Pretend atheists and bigotry.

I am asked many a time why I speak the loudest against Hinduism and Hindutva (two very different animals technically, but unfortunately joined at the hip, just like Islam and Islamism, one supposedly spiritual and other, avowedly political, each one feeding off the other), my answer is that it is because that was the religion I was (so to say) 'born' into. My parents professed it, and their parents before them, and theirs before them. So, it was assumed, and rightly for my entire childhood and early adulthood, that I too shall follow their path and be a good Hindu.

Until I started thinking, and then reading, and then speaking, and then listening, and then thinking again. And I realised that this entire thing is such a sham that even when I, with my caste (and I dare say gender), sit at the apex of the pyramid, it is still like sitting atop a pile of shit, whether one is perched on it or buried in it (though the comfort levels are vastly different, as anyone who has experienced caste discrimination will attest), and the best course of action is to get off. Immediately. And, like the hypothetical passenger in the hypothetical aircraft that has lost cabin pressure and who is expected to put on their oxygen mask before helping others, once off, start pulling others out to the best of my ability.

So, here's a thought: You are a true atheist or rationalist only if you speak up against the religion of your parents first. And loudest.

Just writing 'atheist' in your bio and mocking the gods of religions other than your parents' is not rationalism. It is cowardice and dishonesty at best, and mischievousness and malafide intent at worst.

Any which ways, if you are going to criticise dogma, your parents' faith is, and ought to be, the starting point. Otherwise, you are just a bigot, trying to seem smarter than you can hope to be, relying purely on virtue-signalling, when what you are actually doing is dog-whistling, a fact not lost on people who are actually truly atheistic and rationalistic in their thoughts and actions, and the very people you are trying so hard to impress (all the while claiming you aren't).

The simple rule of criticism (from ancient times) has been simple: Your own. First. And loudest.

P.S: For those who claim that being an atheist is different from being an anti-theist and that atheism should not mean one must knock religion or god, I say this: you are an atheist, for sure, but only in the most technical manner, for anyone who has truly studied, researched, and journeyed to come finally to the understanding that a belief in god(s) is unnecessary and irrelevant without seeing, realising, and understanding the evil that belief in god and organised religion has done and continues to do is an animal that does not exist. And if you have come to believe that there is probably no god, but have not arrived here through the hard route of complex, painful, and sometimes dangerous social de-conditioning and much reading, discussion, and introspection, your non-belief is as dogmatic as the belief you claim to have shunned.