Greetings Friends!

Members of the Nirmukta team will be broadcasting a live meeting and interactive discussion in the Nirmukta chatroom on Saturday the 23rd, at 21:30 IST (16:00 London, 11:00 New York). You have the chance to participate online by asking questions and presenting suggestions to our panel of activists, skeptics, writers and academics.

The chatroom is located at : http://tinychat.com/nirmukta

RSVP for this on facebook, here.

This event is open to all. A full agenda will be posted very soon along with the list of panel members.

The web-based platform we are using is tinychat.com. This service allows upto 8 panelists to broadcast simultaneously. The text-chat function is open to all audience members who sign in using their facebook or twitter accounts. If you don’t have one yet, consider getting one before the event (although if you don’t have one yet you’re probably here by mistake).

The main subject of the discussion will be the future of the movement, and our panelists will present their views on Nirmukta and its potential role in advancing reason in India. However, there will be other subjects discussed as well. There are many areas to be covered since this is the first meeting and broadcast. In the future we will have scheduled broadcasts of shows on various subjects and in various formats.

So, come talk with us at the chatroom next Saturday. Make a note of it on your calendar. Send us an email and tell us what you’d like to see discussed. Join us and become part of the Nirmukta community.

Important: Please RSVP for this event on the facebook page.

Ajita Kamal

Editor

Send Email to:

info [at] nirmukta.com

or

ajita [at] nirmukta.com

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The past few months have seen a lot of interesting developments and events. We can safely say that the freethought community is growing and exchanging information at a more rapid pace than previously. Here is a quick recap of some events from the recent past. Read the full story

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Just a quick post requesting Nirmukta readers to click here and join us on facebook. I have left the group open to all and I hope that those interested in becoming part of the free-thought community in our corner of the world will join. Promoting secularism and science in Southeast Asia are the stated objectives. There will not be much required of you after joining the group, but since getting such a group off the ground is the hard part, please excuse some persistence on my part in getting you to join
I have been having more trouble than I had anticipated with the newsletter, and am considering making it bi-monthly instead of monthly as initially proposed. The good news is that I finally have sufficient material to put together a first issue that will be worthy of Nirmukta! For the millions out there waiting with bated breath, it should be out in the next couple of weeks. There will also be a link to it from the homepage.

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We are looking to change the look of Nirmukta. Towards this end we are looking for a graphics designer who can help us with our logo and banner. If you are interested please get in touch with us at info@nirmukta.com.

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A couple of days ago I had sent out an email to the subscribers and contributors at Nirmukta, notifying all of you of the posted article containing my interview with James Randi.

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An astute observer would have noticed that there have been some changes to the color scheme at Nirmukta. The said scheme may also appear familiar to some of our readers. In all seriousness, the new look is purposefully designed to convey the “Indian-ness” of the website (and yes, I do stand by those colors!) while maintaining our focus on the brewing conflict between science and religion in society.

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When at first I decided to start an online magazine for free-thinkers it was little more than an experiment in creative expression to vent my frustration at the irrationality that permeates many aspects of Indian culture. There are numerous blogs that range from covering scholarly studies to publishing immature rants on the subject of atheism in India. Where does Nirmukta fit in this scheme of things? Read the full story

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Apar Gupta

Division of Atheism and State: Absence of Status and Tacit Discrimination

One of the frequent themes in my introduction to Hinduism is the reference to the number of deities. The figure which adds up to 330 million is seen with incredible surprise by people belonging to monastic world religions. What does not surprise people is the deficiency in the Indian Legal System to accord any status to atheism, as an individual choice or a rational movement. The understanding is universal, law and atheism suffer a disconnect. Though the absence of recognition in law is discrimination itself, it is not limited to law. The result is a broader social discrimination against atheists. Read the full story

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Hello. This section of Nirmukta will record the content development and behind-the-scenes action at the web site. Not that the articles themselves are not entertaining in their own right, but we thought that a running commentary could be justified given the context. Objective statements about some of the quaint beliefs talked about at Nirmukta can barely skim the oceans of amusing observations possible. This blog page will, however, plunge right in.

Now that I’ve justified the necessity for this blog, lets get to business. As a rule, older languages are usually more ambiguous in their interpretation than recently evolved ones. This being true for Sanskrit, Nirmukta can be twisted to mean many different things. The meaning we use here is “freed”. “Liberated”. It is meant more as a state of being than as a verb. Freed of irrational belief in the supernatural AND the subnatural. What, then, am I? A Nirmuktan? Wonder if I can divine the answer to that.

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