On the ‘Impossibility’ of Atheism in Secular India

This chapter examines two cinematic representations of atheism in Bollywood cinema and probes the precarious location of atheism as an ‘impossibility’ within the framework of religious nationalism and state secularism as two interrelated aspects of Indian nationalism. The historical genesis of secularism as a political principle in India is conceptually closely entwined with religious nationalism in so far as it tends to take the religious or spiritual nature of the Indian nation for granted. While public and academic debates tend to focus on the relationship between majoritarian Hindu nationalism and various religious minorities, atheists and those who are explicitly irreligious are often ignored or considered to be too few to deserve closer attention. On the basis of popular cinematic representations of atheism and ethnographic observations among atheists in South India, this chapter argues that atheism is not ejected from the imagined community of the Indian nation but marginalized as a discursive position that may be acceptable or even desirable within limits, but ultimately impossible as a viable practical project and social identity