God.” During the debate, Gandhi said that he should fast because atheism was spreading. Gora has recorded, “Evidently he thought that atheism had developed in reaction to the misbehaviour of god-believers and that better conduct on their part would render atheism unnecessary.” Gora became so close to Gandhi that he was considered a dear member of Gora’s “family” and a master to him.

A Brahmin, Gora was working for the uplift of untouchables and thought that belief in God divides man into sects. So, he thought that an atheist could serve better the cause of removing untouchability. He even married his daughter off to an untouchable. It was no love marriage. Gandhi was to attend the marriage but he was assassinated before it could be solemnised. However, Jawaharlal Nehru attended the marriage.

In his introduction to Gora’s book, An Atheist with Gandhi, Kishorilal Mashruwala wrote, “Gandhi found that though Gora loved to call himself an atheist, he was a sincere and serious-minded man. He was what might be called, ‘a man of God’. In fact, he resented being considered ‘godless’, and insisted on distinguishing between atheism and godlessness.” Mashruwala said that atheism is also a creed among many others and there is all logic in saying so.

Also, Gandhi did say about Charles Bradlaugh that not-withstanding his non-belief in God, he was a man of noble character and a truly religious man. And he was a great atheist. Bradlaugh was a political activist and a famed atheist of the 19th century who founded the National Secular Society in 1866. He was elected MP of Northampton in 1880 but he refused to take the oath in the name of God; instead he wanted to “solemnly affirm”.

Oaths Act
The matter was referred to the Select Committee which did not allow him to take oath like this. He was also arrested and forfeited his seat in parliament. But he was re-elected in the by-elections four times in succession with bigger margin each time. He was finally allowed to take the oath in 1886. Two years later, he secured the passage of a new Oaths Act which enshrined into law the right of affirmation for both Houses.

In his debate with Gora, Gandhi said about Bradlaugh, “I remember of clergymen who had come to funeral of the great atheist Bradlaugh. They said they had come to pay their homage because he was a godly man.”

Since the ancient period, the term ‘atheism’ has been used to persecute rivals and opponents. Romans persecuted the early Christians as atheists, not because they did not believe in God but because they refused to profess loyalty to the imperial cult. Anaxagoras was charged with atheism as he conceived of the sun as a material body.
Protagoras was banished from Athens because of his frank assertion that he did not know whether God did exist and that the subject was difficult and life was short.

Giordano Bruno, the Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet and astrologer, was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition because he said that stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own exoplanets and held guilty, and in 1600, he was burned alive.

Galileo had to recant the heliocentric theory to live. He was incarcerated, tortured and tormented. While being tortured, he would say that the earth is flat and the sun moves round the earth. But as the pain subsided he would shout that the earth is spherical and that the earth moved round the sun.