Article

Atheism and Unbelief Society and Culture in South Asia

3(1) 45–67
among Indian © 2017 South Asian University,
New Delhi
SAGE Publications
Scientists: Towards sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/2393861716674292
an Anthropology of http://scs.sagepub.com

Atheism(s)

Renny Thomas1

Abstract
Taking into account the specific contexts and cultural specificities lends
different meanings to categories like ‘atheists’, ‘agnostics’ and ‘material-
ists’, this ethnographic discussion of scientists shows the limitations of
Western atheism to capture the everyday life of Indian scientists. The
article argues that Indian atheism(s) need not be, nor is it actually, iden-
tical with the brands of Western atheism. By trusting ethnographic data,
we see that atheistic scientists called themselves atheists even while
accepting that their lifestyle is very much a part of tradition and reli-
gion. For them, following the lifestyle of a religion is not antithetical to
atheism. The study of atheism and rationality should not be just a sim-
ple-minded attempt to find Western parallels. We need to acknowledge
the locations while studying atheism(s) and unbelief.

Keywords
Atheism(s), unbelief, religion, India, scientists, culture, orientalism, West

1
Department of Sociology, Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi, New Delhi,
India.
Corresponding author:
Renny Thomas, Department of Sociology, Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi,
Chanakyapuri, New Delhi – 21, India.
E-mail: rennyjnu@gmail.com
46 Society and Culture in South Asia 3(1)

Introduction
‘As an evolutionary biologist I know what constitutes life, so I cannot
believe in God. A good scientist cannot believe in God,’ said Gracy
Gomez,1 an evolutionary biologist. Like Gomez, there are many ‘vocal’
and ‘passive’ non-believing scientists in Indian scientific research insti-
tutes and universities. Some called themselves ‘hard-core atheists’, some
‘agnostics’ and some ‘materialists’. This article tries to understand how
these scientists interpreted their unbelief and science. A cursory look at
some of the existing studies by historians and anthropologists reveals
lacunae in understanding the practices of unbelief or atheism among
Indian scientists in particular and Indians in general. The dominant
orientalist constructions of India being metaphysical and spiritual have
obfuscated any serious engagement with practices of atheism or non-
belief. Given this gap in much of the existing scholarship, the article
endeavours to ethnographically study the cultures of unbelief and athe-
ism among scientists in India.
One can argue that the dominant trope of Indian spirituality and
mysticism cast a shroud on a much needed engagement with ideas of
rationality, non-belief and atheism in India. Much of the discussions
on science, atheism and religion occurred on separate planks and it
is not surprising that the limited Western engagement on the Indian
cultures of rationality, atheism and the development of science testify
to the continued prevalence of orientalism in social sciences. Western
anthropologists are interested to study ‘things exotic’ in India such
as healing traditions and religious rituals. The recent ICSSR (Indian
Council of Social Science Research) research survey on the sociology
of knowledge by V. Sujatha and A. Sengupta also shows that the major-
ity of studies on science, technology and knowledge in India were
primarily undertaken by Indian scholars (Sujatha and Sengupta 2014).
The debates about the apparent incongruity between rationality and
religion in India led me to undertake ethnographic fieldwork among
scientists in Bangalore.2 Much of the existing literature on Indian
scientists fetishises their religiosity and spirituality, and emphasises

1 
Names of scientists have been changed to ensure anonymity.
2
Fieldwork was conducted for about 11 months from February to December 2012 at the
Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. I was affiliated with a laboratory at the IISc.
Using the identity as a lab member of IISc, I have also visited other scientific research
institutions in Bangalore and conducted interviews with scientists at the National Centre
for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific
Research (JNCASR).
Thomas 47

the scientists’ belief in ideas of karma, after life and so on (Keysar

and Kosmin 2008). Though some studies briefly discussed about
atheist scientists, they were more keen to document the religious
and spiritual lives of scientists in India (Brown 2012; Gosling 2007).
This exoticisation resulted in the unavailability of literature on the
non-religious or atheistic life of scientists in India. It is pertinent to
note that there is no paucity of scientists who described themselves
as atheists or non-religious in Indian universities and research insti-
tutes. For instance, Susmita Subramanyam’s study of Indian Institute
of Science (IISc) scientists documents that she had interviewed sci-
entists who called themselves atheists, agnostics and non-believers
(Subramanyam 1998). Historically, too, one can look at the life tra-
jectories of scientists such as M. N. Saha to understand the radical
views he harboured on the question of ‘science and religion’, and on
the supremacy of religion (Saha 1937). I met many scientists who
called themselves ‘atheists’, ‘agnostics’ and ‘materialists’. However,
as I will demonstrate, parallels cannot be drawn between their ideas
of atheism or non-belief and their Western counterparts, and also it is
problematic to look for a homogeneous category called ‘atheists’. For
instance, the scientific atheism of scientists like Richard Dawkins is
not popular among Indian scientists. There are multiple practices of
atheism(s) among scientists. The history of the practice of atheism
varied in different locations and each of these locations produced its
own understanding of belief and unbelief.
Bernard Lightman shows that the idea of atheism and its alleged
connection with science varied in different time and space. He writes:
Whereas Dawkins asserts that atheism lies at the heart of modern science,
Sir Isaac Newton, the great hero of the seventeenth century scientific
revolution, believed that the scientific study of nature revealed the
existence of universal laws of nature that could be grasped mathematically.
The existence of natural law led, in turn, to the recognition that a
creative deity had provided an order to nature. (Lightman 2011: 252)

In the context of Britain, Lightman shows that during the time of Newton,
atheism was considered to be inimical to the scientific spirit and Newton
himself argued against atheism (ibid.: 252). He writes:
Dawkins and Newton illustrate the dramatic shift that has occurred over
the past three centuries in the ways scientists, intellectuals, and the public
perceive the implications of natural knowledge for religious belief.
At some point the close link between science and theism in Newtonianism
was severed, and science came to be associated with unbelief. (ibid.: 253)
48 Society and Culture in South Asia 3(1)

Lightman stresses on the importance of contexts to understand how cer-

tain forms of unbelief came into existence in certain societies during
certain historical conjunctures. He problematises the universal claim of
atheism by showing its emergence as a school of thought, in response to
various social, political and intellectual discourses specific to Europe at
a particular time (Lightman 2002, 2011). For instance, the historical and
social situation of Britain and the prevalence of scientific discourses
such as the theory of evolution paved the way for Thomas Henry Huxley
to propose the idea of Agnosticism in 1869 in one of the early meetings
of the Metaphysical Society in London (Lightman 2002, 2011: 266). As
Lightman puts it:
The space in Britain created by Huxley, Spencer, and their allies for intel-
lectuals to connect science to unbelief was somewhat unusual. Although
Western intellectuals in other national contexts attempted to create
a similar space in their countries during the second half of the nine-
teenth century, they were not as successful as their British counterparts.
(Lightman 2011: 270)

Taking into account the specific contexts and cultural specificities lends
different meanings to categories like ‘atheists’, ‘agnostics’ and ‘materi-
alists’, the ethnographic discussion of scientists will show that the
Western3 understanding of atheism as a philosophy of godlessness and
anti-religious sentiment does not apply in the Indian context. Though the
Western ideas of atheism and agnosticism travelled to many other non-
Western sites due to colonialism and trade relations, it got changed and
modified according to the specificity of the destinations. As Edward Said
in his classic essay ‘Traveling Theory’ argued:
Like people and schools of criticism, ideas and theories travel—
from person to person, from situation to situation, from one period to
another. Such movement into a new environment is never unimpeded.
It necessarily involves processes of representation and institution-
alisation different from those at the place of origin. (Said 1983: 226)

David N. Livingstone writes in this context:

Ideas and images travel from place to place as they move from person
to person, from culture to culture. But migration is not the same as
replication. As ideas circulate, they undergo translation and trans-
formation because people encounter representations differently in
different circumstances. If theories must be understood in the context

3
West is not used as a homogeneous category. West(s) has its own specificities. West here
simply connotes the dominant Western discourse.
Thomas 49

of the period and place they emerge from, their reception must also
be temporally and spatially situated. (Livingstone 2003: 11–12)

It is in this context that I discuss how the scientists who described

themselves as non-believers lived an ‘atheistic’ life in their culturally
specific way.

‘Being a Scientist I Cannot Believe in God’:

Practices of Atheism(s) and Unbelief among
Scientists
When I first met Rajiv Kumar at his office, he told me that talking to him
on religion will be of no use as he does not believe in God, and said that
he is a ‘hard-core atheist’. When I told him about the nature of my work
and that I wanted to listen to people who have different opinion on
religion and science, he narrated his views on religion and God in the
course of three interviews. Kumar specialises in Molecular Reproduction.
He lived in the United States of America before joining the Institute. He
was born in Kerala in a traditional Nair family. He criticised many
scientists for believing in God. As he said proudly,
A true scientist cannot believe in God. Science is based on logic, asking
questions, based on what you see, the evidences that you get. Those
evidences could be wrong evidences; tomorrow you might rewrite
it, that is okay. Again, you have a new set of evidence. Based on this
new set of evidence, the old one is removed. That is about science. In
science, you have real logical–rational thinking. Religion is not like
that. The Bible is not going to revise, never going to revise. Bhagvad
Gita is not going to revise, Gita stands final for a Hindu, Bible stands
final for a Christian, Quran is final saying for Muslims, so there is
no rational thinking; just believe in what is written. When you are in
the temple you are a Hindu, not a scientist, or when you go to Church
you are a Christian, not a scientist. If you want to believe that God
exists, then you have to shut your logical mind. In reality, science is
a religion that believes in logic and is open to questions and criticism.
On the contrary, religion is a science which blindly believes in what
is preached. They can’t blend. It is foolish if one tries to blend them.

He informed me that he avoids attending functions associated with

religions. He added that he never practiced any religious rites, not even
in his childhood, as his father told him not to believe in anything without
a reason and logic. As he expressed it, ‘I didn’t find any reason to believe
in God.’ He went on to criticise the believers,
50 Society and Culture in South Asia 3(1)

If one wants to believe in God, one has to shut down logical thinking. I
don’t know why people go to the temple to see the stone and believe in it.

He argued that if God exists, the religious people should be able to

prove it, and convince the non-believers. According to him,
Believing without proof is what religion is all about. The God Hypothesis
should be tested. The result will be negative. Scientists have created the
essence of life (DNA) and have assembled life artificially. So, God as the
creator is already challenged. Belief, not based on evidence and proof, is
not acceptable.

He stated that in the name of culture and tradition, scientists in Indian

institutes and universities promote religion and rituals in the form of
festivals. He said,
I do not like religious practices in the institute and/or in the lab.
There are designated places for worship (temples, churches and
mosques). Even at home, a religious guy does his religious act at
a designated spot. He/she does not do it in the toilet. So, there are
specific places for various acts. A scientific research institute is for
doing scientific research and is not a place for any kind of religious act.

For him, atheism is the only way of life where reason is important.
He said,
I believe in NOT BELIEVING IN GOD. Atheism is the alternate
philosophy. Atheist scientist is a scientist by profession, but is an atheist
as any other atheist is. His logic does not accept proof-less philosophy.

Kumar was very happy when I told him that he sounded like Richard
Dawkins. He in between asked me if he is the only radical atheist scientist
I had met. When I said I had met more he appeared very happy, ‘Great,
I thought I am the only strong atheist scientist.’ Though Kumar proudly
declared himself as a hard-core atheist we will see later how he interprets
the cultural aspects of believing in God and religion.
When Kumar chose to call himself a hard-core atheist, Ashok Baruah,
a scientist who specialises in Geometry, chose to call himself as an
‘extreme materialist’. He said,
There is no role for religion in my life. God and religion is a matter
of belief. Religion, in my opinion, is a set of beliefs that are not based
on evidence, and which attempts to explain that there is a design and
purpose underlying life’s manifold injustices. I don’t believe that there
is a grand design or purpose behind the misfortunes that individuals
experience. I am philosophically an extreme materialist, which means
I don’t understand spirituality and I don’t think that there exists such a
Thomas 51

thing called spirituality or God. To say that anything that happens has a
consequence in the real worlds often have a physical and material cause.
I mean, the material might be extremely microscopic, but there might be
phenomena which involve the interaction of subatomic particles that we
can’t see and we can’t touch, but ultimately, these are physical entities.

He went on to criticise people including scientists who said that

astrology has scientific significance. He stated,
People, whether scientists or non-scientists, who believe that astrology
has scientific significance, and also the proponents of Intelligent Design
Theory badly need psychiatric help.

He said that being a materialist, the theory of evolution for him is the
best and convincing thesis on the existence of human life. As he said,
Theory of Evolution is a theory as much as Newton’s Laws and
Special Relativity are theories that explain why moving bodies move
the way they do. I ‘agree’ with the theory of evolution in the non-
dogmatic sense that it has a great explanatory power, and will continue
to ‘agree’ with whatever revisions of the theory—big or small—that
increase the explanatory power of the theory. In short, I see theory of
evolution as a convincing proposal for the mechanism behind the origin
of species, whose specific details continue to be a work in progress.

Gracy Gomez, the evolutionary biologist, described her identity as

‘hard-core atheist’. She works in the area of evolutionary ecology of
species interactions. Her laboratory investigates the sensory biology
of these interactions, especially their chemical and visual ecology. She
was born into a Roman Catholic family in Goa. She told me that she
attended catechism classes regularly in her Church during her childhood.
It is her entry into evolutionary biology and training in biology which
equipped her to question the existence of God and the negative aspects
of religion. Darwin for her is an important hero figure. She argued that
being an evolutionary biologist, she is aware of the origin of religion.
She said,
Religion is the creation of society. I think religion serves a purpose. It
gives solace to people who are trying to deal with the sufferings of the
world. It gives them some level of comfort and safety. As an evolutionary
biologist, I think religion was a necessary creation of the human mind.
As an evolutionary biologist, I understand why religion was a necessary
creation. Once you understand how religion evolved and once you realise
that every culture has some kind of belief in religion and totem, you will
understand that it was important for people to survive in the society to
deal with difficulties and sufferings. It is also a safety valve for people
52 Society and Culture in South Asia 3(1)

who are not strong enough. Since I know as an evolutionary biologist

how religion developed, I cannot believe in God. I am a hard-core atheist.

She stated that once people realise the reality of life, they will start
questioning the existence of God like the way she did. She argued,
‘People believe because they are afraid. They are full of fear and it is
this fear which lead them to believe in God.’ Iqbal Rizwan is another
evolutionary biologist at the Institute. His lab focuses on the evolutionary
ecology of individuals, populations and species. Rizwan stated that he is
an ardent atheist. As we sat amongst the pictures of Darwin and posters
celebrating the 150th year celebration of Darwin’s Origin of Species that
adorned his office, Rizwan told me:
I am completely non-religious. I see myself as an ardent atheist. I
grew up confused, because my mother is a Christian and my father
a Muslim. I have had a formal religious training in both religions.
I went to Sunday school and I was also taught the Quran at home.
Neither of my parents was deeply religious. The reason I attended
both religions is because my mother insisted that I should be given a
chance to explore. As a result, you get to know about both, and I was
attracted to neither of them. Also, reading about evolution, reading a
lot of debates on the existence of God, on the question of evolutionism
and creationism shaped my thinking. I realised that there is no
reason for me to believe in God. So I see myself as a strong atheist!

It is partly his training as an evolutionary biologist which helped

him to grasp the reality of life and universe. He was also very active
in various nature clubs during his college and university days, which
helped him to be familiar with various rationalist thinking and writings.
Like Gomez, he is also an ardent supporter of Darwinism.
The scientists we have met so far clearly are not only influenced
by Darwinism, but they see it as a way of life and thinking. Likewise,
Nagendra Rao, one of my lab mates, said he is a ‘hard-core evolutionist’.
In many of my conversations with him he told me that Darwin is his
hero, and he reads books on evolution. He told me that the Darwinian
theory of evolution is the only convincing theory to explain the existence
of life on earth. In our discussions on science, evolution and religion, he
stated that he doesn’t understand why people believe in God. Once he
said very poignantly,
I do not believe if there is something called God. It is hard for me to
believe without any scientific background that a super power has created
the whole universe and it takes care of all the happenings in the Universe.
Thomas 53

Even if provided with a scientific background, the next question that comes
to mind is: (a) Why did God create universe? (b) Who is he to create one?

Ramesh Iyer, an ecologist had similar views to share. Iyer was born
in a traditional Tamil Brahmin family. He had his doctoral training from
the United States of America. He joined the Institute as a faculty a couple
of years ago. He is also interested in environmental activism along with
his scientific career. When I met him at his office, we discussed about
rationality, religion and science. He said he is a ‘complete atheist’.
At a personal level, basically, I am a complete atheist. I have not had or
engaged in any form of religious practices as far as I remember. I don’t
go to religious places; I don’t engage in any rituals in any form. I am
shocked by the fact that knowledge plays such a small role in shaping
peoples’ ideas. I am amused by the fact that Richard Dawkins thinks
that he can make a logical argument for the non-existence of God and
expect that people would believe him because it is logical. Unfortunately,
that’s clearly not how knowledge is transmitted in our society. I find
it frustrating to realise that people respect religion and not knowledge.

He goes on to criticise and question scientists who argue that religion

gives them a sense of satisfaction and psychological security. He said,
This has been the standard arguments for scientists who don’t want to
give up religion. They would say that science doesn’t have the power
to disprove the existence of God. I see this as utter nonsense. I don’t
subscribe to their argument that science and religion co-exist. I don’t
subscribe to their argument that one cannot use rationality and scientific
methods to question the existence of God. This is just a method to cope
with the dilemma. It is a categorical refusal to engage with the debate.
I don’t buy their argument at all. Interestingly, some believing scientists
call themselves spiritual when they actually believe in God. I think the
usage of spirituality is a way to hide their religiosity and religious practices.

Iyer’s criticism of Indian scientists echoed the opinions of a

well-known Indian biologist and promoter of scientific temper, P. M.
Bhargava. Bhargava said in 2011,
Some of the scientists in the country lived double lives, teaching
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to students by day, but endorsing
the theory of creation at home in the evening. It was very unfortunate
that rocket scientists went to Tirupati to pray for the success of the
launch instead of having confidence in their efforts. (The Hindu 2011)

Recently, he accused Indian scientists for being superstitious and lacking

scientific temper. He provocatively stated, ‘India has not produced any
Nobel Prize winner in science in the last 85 years—largely because of
54 Society and Culture in South Asia 3(1)

the lack of a scientific environment in the country, of which scientific

temper would be an important component’ (Bhargava 2015: 11).
Elsewhere, he argued that
The religious tradition in India has attempted to assimilate science as well.
Consequently, the acceptance of science as something that in the ultimate
analysis stands out in contradiction to religious dogma, superstition, and
traditional beliefs has been difficult to come by in India. This situation
has certainly acted as an impediment to India’s development of science.
(Bhargava and Chakrabarti 1989: 355)

Iyer went on to criticise Indian science and the practices of scientists as

Brahmanical and criticised them for being very exclusive. He said,
Calling these scientists religious doesn’t do justice to truth. Indian scientists
are not religious, they are deeply Brahmanical. Brahmin tradition of science
in this country is very strong. Most of these scientists come from hard-
core Brahmin tradition. They hold on to the priesthood of Brahmanism
and not religion. Brahmanism is the problem in India. IISc, for instance, is
known as Iyer Iyengar Science Campus. The scientists’ wish for the return
to Indian culture is actually a wish for the return of Brahmin supremacy.

Ramamurthy, a renowned physicist who teaches theoretical physics at

the Institute, told me that he is totally irreligious and stated that he finds
it atrocious to listen to people who uncritically engage with religion.
He said many people in the name of religion promote superstitions,
and many irrational activities. He stated that his parents were not very
religious, and the upbringing in a less religious family helped him along
with his training in science to critically see religion and the idea of God.
Likewise, Madhava Sastry, a distinguished biologist, argued that his
scientific training had helped him to understand the complexities of life,
and to question the existence of God. His lab focusses on establishing
the evolutionary relationship of viruses and structural comparison of
proteins. He said,
I do not believe in God even in the psychological sense of the term.
Religion has no role in my life. I am an atheist. Atheists are as normal
individuals as theists. India, for instance, has had a large following of
atheistic ideas (Lokayatas). Perhaps, there are more atheists among
scientists compared to others not trained in science, although I am not sure.

It is notable that he mentions Indian tradition of non-belief and

atheism. Many non-believing scientists I met were aware of Indian
schools of atheism and materialism. They observed that India had a
Thomas 55

rich tradition of atheism, and they are inspired by some of these schools
of thought.
Poornima Vasudevan, who has done important work in the area of
molecular reproduction and genetics, said,
I am an atheist. I am a complete atheist. I don’t think you need God
to be a good person. I honestly believe that much of the natural
phenomena will be explained by science. I don’t think there is
anything beyond that. In that sense, I am a true atheist. I don’t think
there is any need to invoke superior being; neither do I think you
need a God to be a good person. You can be a good person and a
good atheist. I don’t think I am a bad person because of my atheism.

She went on to criticise religious practices and rituals in the Institute,

We don’t practice any kind of rituals in lab. I banned Ayudha Puja4 in my
lab. I have nothing to do with Ayudha Puja. I have nothing to do with any
festivals on campus. We stopped it in the lab long back. I find it ridiculous.
I think our department was one of the first departments to stop it. I
certainly don’t allow my lab to practice it. Office people still do it. I think
in my laboratory, and in quite a few laboratories nothing happens during
Ayudha Puja. We work as normal. When people come and ask donation
for Ayudha Puja, I say ‘I am sorry, I can’t give.’ I don’t donate for any
religious activities. I have my charity, but not religion-based charity. I
find it ridiculous when some scientists say that Ayudha Puja is a working
class festival and one should let them do and participate in it. That is
nonsense. They have to educate the working class rather than justifying
it. I don’t subscribe to these sorts of justifications. I find it ridiculous. I
am a complete atheist, so I cannot subscribe to these justifications. When
some of my students acknowledge God in their thesis, I tell them not to
do that. I tell them that what they have done is a human activity. So I ask
them to keep their faith with them and not mention God in the thesis.

These narratives are a telling reminder of the fact that contrary to

popular perceptions of Indian scientists being religious and spiritual,
they were not only non-religious but totally believed in atheism. And
as already noted, they called themselves ‘complete atheists’, ‘hard-core
atheists’ and ‘staunch atheists’. They argued that they never felt the
need to have faith in God or supernatural entities, as everything can be
explained through science. However, we will see later that these scientists
did not subscribe to the kind of Western atheism which scientists like
Richard Dawkins professed.

4
The worshipping and honouring of machines and instruments in laboratories and
workshops.
56 Society and Culture in South Asia 3(1)

‘I’m a Liberal Non-theist, but Not an Atheist’:

Forms of Unbelief
When the above discussed scientists preferred to identify themselves as
‘atheists’, some of them chose to see themselves as ‘agnostics’ and
‘sceptics’, and ‘non-theist’. Gayatri Iyengar, a biologist who works in
the areas of molecular reproduction, for instance, said,
I wouldn’t call myself as an atheist. I personally do not go to religious
places, or do any practices. I did not have the urge to go and seek God
at any point. It’s the same now also. We have a God’s area at home like
every household has. My mother does puja daily. Do I miss doing it?
No. Do I feel bad about not doing it? No. Does it mean that I will never
do it? No, if I will be interested in attending tomorrow, I will do it. At this
point of my life I am not seeking God, and I don’t want to also. In that
sense, I see myself as an agnostic.

Though some of these scientists argued that it is their training in

Western science which helped them to question the existence of God, they
did not believe that it is merely their Western education which changed
their understanding of God. They strongly stated that one can very well
be a scientist and an atheist as India had a rich tradition of materialism
and atheism. Some of them argued that the Indian schools of atheism
and materialism did influence them deeply and they were very proud
of these schools. Though some of these scientists considered Darwin
as their hero, they also took India’s contribution to the understanding
of rationalism and atheism seriously. It will be a Eurocentric analysis
of non-belief in contemporary India, if one doesn’t consider Indian
schools of rationalism and atheism and its influence on the contemporary
scientists. For instance, Quack’s study of Indian rationalists informs
us that many of the rationalist associations in India consider nāstika
(heterodox) philosophies like the Lokāyata and Cārvākaas their early
forerunners (Quack 2011: 22).
Narayana Shastry is an influential aerospace scientist. He works in
the field of fluid dynamics associated with aerospace and atmospheric
sciences. Besides, he also writes on Indian philosophy. During the
interview, he spoke extensively on Indian traditions of atheism and
materialism, and described how he was fascinated and influenced by
these schools of thought. Rather than Western science and atheism, it is
Indian schools of thought that influenced him. He said he wouldn’t call
himself an atheist; rather he calls himself a ‘liberal non-theist’. He said,
Thomas 57

I don’t practice any rituals associated with religion. I stopped wearing

the sacred thread long ago. I do not call myself an atheist. My view
of God is very similar to that of Samkhya. I do not consider myself as
an atheist. I certainly consider myself as a non-theist. Samkhya was
known as Nireeshwara Samkhya; it is not ‘atheist’ as such, but it is
non-theist. It doesn’t say there is no God. It says, ‘it is not necessary to
know God’. You will be astounded if you read Samkhya. It says there
is no evidence for Easwara; it does not say there is no Easwara. To be
specific, I consider myself as a liberal non-theist. I cannot be an atheist
for sure. As I said, I am very much like the Samkhya philosophers.

He has a rich understanding of the history of science in India and Indian

philosophy unlike many other scientists in the Institute. He has written
various articles on Indian philosophy in international journals. During
the conversation, he lamented about the fact that Indians themselves did
not value their traditions. He made it clear that he had no empathy for
the Hindu right-wing forces who argue that everything existed in the
Vedas. He feels that those forces are actually anti-knowledge. After his
retirement, his interest in philosophy stemmed from a discovery of the
rich traditions of rationalism and materialism within Indian philosophical
systems. He argued that these concepts were part of the various Indic
schools of thought. Referring to the influence of these traditions on his
own intellectual and personal lives, he says:
It was 20 years back that I started looking at Indian texts seriously once I
retired from my scientific career. When I started reading Indian classical
philosophy, I approached it with a certain sense of scepticism. I had a
different understanding of Indian philosophy then. I thought India was
superstitious, did not have science, was not rational and so on. I started
reading the classical Indian scientists in original, in Sanskrit. I made
some surprising discoveries which many people had not noticed before.
I found things which surprised me. I call the old texts Indic. Because
if you say it is Hindu, it excludes others. Hindu is not our word; it is
somebody else’s word. The term ‘Hindu’ is not sufficiently inclusive.
What do you do with Buddhist and Jain texts and Islamic contribution
then? So I call it Indic. So I talk about Indic science, not Hindu or Indian
science. I found out when I was looking at those texts that the old Indic
philosophers and scientists were not superstitious or irrational. Of course,
their methods and techniques were very different. If one looks at them
seriously one finds scientific philosophy, it has to do with epistemology.
All of this took time to understand. I began to understand that there were
large numbers of scientists in classical India. If you look at classical
scientists like Aryabhatta and Caraka, there are limited references to
58 Society and Culture in South Asia 3(1)

God in their texts. I found it fascinating. In fact, far less on God than in
the Western literature right down to Newton’s times. It was a revelation
to me. In Aryabhatta’s text, there is only once where he mentioned the
word spiritual; that is a reference to Brahma. It is fascinating, isn’t it?
Samkhya philosophy, for instance, is very radical. My theory is that in
one way or another, many of these classical Indic philosophers followed
Samkhya philosophy. Samkhya was known as Nireeshwara Samkhya. It
is not ‘atheist’ as such, but it is non-theist. It doesn’t say there is no
God. It says, ‘It is not necessary to know God.’ It says that there is no
evidence for Easwara. It does not say that there is no Easwara. What
I want to tell you is that rationalism and idea of non-belief is nothing
new to Indic tradition. One doesn’t need to go to the West to find them.

Shastry’s narrative problematises the orientalist understanding of

classical Indian philosophical texts as lacking in rationality and science.
He argued that one has to study the Indic systems of thought seriously to
understand how rational and radical Indian schools of thought were. As
he said, he doesn’t identify himself as an atheist since Samkhya doesn’t
say that there is no God, but it says that there is no evidence for God.
Philosophers have written about Indian rationalism and empiricism.
J. N. Mohanty, for instance, informs us that there is a strong empiricist
strand in Indian thought. This is testified by the primacy of perception,
importance of an ‘exemplifying instance’ (drstanta) in the syllogistic
theory, and by a conspicuous lack of modal thinking (‘possible worlds’,
‘necessity’ and so on;) (Mohanty 1992: 269).
As scientists like Shastry emphasised, it is very significant to under-
stand the Indic ideas of rationalism and atheism in order to understand the
practice of non-belief in India today; rather than looking at the Western
understanding of atheism. Every culture has its own ideas and practices
of non-belief. It is true that Indian scientists are influenced by their
training in Western science and the Western ideals of rationalism and
atheism, but they didn’t accept it blindly. They modified and reshaped it.
These Western ideas of rationalism and atheism also encouraged them to
look at Indic notions of rationalism seriously as in the case of Shastry.
In order to understand atheistic practices of Indian scientists, one has to
go beyond the ‘scientific atheism’ of the West, and try and see how these
scientists really perceived atheism in their everyday life.
Stephen Ledrew argues that the nineteenth century split in Western
atheism produced two distinct streams: the first is scientific atheism,
closely associated with Darwinism and Enlightenment rationalism; the
second is humanistic atheism, aligned with the rise of the social sciences
and pioneered by Marx and Feuerbach (LeDrew 2012: 70). In scientific
atheism, LeDrew argues,
Thomas 59

Non-believers focused their engagement with religion on science,

explanation and knowledge vs. ignorance; in this view religion could be
eradicated with scientific critique and education. In humanistic atheism
the focus turned to religion as a social phenomenon and a symptom of
alienation and oppression; in this view the answer to the social problem
of religion was to be found in the broader problem of human suffering;
if these could be eradicated religion would disappear. (ibid.: 71)

The contemporary Western understanding of atheism which LeDrew calls

‘New Atheism’ is a movement spearheaded and shaped by the writings of
Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennet and to a lesser extent
Christopher Hitchens (ibid.: 81). This ‘New Atheism’ of the West, LeDrew
argues, is an extension of scientific atheism that emerged in the Victorian
period (ibid.: 81). The New Atheists, LeDrew argues, wield the Victorian
discourse of an eternal conflict of religion and science (ibid.: 81). Terry
Eagleton in his book Reason, Faith and Revolution calls the new atheists
or scientific atheists like Richard Dawkins, or Christopher Hitchens as
‘liberal rationalists’ (Eagleton 2012).
The scientists who called themselves ‘atheists’ or ‘non-believers’
clearly did not subscribe to these traditions of atheisms. They did not
identify themselves with liberal rationalists like Dawkins, nor did
they subscribe to the philosophy of scientific atheism or new atheism.
As David N. Livingstone suggested, ‘if there are geographies of belief,
so too are there spaces of unbelief’ (Livingstone 2011: 284). Unlike the
Western scientific atheists, they are not against the idea of God or against
others being religious. Their perceptions of atheism did not amount to a
state of Godlessness.

Varieties of Atheism(s): Atheism, Culture and

Science
As discussed above, the scientists who claimed to be atheists still lead a
life based on their religious or cultural ethos. They participated in vari-
ous religious festivals and celebrations and perceived it as cultural. The
usage ‘cultural’ in the Indian context is never independent of its reli-
gious and caste affiliations. Thus, even though they called themselves
atheists, the Hindu scientists, for instance, did not find much contradic-
tion in following the lifestyles or their rules of religion. This meant that
they practiced vegetarianism, wore the sacred thread (in the case of
Brahmins), admired classical songs in praise of Hindu gods and god-
desses, and participated in traditional life cycle and seasonal rituals.
60 Society and Culture in South Asia 3(1)

These atheistic scientists gave religious/traditional names to their chil-

dren. Some atheists (Brahmin community) allow their children to
undergo religious rituals like Upanayana (wearing sacred thread) and
other life cycle rituals. Many of them had arranged marriages from their
own religion and caste. They argued that they visited temples and pil-
grimage centres not for worship, but out of an architectural and aesthetic
interest, to marvel at the architectural beauty. As Indians, they are proud
of these historical places and pilgrimage centres. They happily invite
their guests from other countries to these places with a sense of pride
and historicity. Some of the atheist scientists I spoke to informed me
that they would offer puja and seek darshan while visiting the temples
and historically relevant pilgrimage places, especially when they go
with their family; ‘to make them happy’. Likewise, the Christian scien-
tists who called themselves non-believers attend Church service as they
claimed it as an important part of family life. They argued that they
wouldn’t question the religious beliefs and practices of people and pro-
fessed that it is a personal choice to be religious or non-religious. They
also felt that religion and belief in God provide psychological succor to
believers in their hardships and one should not oppose it. Many of the
atheist scientists think that festivals such as Diwali or Ayudha Puja are
cultural events.
Kumar told me that even though he is a ‘staunch atheist’, he is not
against the beliefs of others, and said he wouldn’t mind visiting religious
places with his family. He stated,
Religion is important for those who believe that it is important. For
instance, it is very important for many of my colleagues. They talk about
going to religious places, bringing prasadam from those places and
distributing it amongst colleagues. That is important for them. I don’t
have any problem with their belief. I have problem only when they try
to connect science with religion. If a person develops a good personality
by practising religion, one should encourage it. There is no problem in
doing it. I don’t think God or religion is a bad concept. Both are concepts.
If one practices good things in the name of God or religion, that is fine. If
one is in turmoil and if no one is there to calm them or if they don’t want
to disclose it to others, then God is a very good concept. If one relaxes
after sharing their worries with God, then it is absolutely perfect. If that
is what religion does, I have no problem with religion. I have no problem
if anybody practices religion. I had been to many temples and religious
places with my family. Of course, I don’t pray with them. I spend time
looking at the architectural beauty of the temple. I go to Sri Padmanabha
Swamy Temple but I don’t pray to the Swamy. I observe what people are
doing and then come back. I don’t do anything to offend them. I will be
Thomas 61

a totally detached individual there. I will be a scientist there. I don’t find

it a problem as an atheist to go to temples or other religious places. Of
course, I cannot go as a believer. But I can go as a tourist. That time I will
be a scientist–tourist. I don’t interfere with my family’s religious beliefs.
I don’t have any problem with that. It is their personal choice. I don’t have
any right to question their religiosity, or their idea of God. But I will not
pray there. It is my personal choice to be an atheist. My wife does puja
during Diwali at home. We also have a small puja room at home. I don’t
have any issues with the celebrations. It is their belief and I respect it.

Baruah, the materialist atheist scientist, stated that religion and belief in
God is important for the believers, and he is not at all against it. He said,
I would not say that I don’t believe that there is a higher power; I will
say that I have not seen convincing evidence in one way or the other for
me to have a belief. Therefore, if you ask me how I understand religion,
I would say that I myself do not have a religion in the conventional
sense. But on the other hand, I can see why it is important in the lives of
people; because I guess at the crudest level, religion might give solace
to people. I personally don’t believe in the existence of God though.

He was very critical of the claims made by Western liberal atheists

that everything can be explained by science. He said,
Scientists are humans, and will collectively occupy a large part of
the spectrum (perhaps not all of it) between extreme rationality and
totemism. Scientists are scientists third, humans second and animals
first. We all have to have certain beliefs, which are unsupported by
evidence, in order to survive. None of the scientists, including me,
are 100 per cent empiricists. Most of my colleagues have said that at
some point of time that they are atheists. But, on further discussions, I
sense that what they really mean is ‘agnostic’ when they say ‘atheist’.

Similarly, he stated that celebrations such as Ayudha Puja in the

Institute should not be seen as non-secular and Hindu. He said,
Ayudha Puja doesn’t occur as a diktat of the state, in which case it
would be a breach of the secular principles of the state. I haven’t seen
anyone who doesn’t want to attend these prayers being pressurised
to attend them. I am against using religious symbols and practices
in the conferences and seminars. I ask the organisers to take them
off. The only practice, which has its origins in a specific religion, is
the lighting of a lamp. That is because it represents a subversion and
appropriation of an older, more exclusionary custom, which was
finally absorbed by the syncretic ethos of Indian classical music in
the late-medieval time. This is one practice that, to me, is no longer
religiously laden. And Ayudha Puja should be seen as a cultural festival.
62 Society and Culture in South Asia 3(1)

Baruah, despite calling himself a staunch materialist, questions the

liberal atheistic emphasis of empiricism and the need to establish the
validity of proofs. He also argued that celebrating certain festivals such
as Ayudha Puja cannot be perceived as religious, and suggested that it
be seen as cultural. Unlike Dawkins and other high profile Western athe-
ists, however, the atheist and materialist scientists here do not oppose
some of the religious practices. They typically say, ‘These are cultural
and traditional.’ They also think that religious beliefs and practices help
the believers. They say, ‘I don’t mind if others believe, it is their per-
sonal life’, or ‘religion gives psychological support to believers’. These
scientists accept others’ religiosity because they are themselves, equally
comfortable with their specifically atheistic and cultural lives as the
believers are with their religious and scientific lives.
They, unlike the Western liberal counterparts did not question the
significance of religion and belief for the believers. They said they respect
others’ beliefs and practices. As a result, even though they call themselves
atheists and materialists, they don’t object to all religious rituals and
practices. They are comfortable in saying that religion might be useful
for others. At this point, one example will be necessary to support the
prior discussion. In December of 2012, Raghu Narayanan, a lab member
informed me that there had been a puja on the completion of the renovation
of boss’s5 office in the Laboratory where I was a member and a Brahmin
priest officiated the function. When I enquired about it, boss said,
Oh it is just a tradition. It is not for me, but to satisfy others in the
laboratory. They wanted it to happen, I allowed it. It is their belief.

Similarly, Gomez, the atheist scientist who deeply believes in

Darwinism argued that,
I think religion serves a purpose; it gives solace to people who are trying
to deal with sufferings in the world. It gives them some level of comfort
and safety. It is also a safety valve for people who are not strong enough.

The scientists whom I had interviewed did not necessarily profess

biological reductionism and a complete caesura from God. Encoded in
culture and in the name of tolerance towards others’ religious beliefs, it
was very much part of the way they conceptualised atheism. One can
argue that specific historical and intellectual contexts produced its own
meanings of unbelief and one should be wary of easy generalisation
that draws neat parallels between the contemporary Western atheistic
5
The lab members address the head of the research group as Boss. Boss is a very
distinguished scientist in his field.
Thomas 63

traditions (Dawkins’s position being the dominant one) and other social
and cultural sites.
Sociologist of religion, Grace Davie, argues that in Britain,
‘believing’ in religion persists while ‘belonging’ to a Church continues
to decline (Davie 1990: 455). Nonetheless, I would like to suggest that
atheistic scientists perhaps don’t ‘believe’ in God or religion, but they
‘belonged’ to the larger cultural framework of these religions. It is,
however, difficult to differentiate between believing and belonging
as both interfere with each other very often. Atheist scientists are
comfortable practising the lifestyle of a religion while identifying
themselves as atheists. While describing his identity Madhava Sastry,
the atheist biologist stated, ‘I don’t believe in God but I certainly
belong to the culture and tradition.’
In his lecture at the London School of Economics and Political
Science (LSE), Slavoj Zizek discussed the notion of ‘belief without
believers’. He said,
I don’t think we really live in an atheist era. It is a much more complex
field. We believe, may be more than ever, but are not ready to admit it
publicly, and we have a whole set of strategies of how to displace beliefs
on the others. When I ask my Jewish friends, but the same goes for my
catholic friends and so on, ‘Do you really believe in it?’, then you have
whole series of answers, ‘no, but I act as if I believe because I respect my
tradition’, and so on. Here a wonderful notion can be mobilised; what is
absolutely a crucial one: a belief without believers-this is the fundamental
category today. Certain beliefs can function socially without any persons
actually believing in it. Nobody says to believe, but it functions as a
belief and I claim that it is exactly the same with most of the religions
today. I claim that they really believe but they are not ready to admit it.
We really believe much more than we are ready to admit (Zizek 2014).

It is a significant category to understand the ways in which Indian

scientists negotiated science and religion. The atheist scientists, as we
have discussed so far, can be described as ‘believers without belief’.
While claiming non-belief in God, scientists professed their allegiance to
particular communitarian and cultural practices and identified themselves
with the cultural markers of their religion.

Conclusion: Putting Atheism(s) in its Place

The practice of ‘atheism’ in the Indian context is not free from its reli-
gious and cultural influences, and neither is science. When we study
64 Society and Culture in South Asia 3(1)

atheism and science in different cultures, we need to take into account

the cultures of these societies, rather than expect them to agree with their
counterparts from other cultures. As Sujit Sivasundaram noted, until
very recently, the grand narrative of the history of science and religion
has been dominated by a Western and especially a Protestant bias
(Sivasundaram 2010: 178). We need to think beyond the Western imagi-
nation of atheism and the stereotypical Western conflict between religion
and science (while remembering that in the West, the relationships
between religion and science have been far richer than could be con-
strained by visions of a simple conflict between the two). As Bernard
Lightman and David Livingstone argued, one has to put atheism in its
place and read the discourse of atheism in its specific historical and intel-
lectual space (Lightman 2011, Livingstone 2003, 2011). One needs to
see new age atheists like Dawkins in their contexts, rather than generalis-
ing and expecting his views to be universalised. As Terry Eagleton in his
critical review of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion clearly puts,
It belongs to a specific context. There is a very English brand of
common sense that believes mostly in what it can touch, weigh
and taste, and The God Delusion springs from, among other places,
that particular stable. At its most philistine and provincial, it makes
Dick Cheney sound like Thomas Mann. (Eagleton 2006: 34)

We need to seriously acknowledge this provinciality while studying

atheism. By trusting ethnographic data, rather than categorical presump-
tions, we see that atheistic scientists called themselves atheists even
while accepting that their lifestyle is very much part of tradition and
religion. For them, following the lifestyle of a religion is not antithetical
to atheism. The study of atheism and rationality should not be just a
simple-minded attempt to find Western parallels. To expect all scientists
to be atheistic in the Western way is a category mistake. This misunder-
standing emerges out of an historical reading of science and religion.
As Latour argued, science and religion are two different Modes of Exis-
tence (Latour 2013). To think of the relation between science and religion
in terms of the binaries of ‘conflict’ and ‘complementarity’ is both ana-
lytically and descriptively inadequate. Latour states, ‘The transcendence
and transubstantiation of science have nothing to envy in the transcen-
dence and transubstantiation of religion’ (Latour 2009: 465). He describes
it as ‘a stunning comedy of errors’ to claim to judge religious verification
according to the entirely distinct modes of science (Latour 2013: 322).
Latour asserts that it is a misunderstanding of the purpose of religious
language and imaginary, to identify it inappropriately with a different
‘regime of renunciation’, namely that of science.
Thomas 65

The article attempted to understand practices of atheism(s) and unbe-

lief among Indian scientists. However, Indian atheism need not be, nor
is it actually, identical with the brands of Western atheism defended by
Dawkins and other high profile liberal atheists. We have seen how the
atheist scientists practiced various rituals and followed a lifestyle that
is influenced by their religious and cultural backgrounds. The hyper-
rationalism associated with modernity and Western science did not over
determine the everyday life and practices of scientists. The religious sci-
entists in India did not perceive their religiosity in opposition to science,
nor did they accept the conflictual views of science and religion (see
Thomas 2015, 2016). Likewise, the ‘atheistic’ scientists did not find any
contradiction in following a religious lifestyle and simultaneously iden-
tified themselves as atheists or non-believers. No doubt it would come as
a great surprise to the Western liberal rationalists and scientific atheists
that these scientists did not find any contradiction in following a religious
and cultural lifestyle and were simultaneously identifying themselves as
atheists. The acceptance of a Western canonical understanding of athe-
ism or unbelief imposes a closure on the multiple cultural meanings
assumed by these categories. Any attempt to universalise or homogenise
the experiences of unbelief and atheism(s) against the scale of Western
modernity runs the risk of neglecting the enmeshing of these categories
within the complex life worlds of Indian scientists. Any academic dis-
cussion on science, religion and atheism has to seriously acknowledge
the cultural locations and specificities in order to present a more varie-
gated and nuanced picture.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Prof. Susan Visvanathan for reading various drafts of earlier
versions of this paper. Her timely interventions and comments have been critical
in shaping the paper. I thank Prof. Sasanka Perera for a meticulous reading of my
PhD thesis that helped me in the process of writing this paper. I also thank the
anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions.

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