Why I am an Atheist and Other Works

by Bhagat Singh

“Study” was the cry that reverberated in the corridors of my mind. Study to enable yourself to face the arguments advanced by the opposition. Study to arm yourself with arguments in favour of your cult.

People holding ideas like ours do not throw bombs on their own innocent people.

‘Belief’ softens the hardships, even can make them pleasant. In god man can find very strong consolation and support. Without Him, man has to depend upon himself. To stand upon one’s own legs amid storms and hurricanes is not a child’s play.

The day we find a great number of men and women with this psychology who cannot devote themselves to anything else than the service of mankind and emancipation of the suffering humanity, that day shall inaugurate the era of liberty.

Criticism and independent thinking are the two indispensable qualities of a revolutionary.

But man’s duty is to try and endeavour, success depends upon chance and environments.

Any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith.

If, as you believe, there is an almighty, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent god – who created the earth or world – please let me know why did he create it? This world of woes and miseries, a veritable, eternal combination of numberless tragedies: Not a single soul being perfectly satisfied.

I say why did he create this world – a veritable hell, a place of constant and bitter unrest? Why did the almighty create man when he had the power not to do it? What is the justification for all this ? Do you say to award the innocent sufferers hereafter and to punish the wrong-doers as well?

From the dungeons of prisons, from the stores of starvation consuming millions upon millions of human beings in slums and huts, from the exploited labourers, patiently or say apathetically watching the procedure of their blood being sucked by the Capitalist vampires, and the wastage of human energy that will make a man with the least common sense shiver with horror, and from the preference of throwing the surplus of production in oceans rather than to distribute amongst the needy producers… to the palaces of kings built upon the foundation laid with human bones… let him see all this and let him say “All is well”.

the greatest sin in this world is to be poor. Poverty is a sin; it is a punishment.

I have read of atheists facing all troubles quite boldly, so am I trying to stand like a man with an erect head to the last; even on the gallows.

My life is not so precious, at least to me, as you may probably think it to be. It is not at all worth buying at the cost of my principles.

it is easy to kill individuals, but you cannot kill the ideas. Great empires crumbled while the ideas survived, Bourbons and Czars fell, while the revolution marched ahead triumphantly.

“If you oppose a prevailing belief, if you criticize a great person who is considered to be an incarnation, you will find that your criticism will be answered by calling you vain and egoist.”

“Any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith.”

Man acts only when he is sure of the justness of his action, as we threw the bomb in the Legislative Assembly. After the action, it is the time for bearing the consequences of that act. Do you think that had we tried to avoid the punishment by pleading for mercy, we would have been more justified? No, this would have had an adverse effect on the masses. We are now quite successful in our endeavour.

“I will climb the gallows gladly and show to the world as to how bravely the revolutionaries can sacrifice themselves for the cause.”

“I am such a lunatic that I am free even in jail.”