Why I Am an Atheist & Other Writings

"The epithet of vanity is always hurled at the strength we get from our convictions"— Bhagat Singh A socialist revolutionary who participated in India’s struggle for freedom, Bhagat Singh was martyred at the age of 23. From 1925 to 1931, he wrote a series of essays on his ideological leanings. Amongst these was his seminal piece, ‘Why I Am an Atheist,’ that was first published in People, a Lahorebased periodical in September 1931. In this work, Singh, a freedom fighter and journalist, examines his atheism. He explains that it is a product of rational inquiry, not individual vanity. In his childhood, he was a believer. Later on, however, his beliefs changed and he concluded that there was no foundation for the notion that God had created the world and that He controls it. In Why I Am an Atheist & Other Writings, Singh raises many questions, including: Why did God create a world full of grief? What about punishments inflicted on those who were deliberately kept ignorant by selfish and proud Brahmans? Why does He not fill the hearts of the capitalists with humanism and inspire them to free labouring humanity from terrible inequality? Singh believed that at their core, all religions and faiths support tyrannical institutions and the powerful