1. Introduction

Gora was a social reformer in India to whom Mahatma Gandhi declared: "Though there is a resemblance between your thought and practice and mine superficially, I must own that yours is far superior to mine." The acknowledgment was all the more remarkable in that promoting atheism was part and parcel of Gora's work. This book is for readers curious about a person of such unusual character and moral stature. It will describe Gora's work in the context of the cultural and political forces that gave it meaning at the time.

10. Reflections

The fact that Gora was a praiseworthy man and an atheist is not the most remarkable thing about him. There have been many good people among the atheists as well as among the Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians, Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc. That he was an atheist Gandhian has more to do with what I think was his rare significance (making it worthwhile to write this book). In order to explain what that is, I should first review some aspects of his "positive atheism" and describe an important aspect of Gandhi's concept of civilization.

Gora took the term "atheism" from the Encyclopedia Britannica. It was an inexact term for his outlook, because its normal meaning covers only one, not especially important part of his disbelief. An atheist is normally taken to be someone who rejects the concept of one or more "divine" beings-one or more immortal beings with will-power. Gora when writing in his native Telugu would most often use, however, not the word nirishwar, which means the negation of belief in a single divine being presiding over the universe, but a Telugu word, nastikatwamu, based on the Sanskrit nastika, which normally meant the rejection of the Vedic tradition and referred thus to a variety of alternative Indian philosophical traditions, Buddhist as well as materialist and Jain, not all of which were atheist according to the definition that I have suggested. To dislodge belief in a supreme deity was, in Gora's social work, less crucial than to dislodge the traditional Hindu belief in karma and transmigration, according to which the circumstances of your birth, whether you are stricken by diseases and/or natural disasters, etc.-all those things have been predetermined by your own deeds in some previous life if not in this one. Such was the belief against which he had to struggle in the hearts of most of the other people with whom he dealt: the belief, shared alike by low- as well as high-caste people, that the low-caste ones ought to be poor, illiterate, disdained etc.

And meanwhile Gora defined theism (aastikatwamu)1 in quite a different way than I just suggested when I said that a "divine" being is "an immortal being with will-power." On the first page of the first edition of his book on atheism published in 1941, Nastikatvamu (leka devudu ledu) (meaning: "Atheism: there is no god"), Gora equated theism with "believing that the universe and human life along with it are both governed by something transcendent" [my italics]; and thus he would say (in the preface to the third edition) that under theism, "man has become impotent and has submitted himself to the hardship and cruelty of economic dominance and racial arrogance, saying 'This is my karma' "-even though the traditional concepts of karma (in the sense of "fate" due to past deeds) and kudarata (in the sense of "poetic justice" meted out by Nature) were of an impersonal force and not of an immortal being with will-power.

Most of the superstitious and downtrodden people in India lived, then as now, in villages. But Gandhi's concept of civilization was that its economic foundation is agriculture (as distinct from hunting and gathering) and that it is therefore based mainly on rural rather than on urban culture. And yet, among the relatively few people who collaborated personally with Gandhi and knew about and promulgated (or at least praised) the modern Western science of that day, very few paid more attention to the villages than to the cities. If you were "modern" by Western standards, then you probably focused more on the cities than on the villages even though you were collaborating with Gandhi whose focus was the other way around. And, among the few "moderns" (by Western standards) who collaborated personally with Gandhi but had no tendency to dismiss the villages as hinterlands to where the important things were happening, Gora was the only one who, in addition to having been trained in a Western scientific discipline (he never called himself a "scientist" the way pseudo-scientists do; he called himself a botanist, i.e. using the specific name of his scientific discipline), walked like Gandhi from village to village, teaching peasants certain things which he thought it was important for them to learn. Neither Gandhi nor Gora wanted India to modernize according to the Western historical scenario of ignorant peasants migrating to city slums and joining the Lumpenproletariat until such time as a factory or the like might hire them and then perhaps their children or grandchildren might one day go to school. Instead, they wanted India's recovery from the desolation wrought by British economic exploitation to take place directly in the villages.

There was a considerable overlap between what Gandhi and Gora taught in the villages: hygiene and self-reliance and non-violence and doing away with Untouchability. But Gora taught also a fairly comprehensive set of primary- and secondary-school-type subjects which Gandhi did not teach in his public discourses.

I should mention also that (a) whereas Gandhi attributed no value to sexual pleasure per se, Gora took it to be a good thing when enjoyed in a socially responsible way, (b) Gora was dissatisfied with Gandhi's reliance on the concept of voluntary "trusteeship" whereby the rich would, of their own accord with no prodding from others, manage their property exclusively for the benefit of society whilst reducing drastically their own material standard of living and doing physical "bread labor" every day, and yet (c) Gora, like Gandhi, rejected Marxism-Leninism as entailing violence and immoral secrecy. Gora and Gandhi alike believed in democracy and rejected the idea that reform is bad because it postpones the bloody Revolution.

Perhaps more remarkable than all of this is the fact that Gora upheld his unorthodox views with integrity and straightforwardness and yet with no resentment. He conveyed even to antagonists the impression that a somewhat militant atheist can be a very lovable person. An Englishwoman (the daughter of a Church-of-England bishop) who visited the Atheist Center for six months in 1969-70 recalled in 1996:

"Gora never lost an opportunity, in conversation, of referring to his ideals. He was lively and determined and enjoyed a good argument, which he would never 'lose', though always respecting others even when he disagreed with them. For evening discussions he would walk up and down.... He would often smile and laugh, and could be fond of teasing, while never losing the seriousness of his philosophy. He was widely read, and able to quote pertinently for any situation.... His personality was dynamic, determined, patient, tolerant and full of humor. I never heard him criticize, though he was firm in expressing his disagreements. I have a lasting memory of him in his hut, his palm-leaf roofed office, sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading, typing on what now would seem a very outdated portable manual typewriter, receiving visitors, who would sit with him; allowing conversation, reading and writing to complement each other....

"Firm in his ideas, he was modest in his person, and always willing to listen to others. While Carl Rogers was theorizing in the United States about 'unconditional positive regard', Gora was exhibiting this attribute, accepting and valuing everyone whom he met.

"In valuing all humans equally, Gora had particular messages for women. When I arrived, proudly wearing silver bangles that had been given to me as a birthday present, he asked why I should need to wear such baubles and explained that all the women in his family did not wear jewelry, as it was a sign of [women's] subjugation. Traditionally women [in India] would wear jewelry as a sign of their husband's status or as a dowry for their husband's family."

It seems to me notable also that Gora's "positive atheism" went far beyond rejecting all the superstitious aspects of religion. He and Saraswathi, even though they had children of their own to bring up, embraced "propertylessness" in 1940 in order to dedicate themselves to broader humanitarian service. This was, of course, one of the main reasons why Gandhi admired him in spite of their differences. I find it perfectly sensible of Gandhi to have admired (or not admired) people for reasons of that kind rather than for their explicit philosophical views. But at the same time I admire Gora's philosophical enterprise. How often is theism nowadays as truthful as his atheism was?