this is taken from a small booklet authored by sardar bhagat singh. it was originally written in gurumukhi and later translated in english. if someone has any objection about copyrights of the same, please note that my objective is only to spread the word..nothing more!
continue from part four
i ask you how far would you appreciate a criminologist, a jurist or a legislator who proposes such measures of punishment which shall inevitably force man to commit more offences? had not your god thought of this or he also had to learn these things by experience, but at the cost of untold sufferings to be borne by humanity? what do you think shall be the fate of a man who has been born in a poor and illiterate family of say a chamar or a sweeper. he is poor, hence he cannot study. he is hated and shunned by his fellow human beings who think themselves to be his superiors having been born in say a higher caste. his ignorance, his poverty and the treatment meted out to him shall harden his heart towards society.
suppose he commits a sin, who shall bear the consequences? god, he or the learned ones of, the society? what about the punishment of those people who were deliberately kept ignorant by the haughty and egotist brahmans and who had to pay the penalty by bearing the stream of being led (not lead) in their ears for having heard a few sentences of your sacred books of learning-the vedas? if they committed any offence-who was to be responsible for them and who was to bear the brunt? my dear friends: these theories are the inventions of the privileged ones: they justify their usurped power, riches and superiority by the help of these theories. yes: it was perhaps upton sinclair, that wrote at some place, that just make a man a believer in immortality and then rob him of all his riches, and possessions. he shall help you even in that ungrudgingly. the coalition amongst the religious preachers and possessors of power brought forth jails, gallows, knouts and these theories.
i ask why your omnipotent god, does not stop every man when he is committing any sin or offence? he can do it quite easily. why did he not kill war lords or kill the fury of war in them and thus avoid the catastrophe hurled down on the head of humanity by the great war? why does he not just produce a certain sentiment in the mind of the british people to liberate india? 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 laboring 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.
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. now don’t try to advance round about arguments, they are out of order. let me tell you, british rule is here not because god wills it but because they possess power and we do not dare to oppose them. not that it is with the help of god that they are keeping us under their subjection but it is with the help of guns and rifles, bomb and bullets, police and millitia and our apathy that they are successfully committing the most deplorable sin against society- the outrageous exploitation of one nation by another. where is god ? what is he doing? is he enjoying all i these woes of human race ? a nero; a changez : down with him.
do you ask me how i explain the origin of this world and origin of man? alright i tell you. charles darwin has tried to throw some light on the subject. study him. read soham swami’s “commonsense”. it shall answer your question to some extent. this is a phenomenon of nature. the accidental mixture of different substances in the shape of nebulae produced this earth. when? consult history. the same process produced animals and in the long run man. read darwin’s ‘origin of species’. and all the later progress is due to man’s constant conflict with nature and his efforts to override it. this is the briefest possible explanation of this phenomenon.
your other argument may be just to ask why a child is born blind or lame if not due to his deeds committed in the previous birth? this problem has been explained away by biologists as a more biological phenomenon. according to them the whole burden rests upon the shoulders of the parents who may be conscious or ignorant of their own deedsled to mutilation of the child previous to its birth.
naturally you may ask another question though it is quite childish in essence. if no god existed, how did the people come to believe in him? my answer is clear and brief. as they came to believe in ghosts, and evil spirits; the only difference is that belief in god is almost universal and the philosophy well developed. unlike certain of the radicals i would not attribute its origin to the ingenuity of the exploiters who wanted to keep the people under their subjection by preaching the existence of a supreme being and then claiming an authority and sanction from him for their privileged positions. though i do not differ with them on the essential point that all faiths, religions, creeds and such other institutions became in turn the mere supporters of the tyrannical and exploiting institutions, men and classes. rebellion against king is always a sin according to every religion.
as regards the origin of god my own idea is that having realized the limitations of man, his weaknesses and shortcoming
having been taken into consideration, god was brought into imaginary existence to encourage man to face boldly all the trying circumstances, to meet all dangers manfully and to check and restrain his outbursts in prosperity and affluence. god both with his private laws and parental generosity was imagined and painted in greater details. he was to serve as a deterrent factor when his fury and private laws were discussed so that man may not become a danger to society. he was to serve as a father, mother, sister and brother, friend and helpers when his parental qualifications were to be explained. so that when man be in great distress having been betrayed and deserted by all friends he may find consolation in the idea that an ever true friend was still there to help him, to support him and that he was almighty and could do anything. really that was useful to the society in the primitive age.
the idea of god is helpful to man in distress.
society has to fight out this belief as well as was fought the idol worship and the narrow conception of religion. similarly, when man tries to stand on his own legs, and become a realist he shall have to throw the faith aside, and to face manfully all the distress, trouble, in which the circumstances may throw him. that is exactly my state of affairs. it is not my vanity, my friends. it is my mode of thinking that has made me an atheist. i don’t know whether in my case belief in god and offering of daily prayers which i consider to be most selfish and degraded act on the part of man, whether these prayers can prove to be helpful or they shall make my case worse still. 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.
let us see how i carry on : one friend asked me to pray. when informed of my atheism, he said, “during your last days you will begin to believe”. i said, no, dear sir, it shall not be. i will think that to be an act of degradation and demoralization on my part. for selfish motives i am not going to pray. readers and friends, “is this vanity”? if it is, i stand for it.
bhagat singh (1930)
p.s: i helped me clear my views a lot….
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