The Comfort of Belief and the Weight of Reality
Reflections on faith, doubt and the festivals that multiply in hard times
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While growing up, one encounters various ideologies and often adopts one. The adoption here often lacks depth, and we may be too naive to understand that, like those famous Starbucks-socialist memes.
Bhagat Singh's words on atheism made me question my belief system about atheism:
So I was a true atheist then and I am an atheist now. It was not an easy task to face that ordeal. Beliefs make it easier to go through hardships, even make them pleasant. Man can find a strong support in God and an encouraging consolation in His Name. If you have no belief in Him, then there is no alternative but to depend upon yourself. It is not child's play to stand firm on your feet amid storms and strong winds.
And another one:
What more consolation can there be! A God-believing Hindu may expect to be reborn a king; a Muslim or a Christian might dream of the luxuries he hopes to enjoy in paradise as a reward for his sufferings and sacrifices. What hope should I entertain? I know that will be the end when the rope is tightened round my neck and the rafters move from under my feet. To use more precise religious terminology, that will be the moment of utter annihilation. My soul will come to nothing.
He prominently highlighted that being an atheist made his sufferings worse while he was in jail, waiting for the D-day to come. Because he knew deeply that there was no supernatural force. It will be the ultimate end. Believing in the gods gives you hope. And he didn't have any at that time.
27th June 2025 was Rath Yatra. For those who don't know, it is a big festival in Odisha, one of the eastern states of the country. Some other eastern states also celebrate it. While growing up in West Bengal, we had Rath Yatra celebrations done mostly by kids. We would pull the Rath in our local neighbourhoods, shout "Jay Jagannath," then play with friends and come back. After that, we would generally have Papad and Jalebi at home. That was it.
This year, I was going through my WhatsApp statuses posted by my friends. And I was a bit astonished. I noticed two grand Rath Yatras organized by two political parties in my hometown. One was big, with the CM's face. Another was comparatively small. It is not an isolated event; nowadays, I see so many organized processions for almost every religious festival, which we didn't celebrate at all while growing up.
But there is one angle to it. Consider a tier-1 city like Mumbai or Bangalore, where you have millions of migrant workers coming in and there is a chance that they will celebrate their own festivals. But in a tier-2 city? Why? Unless there is a huge influx of workers from other states, new festivities shouldn’t just emerge out of nothing.
My hunch is this: not enough job opportunities → people starting to believe in different gods to gather strength and hope for prosperity. The political parties, obviously, support that and help propagate that. I am not against any procession or function like this (unless someone forces me to join). But I find these congregations quite interesting, and how people's beliefs have diverged to celebrate many more festivals.
Now, the new temple also makes sense, which was recently inaugurated by none other than the state CM.
Marx got many things wrong in terms of state interventions, but his diagnosis of society in many aspects seems spot-on. Especially this:
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
The real test of any belief system (whether religious or atheistic) isn't in its comfort during easy times, but in its honesty during difficult ones. Bhagat Singh chose the harder path of facing reality without consolation. The question remains: are we adopting beliefs because they're true, or because they make life easier to bear?
Most of us neither reject belief entirely nor surrender to it fully. We live somewhere in between. Often curious, often uncertain, and occasionally drawn. And maybe that’s okay.
Ordinary thoughts, shared with hope. Pass it along if it resonated.