What matters is justice, not religion or atheism

I don’t believe in God, but I feel uncomfortable with certain types of atheists, Richard Dawkins for one.

There are several atheists on the extreme right in India as well. Savarkar was one. Hindutva, for this lot, is not rooted in any lived religious practices, customs or traditions; it is a modernized ideological position of ethnicity and race. It defines who has the first right to this land. Savarkar makes this position explicit in his most influential text, Hindutva: “Dharma of a Hindu being so identified with the land of the Hindus, this land to him is not only a Pitribhu but a Punyabhu.” Hindutva was his way of marrying his atheism with his communal outlook.

Dawkins’ obsession, on the other hand, is science and evidence (in addition to dollops of Islamophobia). Science and evidence need to have a significant role in every nation, especially to avoid fakery in healthcare and bigotry in education and public life.

However, if something lacks evidence today, it doesn’t mean it is non-existent. For example, even 50 years ago, there was hardly any evidence that human activity could be attributed to global warming. But human activity has been adding to global warming since the industrial revolution — at least, that’s the scientific consensus today. In other words, the scientific consensus is that industrial progress led by science has been contributing to global warming and therefore science must find ways to arrest it. Fact, not irony.

Therefore, when we lack evidence, it could either mean something is definitively not there or that the evidence might show up later. And since we can never be too sure, let’s prefer humility to certainty.

What drives violence? Is it religion or territory, hurt pride and desire for control?

There is an implied Dawkinsian conviction that religion is at the root of all the trouble in the world. That it is the religious who endorse most forms of violence and stand in the way of rational progress. Dawkins cites Biblical and Quranic verses to expose how these texts endorse violence.

But this conviction, if anyone nurtures it, lacks evidence. We needn’t go too far to disprove this. How many religious people do we know in our own families who want to unleash violence in the name of religion? We also know that a significant majority of the oppressed classes are believers in one God or another and that they have hardly resorted to violence in the name of religion.

Also, the toiling classes seldom engage with “texts” (The Bible, Quran, Gita) that the atheists painstakingly tear into. What matters to them are hope and prayer. It’s the rituals, customs and festivals that bring solace to their life — not ‘deep’ philosophical insights.

Karl Marx understood this well, and that’s why what he talked about religion is much more powerful than the oft-quoted “Religion is the opium of the people.”

Here it is from his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right:

“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.”

So, there you have it: religion is the sigh of the oppressed classes and the heart of a heartless world. And what we have to give up is not just the illusion (read religion) but the condition (read oppression) which needs this illusion.

If you take gender, you would see more women holding onto faith and rituals than men. If you take the oppressed races, you would see them made of stronger faith than the traditionally privileged ones. So, too the oppressed castes. Probably the hope and strength that religious faith provides for the exploited is what makes them cope with their current state.

Even the well-to-do participate in this illusion, perhaps to hold on to their riches, seek blessings to acquire more and fight the uncertainty of losing it all. They also fund and exercise control over organized religions, just like they exercise power over secular institutions. But chances are you will find more agnostics and atheists among the well-to-do and the powerful than among the disadvantaged.

As for violence, a quick glance at history will tell you that wars and destruction, including those in the name of religion, had more to do with exercising control (burning of the witches, inquisition, gulag), acquiring/controlling territories (colonialism/imperialism), reaction to colonialism and imperialist interventions (violent freedom struggles, Islamic terrorism), retaining mythical lost lands (Israel), hurt pride (Nazism and Hindutva), insecurity (partition), and so on. And religion can be a handy tool for any of the above, but even if religion was not there, something else would have come in handy. Where was religion in the Holocaust and gulag?

There are ways to critique religion and fight the irrational, without ridiculing the faith of the underclasses. Buddha did show a way a couple of thousand years ago — one rooted in compassion. Just about 50 odd years ago, Periyar, the militant atheist, did show another way. And he is still revered by millions of Tamilians, many of whom are deeply religious. This is because they see Periyar as an icon of self-respect for the oppressed castes; he was not as an atheist who ridiculed the deprived and their customs.

Both the religious and atheists come in various shades. And although a non-believer myself, I would prefer a compassionate Buddhist over a cold-hearted atheist (of course, this is not to say all atheists are cold-hearted). Because when it comes to human relationships, trust, generosity and treating each other as equals matter more than scientific truths.