This summary, touching on Dawkins’ imperial-elite atheism, evokes my reading of “The Indian / Sepoy Mutiny” of 1857, when Empire’s East India Company and military chiefs, and sundry journalists and box-wallahs usually regarded south Asian religiosity with unabashed condescension even outright disdain, all crucial attitudes leading to the explosive rebellion by largely Hindu and Muslim troops and sympathizers. The ruling class then regarded themselves as enlightened due to their disavowal of any religious values as mere “superstition” and definitively irrational: Dawkins would be of that particular class. Here in Australia the Deep Stater elite has regularly publicized and celebrated Dawkins along such similar, thinly coded imperial sneers at the commoners’ religious values.
