According to the recent data of 2011 Census, it is been the first time to include non-faith category. Census 2011 data reveals that India has 2.87 million people who doesn’t have faith in any religion, which contributes to 0.24 per cent of the country’s population of about 1.21 billion.The figure includes atheists, rationalists as well as those not interested in any religion but believe in some ‘unknown’ force. As per the reports of the census 2011, the majority of the people who live in rural areas ticked non-faith category when compared to the people live in urban areas.

A Few Interesting Facts Regarding ‘Non-Faith Category’

• A majority of people (1,643,640) who live in rural areas ticked the non-faith category when compared to those in urban areas (1,223,663).

• More males (1,463,712) than females (1,403,591) does not believe in any faith.

• In Uttar Pradesh, more number of people registered as ‘non-faith’ (582,000) than any other state such as Bihar, Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu all have a count of more than one lakh people in the category.

TN, perhaps has a history of atheism, more than any other state. It started with E V Ramasamy (1879-1973), popularly known as Periyar, who propagated atheism (or rationalism) in the early 1900s. Since then, the political party he founded, Dravidar Kazhagam, and members of its offshoots, the Dravidian parties like DMK, have had avowed atheists.

In India, 2.87 Million People  Have No Faith In Religion

“It is welcome that our voice has been recorded for the first time in the census,” Dravida Kazhagam leader K Veeramani said. But he believes there are many more non-believers than the census department recorded. “There are two parts to this,” he said. “One is that the census department does not have a fool proof system of collecting data. Two, there are some non-believers who don’t have the courage to say they don’t belong to any religion. If you include them I’m sure the non-faith category would comprise at least 1% of the population.”

According to the report of 2012 WIN-Gallup poll, which was based on interviews with 50,000 people from 57 countries, stated that 3% of Indians were convinced atheists and 3% were unsure or did not respond. It said 81% of Indians were religious and 13% were not religious. Even, Andhra Pradesh has had several non-believers. The Atheist Centre based in Vijayawada and its founder Gora (Goparaju Ramachandra Rao) and his wife Saraswathi Gora fought against superstitions during the freedom movement and after Independence.