Atheism and theism in India

Every village in India is anchored to a temple. Take it or leave it.
As a friend said, "Intelligence has nothing to do with belief. Their belief is in no god. So they will never get India till eternity."

Xavier Dias Not seen this here in most Adivasi villages of Jharkhand nor in most NE States

Mili Maria Thomas Have seen sacred groves in Meghalaya

Aparna Krishnan if not a groove, a tree. traditional communities have a sense of the sacred.

Komakkambedu Himakiran For adivasis, nature is divine.

Aparna Krishnan yes, and they would worship a hill or a tree or a well. all anchor their sense of sacredness to something. i have never seen an atheist villager in my life.

Aparna Krishnan The temple may be just a stone, or a tree, or an anthill. but there is a gram devata (or devatas). Always.

Aparna Krishnan The bhil tribals did have their gods - i spent a couple of years there.Also it takes many years of living in a place to understand the nuances of faith and belief. The modern discourse of'spirituality' versus 'religion' divide is also artificial. That is not a concept in villages, where simple rituals, simple idols (maybe a hill), and simple reverence go together.
Xavier Dias Aparna Krishnan You used the word temple. Sarna Adivasis of Jharkhand would resent it I know.

Aparna Krishnan Do they consider nothing sacred - neither trees nor wells ? And why would they 'resent' it ? To my village, the stone, and the anthill and the stone temple are all temples - reminders of divinity. Did they nothave their own gods ? From oldest times.

Xavier Dias No

Aparna Krishnan One would need to look deeper. i would not expect any traditional community to not have sacred trees, or groves, or attach a sense of the sacred to something. my own experience of living in villages has been to the contrary.

Naveen Manikandan Periasamy Xavier Dias Can you add more details about the spiritual beliefs and practices of the Jharkhand Adivasis? Thanks!

Ra Jesh Aparna Krishnan: Maybe the statement would work better if you replaced "temple" in the first sentence with "place of God" or "place of worship".

Aparna Krishnan Why ?

Aparna Krishnan 'God' would upset people even more ! And 'worship' is 'ritualistic' - even worse !

Ra Jesh I was just thinking that there are probably villages centered around Mosques, Churches, and other structures that are intentionally NOT temples.

Mili Maria Thomas Many churches in Tamil Nadu are referred as Mary Madha Koil.

Aparna Krishnan Yes Mili. Rajesh, these distinctions are the woes of the intellectuals. The intellectuals and their woes actually do not interest me any more. Only the people do.

Rahul Banerjee That is the problem!! Jhuka sar ko too mandir me ya masjid me too kar sazda, tere yeh gam na honge kam jab tak raat baaki hai

Aparna Krishnan That could be the activist line. My interest is the line of the people. And a sense of sacredness and a sense of humility has not come in the way of the village people working hard and focussedly at 'karmanyevaadhikaraste ...', a sense of doing one's best and facing the results as part of a larger picture. That every social manmade reality is loaded against them is another story.
But my own line aside, the post was about that I do not think there exists a village in india without a sense of the sacred - be it a grove or a tree or a stone. My friend who has travelled widely and engaged deeply with villages through the northern belt including the NE corroborates this. For AP and TN this holds as far as I can see. Have you seen an atheist villager ? Or a village itself with nothing sacred, and no festival either ?

Aparna Krishnan I still have not got a categorical answer from anywhere if anyone can show an atheist village in this land, devoid of any sense of spirituality. My contention is that it does not exist.

Rahul Banerjee Just because people are fools it doesn't validate there foolishness.

Aparna Krishnan To judge people as fools is to miss everything.

Aparna Krishnan Every civilization has a foundation, a praxis. That needs to be respected to engage with it effectively, and meaningfully.

Aparna Krishnan There will always be deviations and those have to be faced, addressed and collectively corrected. To call the people potatoes is neither acceptable , not do i think it can be effective.

If a civilization is fundamentally spiritual, then the way to engage is the way of Narayana Guru or Kabir or Meera or Nanak or Kumarappa or Gandhi. Or if we are ourselves, through an excess of education, unable to be truly religious, to at least respect it.

Rahul Banerjee People are free to be foolish but it will not free them from their travails.

Aparna Krishnan My very point.To consider people foolish intellectual and spiritual arrogance. There are certianly wrong practices, which need to be faced and corrected, understanding the essential axioms of the civilization. Spirituality, and a sense of sacredness, or hill and tree and forest and stone (idol) is an essential axion on this land.

Aparna Krishnan As for social injustices, we need to work on definitely, and neither Narayana Guru nor Nanak nor Mahavira refuted that !

Rahul Banerjee You can consider a stone to be a symbol of spiritual power but to leap from that belief to the conclusion that the stone can solve your day to day material problems is foolish.

Aparna Krishnan "Pray to god sailor, but row to the shore", is what i see practised.