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His family thought he was too deeply involved with the cause of freedom and needed an anchor, and hence thought of arranging his marriage. To escape the same, he ran away.
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‘Why I am an atheist’ is a well-articulated opinion of a young man at the threshold of death. Popularizing for the nation and fellow revolutionaries the slogan “Inquilab Zindabad”, he became the flagbearer of the voice of resistance to the British Raj.
His criticism of religion and specially Hinduism will cause right wingers to have fits.
studied Bakunin, the Anarchist leader; something of Marx, the father of Communism and much of Lenin, Trotsky and others – the men who had successfully carried out a revolution in their country. They were all atheists. Bakunin’s “God and State”, though only fragmentary, is an interesting study of the subject. Later still I came across a book entitled ‘Common Sense’ by Nirlamba Swami. It was only a sort of mystic atheism.
His Marxist influence.
In those days I believed – though I was quite innocent – the police could do it if they desired. That very day, certain police officials began to persuade me to offer my prayers to god regularly both the times. Now I was an atheist. I wanted to settle for myself whether it was in the days of peace and enjoyment alone that I could boast of being an atheist or whether during such hard times as well I could stick to those principles of mine. After great consideration, I decided that I could not lead myself to believe in and pray to god. No, I never did. That was the real test and I came out
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On atheism.
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.
There lies the misfortune. Instead of using the experiments and expressions of the ancient savants and thinkers as a basis for our future struggle against ignorance, and to try to find out a solution to this mysterious problem, we – lethargical as we have proved to be – raise the hue and cry of faith, unflinching and unwavering faith to their versions, and thus, are guilty of stagnation in human progress.
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. Pray, don’t say that it is His Law. If he is bound by any law, he is not omnipotent. He is another slave like ourselves. Please don’t say that it is his enjoyment. Nero burnt one Rome. He killed a very limited number of people. He created very few tragedies, all to his perfect enjoyment. And what is
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Well, you Hindus, you say all the present sufferers belong to the class of sinners of the previous births. Good. You say the present oppressors were saintly people in their previous births, hence they enjoy power. Let me admit that your ancestors were very shrewd people, they tried to find out theories strong enough to hammer down all the efforts of reason and disbelief. But let us analyze how far this argument can really stand. From the point of view of the most famous jurists, punishment can be justified only from three or four ends to meet which it is inflicted upon the wrongdoer. They are
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This is critical thinking. Dissecting religion with criminal theory.
Why does he not infuse the altruistic enthusiasm in the hearts of all capitalists to forgo their rights of personal possessions of means of production and thus redeem the whole labouring community – nay, the whole human society from the bondage of Capitalism. You want to reason out the practicability of socialist theory, I leave it for your almighty to enforce it.
Let no religious man question the practicality of socialist theory.
People recognize the merits of socialism in as much as the general welfare is concerned. They oppose it under the pretext of its being impracticable. Let the almighty step in and arrange everything in an orderly fashion.
As regards the moral status of love, I may say that it in itself is nothing but passion; not an animal passion, but a human one, and very sweet too. Love in itself can never be an animal passion. Love always elevates the character of man. It never lowers him, provided love be love.
Love be love.
We are sorry to admit that we, who attach so great a sanctity to human life, who dream of a glorious future, when man will be enjoying perfect peace and full liberty, have been forced to shed human blood.
Sacrifices ...
You will recollect that we have talked several times about realism in the Rusian literature, which is nowhere visible in our own. We highly appreciate the situations of pain in their stories, but we do not feel that spirit of suffering within ourselves. We also admire their passion and the extraordinary height of their characters, but we never bother to find out the reason. I will say that only the reference to their resolve to bear pain has produced the intensity, the suffering of pain, and this has given great depth and height to their characters and literature.
After his first experience with the Ahmedabad labourers in 1920, Mahatma Gandhi declared, “We must not tamper with the labourers. It is dangerous to make political use of the factory proletariat” (The Times, May 1921). Since then, they never dared to approach them. There remains the peasantry.
His main issue with Gandhian way.
According to our definition of the term, as stated in our statement in the Assembly Bomb Case, revolution means the complete overthrow of the existing social order and its replacement with the socialist order. For that purpose, our immediate aim is the achievement of power. As a matter of fact, the state, the government machinery is just a weapon in the hands of the ruling class to further and safeguard its interest. We want to snatch and handle it to utilise it for the consummation of our ideal basis, i.e. social reconstruction on new, i.e. Marxist.
This is him being as clear as possible about his ideology.
