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45 - Atheism in India: Twentieth Century and Beyond

from Part VII - Lived Atheism in the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Centuries: Case-Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2021

Michael Ruse
By
Renny Thomas
Edited by
Stephen Bullivant
Michael Ruse
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Stephen Bullivant
Affiliation:
St Mary's University, Twickenham, London
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Summary

Recently, there have been attempts to study atheism in different disciplines, from historians to anthropologists, going beyond the conventional trajectory of studying only the west. Scholars have looked at different histories of atheism in many locations, and in that process have challenged the idea that atheism is essentially a western phenomenon. When atheism is seen as a western idea, the non-west is mostly perceived as spiritual and metaphysical. The politics involved in making certain places atheistic and certain places spiritual has to be understood, and anthropologists and historians have looked at different locations and places, and studied various forms of atheism and unbelief. This chapter is an attempt to discuss atheism in India, and to see its many meanings and many histories. In that process it challenges the monolithic reading of atheism.

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The Cambridge History of Atheism , pp. 831 - 849
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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