Atheists in Indian Cabinet/Ministry

[wtf]

Six ministers in Team Manmohan are 'non-believers'! - National News ? News ? MSN India - News

New Delhi: Six Cabinet ministers of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's new team are 'non-believers'.

These ministers 'solemnly affirmed' that they would bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution while taking oath on Friday.

The prime minister and 13 of his ministers took oath in the name of God.

The 'atheist' ministers are A K Antony, P Chidambaram, Sushil Kumar Shinde, M Veerappa Moily, S Jaipal Reddy and C P Joshi, a first-timer in the Cabinet.

The ministers who took oath in the name of God include Pranab Mukherjee, Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee, Vayalar Ravi, S M Krishna, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kamal Nath, Meira Kumar, Murli Deora, Kapil Sibal, Ambika Soni, B K Handique and Anand Sharma.

 

[wtf]

6 out of 19 ministers apparently are non-believers. I am not sure if they are atheist or agnostic. Interestingly none of them are from Communist parties.

Pretty strange for a country where 93 percentage believe in god (RDN Article: Indians Get More Religious, 93 Percent Believe in God (India)) if some surveys are to be believed. Maybe India is on the liberal European track, where politicians private life is not a concern to those electing them.

 

[King Julien]

lol thats null & void situation....
can this be fatal?

 

[wtf]

lol thats null & void situation....
can this be fatal?

Fatal to whom

 

[sob]

Wtf,

Now with a jumbo sized ministry of around 79 members it would be interesting to see the new ratio(6 out of 19 was in the 1st phase).

 

[Banana]

How many are still remaining?

 

[JanjaWeed]

Not at all... Author got it wrong. In fact they believe in god more than others & that's why they didn't take the oath in the name of God. Others didn't care if they lied in the name of god... whereas these guys din't want to!!

 

[MilSpec]

I'm atheist... hasn't done me any harm

 

[russellpeters]

Good to note...Atheism or agnosticism were well developed in ancient India.Sankhya and Yoga are demonstrably a-theistic, Vedanta is only nominally theistic. Not to say of the Buddhist and Jain traditions that reject the notion of God.Good to see signs of a return to liberalism, to each his own.

 

[T90TankGuy]

what has aestheticism or being an agnostic got to do with them taking an oath and fulfilling their duties? . if one can be true to oneself and his ideals and principles , where does the need for god come into the equation?

 

[Tangent]

being a believer or non believer is a non-issue for India
Indian constitution is above all religious books.
Believe in Indian constitution is more important than believe in Gita, Kuran or Bible.

 

[livingdead]

I was going to comment but then saw this is 2009 thread.

 

[ApparentRaceTraitor]

Antony is an atheist? RESPECT!