(I am not) Religious in India
I was born in a very liberal Hindu Brahmin family in Kolkata. Idol worship was very staunchly practiced throughout my entire household. Durga, Kali, Shiv and the whole pantheon of Hindu gods and goddesses had a separate seat of power in my home. They held sway over all days of the week barring none. Religious festivals were of the utmost importance most of all the Durga Puja. I spent days on end lying on my grandmother’s lap and listening to stories of the pantheon of gods. The story of Ganesh’s Birth, of Durga’s creation, of the Dashavataras all fascinated me dearly. I used to even do my own part for Rath Yatra; I used to have a small rath with 3 stories, one each for Jagannath, Balram and Subhadra. I used to walk around my entire neighborhood with them in tow, showing off my majestically decorated rath to all the other kids in the neighborhood. These were my humble religious beginnings.
Even from my childhood I was never taught secularism and nor was it ever imbibed in my ideologies and principles. My world as a Bengali was divided between “bangali” and “abangali” (People who spoke Bengali and People who didn’t). I saw everyone as one, heck I did not even know what religion was properly until I moved to New Delhi.
New Delhi put me in the mix with a lot of different people who were a lot of different things. There were Jains, there were Sikhs, there where Muslims. Also as an added factor right in front of where I lived there was a Hindu Temple, a Buddhist Monastery, a South Indian Temple, a Church, a Sai Baba Dhaam and a Mosque a little distance away. Being a shy introvert kid I used to visit these places of worship with my maternal grandmother. She would sit and meditate/pray and I would go around eating Prasad and solving all the mysteries of the world.
Then I was exposed to more of the world and its cultural diversities, the first of which was Hellenismos, the entire pantheon of Greek Gods and Goddesses. I was truly fascinated the world of Heroes and monsters with 9 heads and everything that came along with it. I wanted to live in that world, be a part of it. To Be Hercules, to be Poseidon, to be Hermes, it was what my heart yearned for. I cannot call it a phase growing up because even if today people ask me about my religion, my prompt answer is Hellenism.
There on as I delved more and more into darker forms of music I got interested in more obscure religious sects, this was definitely a phase but a rather interesting phase of my life. My first meeting of this stage was with Wicca. Wicca is basically a modern pagan, witchcraft religion and so it involves the ritual practice of Magic. Wiccan spells are usually cast inside a sacred circle and consist of spells of healing, protection and banishment of negative influences. If you have read or seen the Da Vinci Code, it is the religious sect to which Sofia’s Grandfather belonged. I don’t really know what got me interested in Wicca but I was practicing it in secrecy for almost 2 years and had performed every rite of passage to be a member very methodically until something even more risqué caught my attention.
My next tryst was with Satanism and it was not exactly worshipping Satan as most people saw it. How I had reached a prolific anti-Christian sect I do not know but the main idea was planted in my mind by a certain Greek Philosopher named Epicurus. It was these lines from an astute piece of logic put worth by Epicurus that set my mind wandering to different places:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
These lines are called The Problem of Evil which in turn led me to read more about Hedonism and directed me towards the beliefs of Satanism. The Satanic Bible was a very interesting read and the views it put worth were something that my ideologies agree with. In it Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence! Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams! Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit! Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates! Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek! Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires! Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his "divine spiritual and intellectual development," has become the most vicious animal of all! Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
Satan was the embodiment of knowledge whereas God was all about blind devotion and these ideas were embedded deep into my belief system and they still are. After this I started reading more and more about religion and came close to something from my birth religion that caught my fancy. This was the concept of the Brahman in the Vedas, something that modern day Hinduttva had long forgotten. The words in the Vedas could not have been truer.
Firstly Brahman is not God. When we speak of Brahman, we are referring neither to the "old man in the sky" concept, nor to the idea of the Absolute as even capable of being vengeful, fearful or engaging in choosing a favorite people from among His creatures. For that matter, Brahman is not a "He" at all, but rather transcends all empirically discernable categories, limitations and dualities. Brahman is described in the following manner: "satyam jnanam anantam brahma", "Brahman is of the nature of truth, knowledge and infinity." It also said the lines “Aham Brahmasmi” which literally translated mean I am Brahman or I am god. Notice that it is god and not God.
At this point of time I was thinking about Atheism since I clearly could not decide what was god or what he could or could not do. Nor what he should do and neither what he wanted us to do. It seemed stupid to me and clearly being Agnostic at this point was impossible because I was not at all open to the idea of God. It was then a friend said to me “Nobody can become an atheist. Remember, if someone tells you that he is an atheist, he is just lying, or being fashionable. There is no such thing as an atheist. Even atheists believe in something, and everything is God, so the something atheists believe in must be God too, so atheists do believe in god, so atheists don't exist.”
My answer was short and curt “Since everything is God, if I kill you now it will be an act of God.” Saying this I walked off into a state of belief; a belief of everything in the world as it was but not agreeing or admitting to God having had any part to play in how the World had rolled into all of our perspectives. This is now my current state of Atheism.
