My review on Book
Bhagat Singh wrote “Why I am an Atheist” in 1930 when he was incarcerated in the Lahore central jail. This book was published in 1931 in Lala Lajpat Rai’s weekly, “The People.” To be clear, this is not a book but an essay of 24 pages. Later Periyar E.V. Ramasamy asked P. Jeevanandham to translate this essay into Tamil. This Tamil version was published in Periyar’s Tamil weekly, Kudi Arasu, in 1935. Afterwards, the English version of this essay was lost and some people translated this from the Tamil version back into English. It is these versions that we find today both online and offline. This essay opens with a question whether vanity was the cause of Bhagat Singh’s atheism. Apparently, some people had blamed him of this and he responded to this accusation through this essay. According to him, pride or vainglory did not stand in the way of his belief. He simply denies the existence of the almighty supreme being and vanity is not the reason for it. Bhagat Singh had been an atheist fro