Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

Life and work

Gora started his activism against superstition in the 1920s. He and his wife publicly viewed solar eclipses, as there was a superstitious belief that pregnant women should not do so. They stayed in haunted houses to dispel the myths about such places.

Gora used to run a monthly programme called "cosmopolitan dinners" every full moon night, where people of all castes and religions gathered together. Gora insisted on staying in a Harijan locality whenever he was invited to address a village. He also conducted several inter-caste and inter-religious marriages. A son and a daughter of his married spouses from untouchable castes. On the eve of Independence in 1947, they moved the Atheist centre to Vijayawada. Gandhi supported Gora's anti-untouchability reform movement, and remarked that he wished Gora would succeed in producing a Tuskegee in India. Tuskegee in Alabama, United States, is an important site in Africa American history where Booker T. Washington established the Tuskegee University.

In 1952, he contested in the parliamentary elections to propagate his idea of party-less democracy. In 1967, he also contested in the assembly polls. The first World Atheist Conference was held in 1972. After the event, Gora published a book in English called Positive Atheism. His eldest son Lavanam, daughter Mythri and another son Vijayam, continued to organise the World Atheist Conference. Mythri is the chairperson of Atheist Centre and Vijayam is the current executive director of the Atheist Centre. The physician G. Samaram is his son.

His daughter, Chennupati Vidya, is a social worker. She was elected to the Lok Sabha, of the Parliament of India, in 1980 and 1989.

Political views and philosophy Gora supported partyless democracy.

Gora was a Gandhian and believed in Sarvodaya (progress of all). He rejected historical materialism and considered Marxism a 'fatalist philosophy'.

He believed that atheism allows a person to surpass the barriers of castes and religions. It allows a person to understand that his/her actions are directed by free will and not Karma, fate or divine will. This in turn would allow Harijans to be liberated, as they would no longer believe that they are fated to be untouchable.

Recognition In 2002, India Post, the postal department of the Government of India, released a postage stamp of five rupee denomination commemorating Gora's birth centenary.