I do not believe in the religious claim that a god or gods exist. That makes me an atheist. I am however, not unique in having this position. Plenty of people lack belief in the claim that god or gods exist. Many even make the positive claim that gods do not exist.

But it is not equally easy for all of these people to publicly identify as atheists.

I have written previously about how it is easier for some people to identify as atheists than others. Specifically, I was talking about those who call themselves Hindu atheists or even those who simply do so with their dominant caste privileges backing them up.

I had the opportunity of speaking about this asymmetry when I was on the Anurag Minus Verma Podcast some months ago. Among other things, we discussed how there are many women who do not subscribe to the view that gods exist or that rituals have any significance beyond symbolism but they continue to perform what is required of them because there is an additional burden of being keepers of culture on them. The woman is often expected to be a vessel for living religion, at least in Hindu families. She is the one who makes sure the rituals happen when they are supposed to happen in the ways that they are supposed to happen. Even if she personally has no faith in the system, she is bound to it by her patriarchally assigned gender role.

In India, a lot of atheists come from a Hindu background. But not all of them are willing to leave their Hindu identity behind. Such willingness is more common among those from Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi backgrounds who identify Hinduism as the source of their oppression and brainwashing into Brahminical ways of thinking about reality and society. However, when they do this, their atheism is labelled 'political' by many of their fellow atheists (and even some theists pretending to be agnostics or some self-declared 'Hindu atheists').

In India, apparently opposing Islam or Christianity for their (very real) unhealthy socio-cultural impact is perfectly rational, but when the same is done to Hinduism, it all gets too political for comfort.

Similarly, compared to an atheist who comes from a Hindu background, it is often a lot harder for an Indian Muslim to identify as an atheist. He is shunned by believing Muslims obviously, but oddly enough, he often doesn't find acceptance among other Indian atheists, many of whom come from the aforementioned Hindu backgrounds. His Muslim name makes sure that even among atheists, Islamophobia trumps atheist solidarity. To gain a little more insight on it, you can listen to the interview I did some years ago with journalist Shahbaz Ansar.

The problem is not limited to just India either. The question of why there are so few openly atheistic Black people has been asked for long. A good conversation about this was recently had on The Thinking Atheist podcast by Mandisa Thomas. The role of the Church came up, White Supremacy came up. The impression I got was that it had to do with social power equations.

Religion is a source of hope and solace to many. Those with less privilege need more hope and solace. It stands to reason therefore that they would be more attached to their religion than others. And also that, just like the women I mentioned previously, if they should choose to break out of that religious community, they would face more resistance.

Despite atheism itself being a simple matter of lacking belief in god, like everything else in society, as an identity, it too is subject to societal biases and power structures. In India, identifying as an atheist is relatively straightforward for a cisgendered, heterosexual, dominant caste male, just as it is straightforward for a straight White male in America. These people might even be thought of as freethinking heroes who dared to break free from dogma. They don't lose much of their social capital when they 'come out' as atheist. And in this day and age, that loss may even be compensated by the social capital they gain in atheist circles.

However, the same cannot be said about those who come from backgrounds that have been marginalised because of gender, caste, skin-colour or even, like ex-Muslims, markers of their former religious identity. In any society, it is easier for the powerful to alter what others see them as. Others, whose identity has often been defined by the powerful and by histories of oppression, find it harder to do so.

I have maintained for a long time that atheism is not a solution to social issues. In fact, social issues often affect atheism and public expressions of it in much the same way as they affect everything else. It is a lesson atheists, at least the ones who do care about equality, should take to heart. To not do so would be akin to moving to a separate room on a sinking ship, thinking that you have avoided the fate that awaits all your other shipmates.