Religion of Atheism

My brother’s a big fan of Monty Python series, and after watching their Life of Bryan during one of his sailing trips, he was all ga-ga about it. So, when I had some free time yesterday, I was reading about that movie in Wiki. To those not aware of the group, they are the modern masters of British comedy. As for the movie, it is a spoof on organized religion with a fair bit of political satire too thrown in. Apparently, this movie caused a lot of debate when it was released because it was thought to be anti-Christian because it talks about a Jewish person, Brian, who is born at the same time as Jesus, and is all about his life which finally ends atop a crucifix. In Wiki, I also read about how the director of the movie, and the others in the Monty Python group, defended it against various religious groups or leaders in debates in television or radio.

Going through all this just got me thinking about the religion of atheism. Atheism can roughly be defined as a lack of belief in Gods which would then translate to having no belief in religion. But how would the world have reacted if a similar movie had been made by an atheist from Iran (I choose Iran because they’ve got a great movie industry there), born to Muslim parents? Would it have been the same, or would the reactions have been even more vehement? If Satanic Verses were written by a westerner born to Christian parents, would he be still alive? Having said that, I don’t know whether the fatwa on Salman Rushdie is off or on.

In India, we did see an instance of M F Hussain painting Hindu goddesses nude. To start off with, if no one had told me it was a Hindu goddess, I’d not have known. Of course, the blame lies with me for not knowing modern art, where each color is supposed to mean something, each line’s supposed to mean something else. I realized how ignorant I was when I read a news item in which a horse’s painting was mistaken for a human’s, and art experts in Europe still thought it was great after knowing it was done by a horse and even had an exhibition of the same! So yeah, I really am ignorant about modern art. Probably, I should learn from that horse on how to paint.

Now, coming back to our topic, Hussain felt so much threatened that he felt safe to leave India for Dubai. His exhibitions were cancelled, his works vandalized. But we have our temples filled with similar or even more explicit images and idols – made by Hindu kings, of course. And to make matters better, they probably even weren’t atheists! How would Hindus have reacted if an atheist born to Hindu parents had done what Hussain did?

As a Hindu, the greatest atheists I have seen are in temples. One of those instances was at Kalighat in Kolkata. I had gone to that temple while in Kolkata for my wedding reception. So, there was this long queue for Kali’s darshan, and I wanted to offer Rs. 100 at the Hundi (a metal box for submitting offerings). Not finding one, and seeing everyone offering a priest standing before the Kali idol money, I thought that would be the common practice and did the same. This priest was shooing away everyone after about 10-20 seconds and did the same with me. That is when he glanced at the note I offered to him and saw that it was considerably more than the Rs. 5 or Rs. 10 he’d been receiving until then. He called me back even though I was eager to go out (having been used to the clean temples of Kerala, Kalighat was a totally different experience to me). So I returned, and he made me pray for about 2-3 mins even though the queue was really pressing hard for me to move on. He wanted me to continue praying kneeling down, but by then, I was beginning to worry more about my pants getting dirty, and Kali was definitely not in mind. Anyway, after so much praying, and a generous blessing from the priest, I felt rejuvenated and free of all the sins until then. Just as I was about to step out from the sanctum sanctorum, another priest stopped me and extended his hand. While I realized the gesture (being in India, you’ll also learn how to ignore it) and shook my head in the negative. Upon seeing this, he started off in Bengali, and according to my wife, a couple of words were definitely not fit to be used in a temple, but thankfully I didn’t know any Bengali at that time and could convincingly smile at all that and walk off. That, though, probably wiped off all the blessings I received from that first priest. It also made me realize that the second priest has to be one of world’s eminent atheists, to be right there in the sanctum sanctorum, demanding money, and to be angry enough to let out a torrent of abuse when not given, without any single thought about how God would react to all that. After that, I have given a special attention to priests, and I have found them to have definite traits of an atheist.

I am not sure if there are any definite answers for the questions I have raised here, but these are indeed genuine doubts I have. Does your religion matter if you are an atheist and want to criticize a religion?