Humanism Now | Secular Ethics, Curiosity and Compassionate Change

56. Indian Rationalism to Global Humanist Resistance - Alavari Jeevathol on Duty, Dialogue & Youth Power

• Humanise Live • Season 1 • Episode 56

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 “Activism is the rent we pay to live on this world.”  Alavari Jeevathol

AJ  board member of Humanists International, founding trustee of the National Multifaith Youth Centre, and National Coordinator of Young Humanists UK — returns to Humanism Now to explore a humanism shaped by South Indian pluralism, UK youth organising, and a lifelong commitment to duty, solidarity, and awe. This conversation traces India’s rationalist heritage, the case for humanistic spirituality, and why resistance must be global, hopeful, and rooted in material realities.

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Music: Blossom by Light Prism

Podcast transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors or omissions. They are provided to make our content more accessible, but should not be considered a fully accurate record of the conversation.

James Hogson:

Welcome back to Humanism Now. I'm your host, James Hodgson. For this episode, it's a real treat to welcome back someone who was on the very first episode of Humanism Now, eevatholJ, or AJ, as he's known. AJ is a fellow committee member at the Central London Humanists and was a regular guest in the early series of Humanism Now. AJ is also a member of the Humanist International Board of Directors, a founding trustee of the National Multifaith Youth Centre in the UK, and serves as the National Coordinator for Young Humanists UK. His work focuses on empowering young humanists, fostering dialogue between faith and belief groups, and supporting apostate refugees, all rooted in humanistic spirituality. AJ Otto proactively advocates for ecological sustainability and intergenerational responsibility. Born in South India and now residing in London, AJ bridges perspectives between the global south and European humanist movements. A recurring guest on Humanism Now since its early episodes, AJ is recognized for his thoughtful contributions to humanism, interfaith dialogue, and India's rich racialist history. Thanks, James. Welcome back, I should say. It's been too long. And as mentioned, I know you were you joined us all the way back on the first episode of Humanism Now in 2023. But since it has been a while, perhaps we can start by going back to your roots. How did you first recognize that you were a humanist and get involved in the many campaigns which you are now very active in?

Alavari Jeevathol (AJ):

I had a fairly easy route to humanism, I would say, especially compared to some of the other people that you've interviewed. I grew up in a family that was fairly liberal in its philosophy, spiritually diverse, I would say, but there wasn't any compulsion for me to either follow an atheist outlook or a humanist outlook or a religious one. I could have freely chosen to be any religion, and certainly my parents would have accepted it. The wider family is religious and reflective of the diverse mix that India as a whole is Hindu, some Buddhist, some Christian relatives. And I had that exposure growing up. So I was always raised to, without calling it interfaith tolerance and celebrating interfaith diversity, I always had that growing up. We'd always go to celebrate Diwali with my Hindu relatives. We were taught that okay, even if we don't share the beliefs of our neighbors, it's still important for that village feel, that community feel, to make sure that we understood the human element and broke bred with people when they it's a holy day for them. And just that that human connection without it being formalized as such, as a philosophy or as a humanistic philosophy, or as an interfaith act done for a quid pro quo or community building. It was just natural in my household, a very philosophical household, a lot of exchange of ideas amongst my uncles and even amongst the women in my family, which is rare in a slightly sexist Indian culture at the time. So I had a very luxurious upbringing in that way. I had a lot of advantages, and that carried over when I came to and settled in the UK and in the West. So I opted into humanism when I came across it looking to contribute to my community from a social justice perspective. Actually, the first ever humanist meeting I went to was a talk by a humanist who'd just been to Israel and Palestine. This would have been in maybe 2016 in my local area in West London. And I just searched online social justice, community activism, London, something like that, or Ealing in West London, near where I live. And this came up West London Humanists and Secularists, as it was then, a group which now didn't survive the pandemic and hopefully it was going to be incorporated into a larger London humanist group. But that was my first meeting. Just turned up, and what led me to that first meeting is very symbolic of what I've tried to do and reflect in my humanist work after that. Social justice, activism. It wasn't so much an identity I was looking for, it just was a vehicle in which to explore and to express my conscientious citizenship. Someone once told me activism is the rent that we pay to live on this world. And that's always stayed with me. And I remember that being kind of ringing in my head. That was as I was going to that first humanist meeting. And then from uh being a local volunteer to a regional London-wide volunteer, linking up with other humanist groups, and then a national volunteer with young humanists, and then now serving at the international level. I didn't plan for it to be this way, but that was the first step on the ladder.

James Hogson:

That's fascinating how just that awareness of the philosophical ideas behind rationalism or secularism can be interpreted as a sense of duty. It seems like there's a real sense of duty to your work that it's not just about living these ideas, but actively, proactively campaigning. And I know you're very involved, as mentioned, in many causes. But I wanted to invite you back onto the show because you recently gave a talk with us at Central London Humanists, really explaining and drawing out more of the heritage and history, long history of the rationalist secular philosophies in India. And this is part of a series that we've been running at Central London Humanists, looking at the global roots and the independent times and places where these ideas that we now call humanism or enlightenment have actually cropped up independently throughout history and around the world. It was a really fascinating talk. So I know that was like 45 minutes, but if you could summarize some of the core ideas of the Indian rationalist tradition that you think our listeners may find interesting.

Alavari Jeevathol (AJ):

Yeah, there's so many ways that we can actually get our teeth sunk into this. We can do it from a colonial perspective. And actually, I tried to give a flavor of all of these in that talk, and I think that'll be recorded so that can be published online on the CLH YouTube channel. So we could approach it from a colonial or anti-colonial perspective, because there were certain aspects in the Indian rationalist movement that were drawn out by the independence from the British Empire. We can approach it from that side, we can approach it from a philosophical side, saying, okay, what does rationalism mean in an Indian context versus a European sort of enlightenment context? And there are some similarities with some differences. So I tried to give a flavor of these in the talk. So say, for example, if we take the colonial perspective, for I mean, are you talking about humanism as a duty? I grew up around that. I was marinating in that with my dad and grandad. They were also activists in their own rights. And my granddad was part of the Dravidian rationalist movement that was not only opposed to British rule and wanted independence, but they also wanted independence from the Brahmanical Hindu supremacist strain that we can see now has come to dominate India. But that was there even in the early days of the independence movement in India. So they said, okay, we're going to throw off the yoke of the British Empire, that persecution. But also within India, Indians dominate other Indians in the caste system in other ways, social and economic ways, that's now come to really fester as a toxic mixture between the worst aspects of caste and also the worst aspects of capitalism as well, and ecological destruction and subjugation and wealth inequality, which is very, very stark in India. So my granddad and my dad were really involved in that. I that was in the background of me growing up, but when I came to the West, when I came to settle in the UK, and then I had a flavor of the global north, and then looking back at the global south, looking back at some of the struggles that my cousins and my relatives had to go through, just living their daily lives, um, trying to grapple with these things of what privileges were afforded to me growing up in London as opposed to my cousins growing up in India, in the background of me trying to be a very active social citizen, activist, and so on. So that really that colonial aspect of the other side of humanism. So not just humanism, what it means in the global north, in Norway, in France, in the US or Germany or the UK, but also I think humanism, as you said there, it can't just be relegated to be a European movement or a movement that came out of the Western Enlightenment. It has to have relevance in the Arab world, in the subcontinent, in the India and Pakistan societies, for example, and in the Philippines and in many other parts of the world. And I think as Humanists International, the organization that I belong to, we really want to represent that and tell those stories and carry on those traditions because otherwise, all of the sacrifices of those activists, like my granddad and others, even though he didn't act, he didn't overtly call himself a humanist, but it was certainly there. So I think that the formation of a rationalist movement, which you know has very many tenuous links and a wide variety of characters. And actually, I'd recommend to the audience, as I did in that talk, disenchanting India, an ethnographic study about the rationalist movement in India, both currently what they do, fighting superstition, fighting ritual harms, witchcraft accusations, and other kinds of scams that use religious or pseudo-religious trickery, literally trickery, in a kind of a James Randi way in India at the moment on the ground. They go and debunk these sort of scam artists, god men, and witch doctors, their activities now, and also the history of the rationalist movement. It's an excellent book. And actually, after that talk that we gave at that we had at CLH, Humanists UK, I was lucky to share a discussion with the author, the author of that study, Johannes Quack, and also a few other Indian Indian diaspora activists and organizers talking about this. I'd also recommend that should also be on the Humanist UK, a YouTube channel. So that the rationalist movement in India and rationalism being basically the more conversant term as opposed to humanism in India. That's just the way that it's evolved. But essentially, it can be taken to be an evidence-based scientific approach, a naturalistic approach. So all of the foundations of what humanism is, they don't really have humanism we use in the UK because it implies much more of that life stance. We have humanist ceremonies, a humanist pastoral care. They don't really have rationalist ceremonies in India as such. So that's why we as the HI, and there are many rationalist colleagues we have in India at the moment, most notably in the uh FIRA, FERA, Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, we're trying to make that case and work with them and trying to build that humanist movement so that we can have the strength of solidarity between humanists in India and humanists in other parts of the world to get to spread these humanist ceremonies and other aspects of a positive worldview, not just the fact that, okay, we're rational people, we like evidence, we like science, but there's not much more there. Whereas humanism, as a holistic, positive worldview in life stance, has much more to offer. So they've not quite got there in India yet. I guess they're still battling superstitions, they're trying to really stake some ground for rationalist conversations in India because, for one, the Hindu domination and the supremacism of religion is so overwhelming there. And it's just that it's so it permeates daily life in a way that we may don't remember in the West, and maybe it used to 500 years ago here, but we don't really have that now. So the religion plays a different role, and rationalism and humanism plays a different role in India than maybe we're used to in the West.

James Hogson:

And I'm wondering as well, what are the the key differences that you see in the philosophical underpinnings of the this secular, to use an all-encompassing term, the secular traditions in both regions, and also yeah, maybe draw out some of the differences you see in the challenges being faced by humanist rationalists in the global south versus what we're familiar with in the West.

Alavari Jeevathol (AJ):

Well, certainly, I think even though sometimes the word rationalist can be a bit of a false friend, and we discussed this in that talk, where in the Western tradition you get into rationalism versus empiricism, not to get too philosophical here, but about how do we acquire knowledge. Empiricists will say we acquire knowledge just through our sense organs, through experiencing the world and that imprints on our brain. So it's all sort of external. Whereas rationalists tend to see we have an innate sense of knowledge, we have our genetic blueprints, we have all of these kind of just in our biology, internally, that's where our knowledge is mainly based. Of course, we do receive simuli as well, but even if we're just a brain in a box floating through space, we'll still have knowledge because we'll have that as part of our genetic blueprint. So that rationalism versus empiricism debate is not really what is meant when we say there's in there's Indian rationalists and they're partnering with humanists. They just mean an evidence-based, logical, uh scientific worldview. That's what they mean by that. So it is, we're trying to make that more interchangeable, but again, because and I think in some ways it shouldn't be, and it's not in no surprise that it's not exactly replaceable with what a Westerner may mean by humanism, because it should be, it should be different. They don't need to copy and paste what we're doing. Their challenges are different to ours. They're bastling, especially in very, very rural. I mean, India is has mega cities and points of high development spread out the spread throughout the subcontinent. But really, it's a low-income country that has many challenges for development. There's still many hundreds of millions of people living very, very rural lives, almost feudal lives still, with landlordism and so on, and the education penetration there, and especially after the British Empire, in the decade since then, it's improved, but the literacy rates and the gap between the opportunities available to men and women, wealth inequality, and wealth inequality that's very starkly contrasted by the caste system and that being imprinted on Indian society purposefully. These are not challenges that we see anything like in any Western society. So that permeation of religion is very, very dangerous. I mean that there have been leaders and founders of many rationalist groups and movements in India that have been not only persecuted, harassed, but shot, their families threatened. You can having a rationalist meeting in India or having an activist campaign or anti-superstition campaign can easily find you shot dead at the side of the road. So those kind of which are unknown to us really in the global north. But in the global south, we have to find a way to express solidarity, to help our humanist colleagues and friends there, because the challenges they're facing are a world away from what we have now. And I think that's really what I want to do through HI and through my humanist world, because I've been given this experience of growing up in the global south and the global north and working in both and being conversant in the culture of both. I want us to I want humanism to have a relevance there in both the two global north and south. Because if it's not, it will just be relegated to a Western, privileged, maybe middle class outlook on life, which is not what we want. That's not speaking to the whole of humanity. That's just speaking to people who have the luxury of opting into it.

James Hogson:

And um one of the areas where we've had a bit of disagreement and debates over the years in terms of expanding the scope of humanism is around this idea of spirituality within a humanistic framework. As I mentioned in the introduction, I know this is very core to your work, maintaining humanistic spirituality. And as mentioned, it's something where I've never been as comfortable with the term spiritual. But I think there's a healthy split, I think, amongst humanists. And again, that a lot of that may be geographical as well. So could you explain what is spirituality to you? And how do you think we should expand the definition of humanism to incorporate more of those philosophies?

Alavari Jeevathol (AJ):

Yeah, absolutely. So as much as we one of my missions is to make humanism relevant and conversant and have a place at the table, both in the global north and the global south, sort of that geographical, geopolitical spread, I'd also like humanism to have a seat at the table of spirituality or the spiritual experience. And yeah, it's very important to be clear about what we mean by that, because I think that's where interfaith tolerance, interfaith cooperation, interfaith dialogue comes into play. And there's a relevance there. So if we want to build bridges with people of other faiths and beliefs, we have to find something in common. And I think this idea of a spirituality or a humanistic spirituality is where we can start to form those philosophical sort of cross-fertilizations with other faiths and beliefs, as well as obviously also from a secular perspective, we all that idea of all faiths and beliefs being equal or no one faith or belief being privileged, that those are other ways we can find common cause with other faiths and beliefs in a multicultural society like the UK, for example. But I think spirituality is certainly one of them. And as I've come to the humanist movement, I've noticed that's something that was lacking. I mean, I have to say, as you pointed out, I personally, in my personal life, I have a great relevance, a daily relevance to spirituality. But even if I didn't, I would still say from a sort of diagnosing the humanist movement and saying, okay, where are we weak or where are we not having a voice in the room? Where are we quiet? In which conversations are we not being heard in? I think it's on spirituality. So spirituality, I use it very easily. I give, I move in religious circles, I still help facilitate a Quran class, I've helped teach the Bhagavad Gita from a humanistic spiritual point of view. I have Kabbalah study groups, Baha'i study groups as well. We study the holy texts. Again, going back to that tradition from my grandma and grandparents and my parents that I was raised in, saying you don't have to agree with someone's worldview or validate or have to acknowledge or validate or agree with their supernatural beliefs or beliefs on life after death to actually engage with them. Now, again, I have the privilege of doing that because I don't have any bad experiences of religion. I'm not coming out of a religious childhood, for example. I don't have that kind of traumatic experience of being in a high control religion, for example. So I can easily opt into these things. So that's a privilege. But people who can, I don't think I'm not saying that every humanist should. People should pick and choose and tailor their life experiences in humanism like they do any other faithful belief. But for me, that that's how I've tailored it. So a humanistic spirituality, spiritual for me, I always go back to the idea of say the letter of the law and then the spirit of the law. So we have that idiom in English. So the letter of the law is okay, I'll just read it. What's on the outside? What's the plain thing? What is it saying? Taking it very literally, taking the outside, the outside first impression. The spirit of the law is reading between the lines. Okay, what's what's actually the meaning there? It may not be spelt out exactly in the overt wording, but what's beyond the outer? So what's the kind of the esoteric meaning in some sense? What's the inner meaning? So that framework, I think, alone is enough to then build an idea of spirituality. For example, take a humanistic spirituality. Alice Roberts, I think, described this very well. Taking your walk in the woods in nature, being lost in that sort of grand expanse, standing on a the edge of a cliff, you know, at night, and you see the Milky Way whirling above you, and the firmament and the stars are moving across the sky, looking out into the ocean and the waves crashing, that feeling of it, and Einstein also I think described it very well. That feeling of connection, of awe, of humility in front of this vast cosmos, as a phrase that Carl Steigen introduced into my life, and I'll never forget. The vast expanse of time in the past, time in the future, the vast expanse of the physical universe, knowing that there are aspects of the universe will never, will likely never be able to interact with or know. That feeling of I'm just a small creature in the face of this sort of magnificent creation, magnificent cosmos, this nature, that feeling that gives you goosebumps and that that you can feel in not necessarily only in nature, but say even in a concert, in a musical performance, or together in a large group, walking into a church or walking into some kind of beautiful building. All of these, that feeling, which we all know what that feeling is, we've all had that feeling, that can't only be relegated to the realm of a religious experience. You don't have to believe in a God or life after death or a perfect holy book or a prophet or a messenger to have that experience. It's a uniquely human experience, I think, as far as we know. But certainly all humans have it. So we as humanists, I think we need to be able to describe it, we need to be able to access it, we need to be able to reach hearts and minds in other people. We could potentially be humanists by saying we're not just only angry atheists who are very logical, very rational. We love our formulas and our test tubes and our experiments. No, no, we're distinctly mystical creatures as well. We embrace mystery, we embrace doubt, we embrace whether you want to call it God or nature or cosmos or whatever. We don't believe in a sentient God that can judge you and answer prayers and perform miracles or become embodied in the world and die for our sins. We don't believe in that kind of a God, but we do believe in the laws of nature, the nature of the cosmos, the unknown, and we do experience that feeling of humility of sort of awe in the face of the universe. And I think that needs to be that needs to be heard more because we don't hit we don't hear that much for in a humanist conversation or a humanist worldview. And in doing that, the times when I've expressed that, I've built going back to interfaith tolerance and bridges, I've been able to build interfaith bridges, interfaith tolerance. I've just been invited to a four-day kind of silent retreat or partly silent retreat in Oxford at the global retreat center there with other religious friends from all over the world. I did it last year or the year before. I'm looking forward to it again. And I'm a human there amongst other people from other religions, and they're talking about their holy books and so on and holy texts. And we don't have a holy text as a humanist, but we still have that spiritual experience. So I think it's important just as their religious spirituality about the soul, or about maybe contacting the soul after death and meeting your your dead relatives in heaven, they mean that's what they mean by spirituality in the soul. We can have our definition of spirituality in the soul, and it's just as valid as theirs. And it speaks to more, maybe to the youth who've been raised in the world of the internet, who've been raised in the world of science and uh liberal education. It speaks to them because it says, Ah, okay, humanism also has that aspect. It's not just a debating shop, or it's not just a dry, very barren philosophy that's only relevant to academics. It also has a daily relevance to mindfulness meditation, yoga, and so on, which are big parts of my life.

James Hogson:

Yeah, and thank you for bringing back the interfaith dialogue as well. I think it's again, this is something I think I would like to explore more here. And I know from what you've explained there, you know, you can see the real value in that. And it's interesting as well that you seem to be much better prepared and well researched than most people going into these by really reading and engaging with the religious texts. So I wonder what are some of the other benefits that you've found from actually reading or studying religious text from a secular, perhaps more critical point of view. What have been the key values that you've gained from that?

Alavari Jeevathol (AJ):

Yeah. So I think one of the I mentioned one of my guiding kind of mantras before activism is the rent that we pay to live on this planet. Another guiding mantra for me is nothing human is alien to me. You know, if humans have done it, I want to be able to relate to it. I want to be and how, no matter how bizarre it may seem, I may not agree with it, I may not go and sort of do the same thing again. I don't want to repeat other people's mistakes. I do have that sense of judgment, value judgment, and so on. I do disagree with things. I think that that's where dialogue comes in. That's where the importance of dialogue is. You make very clear and transparent what your understanding is, what you don't know, what your values are, and you bring that to the table and you just put it there in front of everyone and say, I humbly present my understanding, but I'm open to receiving others. Again, it's a very humanistic value, critical thinking, being open to hearing other points of view, not jumping to judgment and saying, okay, this person, because of what they've said, that's what defines them. You know, I'm going to judge them based on that. No, we're all just experimenting, we're all just at the grand kitchen table of ideas, and we're just, I think Peter said it best, life must be lived as play. And I think that captures it. Obviously, there are very serious aspects of life that we want to, we don't want to trivialize everything, but not to take, not to really judge and trying to jump down people's throat too much. I think that in it alone is a good discipline that and the humility that comes out of interfaith dialogue. When you're having to explain your views to someone who finds it completely strange or completely novel, whereas if you only speak to humanists, then you kind of get it into a thought bubble. So I think that has helped me remind me that I am human. The other person over there, even though they may be dressed differently, they may do strange rituals or rituals that I find strange or would seem strange in my daily routine. Outroot, fundamentally, they care about family, they care about their own hierarchy of needs, which are very similar to my needs. We're all on this planet spaceship Earth, we're all hurtling through space, and we have to find a way to not make this planet uninhabitable. So these kinds of things they can really come out through interfaith dialogue. And always say this to other people as well, to young people that I talk to, it's people are always afraid that okay, if we let our young, especially, but also our other members in our group, if the Muslims came over to the humanists, they might suddenly call convert to become humanists. Actually, I think that's fairly rare. Um, what actually happens is you in explaining your point of view to someone and in defending it in some way, not in a I think debates sometimes can be good, especially for getting people's attention to a topic, but they can't only be debates. It also has to be dialogue, there also has to be informal, casual mixing without judgment, without confrontation, but just you know, sharing food, doing activities like sports or litter picking or nature walks and so on. These kind of very social activities can encourage informal dialogue for people that aren't all debaters or philosophers or speakers or organizers or campaigners. We need to have the everyday membership or everyday people in the faith and belief communities mixing with each other. That's how you get true sort of neighborhood, neighborliness, true solidarity. So I think that's the main benefit. Interfaith tolerance, a humility, a reminder of our shared humanity. I don't think any of us have a privileged position. Because we have the word human in it, doesn't mean that we're closer to the truth than anyone else. In that sense, I would say we're all sitting at the kitchen table. We all have our ways towards humanity. A humanist can be just as evil or good as any other person. Just because you're holding the Quran in the hand doesn't make you a better person. And just because you're holding Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time in your hand, or Richard Dawkins' self-esteem, doesn't make you a good person automatically. It's what you do with that, which I think again is a very leveling, a very uh encouraging, a very inspirational message. We're all trying to get towards humanity, and there's no one that has a privileged position or a nearer position than someone else just by dint of their faith or belief. It's what you actually do, it's your character, it's your yeah, you're judged by your actions and you're judged by your peers that way in a rather objective way, which I think is quite leveling. It's very equalizing.

James Hogson:

Now, at time of recording, Humanist International have just announced their 2026 convention with the theme of humanism as resistance. And as a board member of Humanist International, I know you've been part of the organizing committee for the event and obviously speaks to many of the themes we've discussed already. So, what is humanism as resistance and why choose that theme for 2026?

Alavari Jeevathol (AJ):

This really fortifies the relevance of humanism in the global south and also globally, full stop point that we were making earlier. So I think humanism, we've been saying for many decades, has to be relevant in the global south. But in the past, say 20 years, we've been seeing the global north also have a fair share of problems. And within each society, so within the UK, within the US, there is that wealth disparity, there is that disparity in trust of institutions, access to education, access to healthcare, real toxic stress and a trauma that's been applied to many sections of society, especially young people. And we have populist trends coming up, fascism reared its head again after decades of living in uh fairly quiet slumber, and maybe we got too complacent that we defeated it. But actually, no, I think as activists have said in the years gone past, every generation has to fight and re-fortify those same battles. And we want humanism, we as in Humanist International and our global partners and our members and associates around the world. We want humanism to again be a voice in the room. So a voice in the room of spirituality we discussed before an interfaith spirituality, a voice in the global north and global south, irrelevance, a voice in that room, and also be heard as humanism as resistance. It's being held in Canada this year, as in next year in 2026, this time around. It was meant to be held in Washington, but for obvious reasons, we had to move that because for an activist, for example, I'm not hugely controversial or radical online as much. I need to be online more, actually. I have I started a TikTok last year. No one needs to be more online. Well, yeah, I think as an activist, you have especially as a youth activist, you need to be there. And I I haven't That discipline to be online. Again, making these conversations about interface spirituality, about tolerance. And I wish to inspire other people to get online. Actually, we had an excellent example of we had a talk at CLH earlier this year from a British Nigerian activist who'd interfaced with us. She just started her own TikTok and found 300 followers talking about humanism, rationalism, about um, you know, how the church plays in the black community in London. And she got 300 followers, and then she came again, gave a talk to us. And that's exactly what I wanted to do. I mean, I was so inspired by that. And that's what we want to do globally: inspire other people to take up the humanist challenge and take up the humanist cause and progress it. So these are annual conventions, and we're going to call them congresses now every year going forward. So these annual humanist congresses, which are a bit larger and a bit more expansive than the annual conventions or conferences that we're having up until now. Ottawa's going to be the first in that new relaunch of the World Humanist Congress as a brand that we organize as HI, Humanist International, with our local global partners in various parts of the world. So registration's open. So the early bird tickets have to encourage everyone to attend if they can. And we chose resistance as a theme because it's exemplified by many being in Canada, it's exemplified by many of the stance that the Canadian people have taken, being a neighbor of the US and seeing what's going on in that country to the south. I think resistance, we couldn't have chosen another theme because we wanted resistance to be there. We wanted hope to be there. We wanted when democracy is under attack, democracy being a key humanist value, when human rights are under attack, not and not just in the traditional realms of anti-blasphemy laws and criticizing religion and so on. Of course, there's a very important freedom of religion or belief. But also, we had a talk yesterday at CLH looking at the rights of protest and the rights around protesting in London and in the UK, the shutting down, for example, Israel and Palestine activism and freedom of speech related to that. Those conversations are also important to the humanists as well. I think we need to have our voice heard in that room as well, at that kitchen table. So when we can't hold up a sign advocating for a certain group or a certain cause and expressing human rights concerns and expressing disagreement with the policy of the government, it could be our government, it could be a foreign government, when that basic tenet of democracy is denied to people and they're put into a Kafka-esque bureaucracy of arrests and other cancellations and difficulties in their career. You can't have a thriving democracy in that way. You can't have a free market of ideas and exchange of ideas that way. That harts back to the methods, for example, the religious institutions used against humanists or early humanists or rationalists and skeptics. The same thing where you tar someone, tar and feather them in public, you ridicule them, you trivialize them, kill them, burden them with the stake, whatever, in different parts of the world, the persecution takes on different forms. And so we need resistance to that. And we need to inspire people to because the people are losing hope. We need hope, we need resistance, and we hope that for those who can make it in having 600, 700 humanists in Ottawa, we'll get energize that movement. And I think we need it every year. We need that kind of a recharge. So we hope to speak to all of these things: wealth inequality, the relevance of humanism in the global south, the relevance of humanism as an anti-fascist stance. So being political, but not being party political, but certainly being engaged is I think again, always wearing my youth development and youth activist hat, which I try to bring to the board of HI. We need to have relevance there. And for example, I think in Israel-Palestine activism, there's a lot more that could have been done. We've lost ground there compared to other faiths and beliefs and other communities and other campaigns and causes that were more visible as in opposition to genocide, for example, which we've tried to push through at HI in the General Assembly and in the board. But it's a movement made up of its members, it's reflective of its members. So if we really want that global consciousness, it's there for us to pick up and run with it. So the challenge is open for us to take up.

James Hogson:

And um, given your role in youth humanist groups as well, leading the young humanists in the UK, what is your message to the next generation of young people, maybe students coming through who might identify with these beliefs? Perhaps they are politically active, but again, yeah as you mentioned, we need to overcome this sense of hope hopelessness that pervades. So, what is your message to young people who might also want to join the this humanistic resistance?

Alavari Jeevathol (AJ):

Yeah, actually, this is very relevant to a talk I gave a few days ago. That the top the topic was youth identity and spirituality to a Baha'i community that I know very well. And we talked about exactly this, and many of them are based in Canada and the US. So I really focused on Charlie Kirk and his assassination and what he meant to youth in the US, and also Zoran Mandani and his recent New York City electoral campaign victory, and how both of those told a story, different stories, different aspects of what youth want and what youth are lacking currently and what youth are crying out for. Now, of course, talking about it globally, I'm going to be doing a lot of broad strokes. As we said before, for example, in the context of caste and India and rationalism, there's no one overall solution and one general formula for what youth want generally everywhere in the world. But whenever I see the prevalence that the Jordan Petersons of the world, the Andrew Tates of the world, the Charlie Kirks of the world, the purchase that they had amongst youth, especially and amongst especially disenfranchised, disillusioned male youth in our in the global north societies, but also in the global south, when I see that just cries out to me. We as young humanists or young secularists or young sort of free thinkers, we've not been doing our job, whereas in we've been falling short of that. People who are crying out for meaning, crying out for structure. The things that Andrew Tate and John Peterson are saying are just heavily corruptive things of what Marcus Aurelius was saying just centuries ago. So which humanists and humanists and Stoics and secularists have talked about for many years. But why is that not getting through? Why is that message not there? So I think to uh to humanists, to young humanists, which I'll say in the Congress as well, and also in in the UK, for example, when I give talks, I say humanism is there, humanism is open. Humanism doesn't ask you to throw away your previous identity and come to a new one. Humanism is open for engagement, for experimentation, because I think ultimately youth is about experimentation, youth is about experimenting with different ideas, not without having to commit to one, or without being forced or straitjacketed into one. Um I think the youth, the fluidity and the experiment, the ability to experiment with ideas and form your identity in those formative years, in your teens, in your twenties, humanism has to be open to that. And while also, so that's a Charlie Kirk sort of side where going to universities, going to, and some of the work that I do that I'm most proud of is with NMYC, the National Multi-Faith Youth Center in the UK, going to university, engaging with student societies, and really having a sense of the temperature of that melting pot, that crucible, that is the campus culture. So I think that's where you get a sense of a big part of what youth want and what they're facing. So as well as the ideological appeal to youth, saying humanism is open, humanism doesn't ask you to sign up to a creed or or throw away your religion or your ethnic identity or your cultural identity. Humanism is as diverse as you as youth are. So there's that ideological appeal for humanists to uh young humanists to engage. And again, I think it's important to have credibility for young people. We need to be active on the big political issues of our time: wealth inequality, Israel and Palestine, genocide, another genocide unfolding in Darfur, and it has been for many years and decades. If we're not active in that, I think humanism as a movement, if a young person is shopping down the shopping market aisle of which movement or community they want to pay, give attention to, we lose credibility there. So I think ideologically we have to appeal to youth. And also taking a leaf out of Zora Mamdani's campaigns book, we have to speak to the material realities, getting involved in conversations about the cost of living, rent, transport, which he did, talking to the material needs, offline needs, as he said before, spending less time online and in culture wars, but really looking at what are whether it's transgender debates or whether it's about careers or other progression in academia, freedom of speech, if we identify actual material needs, which can only be done by engaging with youth directly, for example, on university campuses, if we do that, and I think we'll gain that credibility, both ideologically as a movement, we can be open, and also focusing on actual material needs and material harms faced by youth who see a century ahead, a lifetime ahead that's disappearing. They don't see a future for themselves, they don't see themselves having homes or raising a family. If we don't speak to those needs, we'll be lost, and someone else will take our place, maybe from the religious uh community, or maybe another secular worldview. So I think humanism, the challenge is there for us to capitalize on it.

James Hogson:

You've been very outspoken and active as well in peace building and solidarity, particularly this year or in the past couple of years, hosting events with us on the Israel-Palestine conflict. And I just wondered we're recording this in November 2025. Hopefully, we're moving towards a resolution and a path forward there. What role do you see again humanists, activists, secularists playing in the resolution of that particular conflict and also peace building globally?

Alavari Jeevathol (AJ):

Yeah, and again, this is very topical to our London humanist community. Fresh in my mind is the discussion that we had a matter of days ago, reflecting on the ceasefire in Gaza, humanist perspectives on the decades leading up to it, the prospects going forward, Palestinian sovereignty, is Israeli security, and that political agreement that needs to be reached there. And this speaks to everything that we've discussed in this episode: credibility for the humanist movement amongst activist circles, amongst youth, relevance in the global south, relevance in the Arab world today as well. I think we we risk squandering all of that progress we've seen in decades past. Millions of people download humanist and scientific books, for example, by Richard Dawkins' early works, Christopher Hitchens and so on, all of that progress, all of that credibility, all of that cry out for yes, justice, a different way of organizing our society, of embracing enlightenment liberal values. That's all fantastic, that's all great. But we need to make sure we follow through on that. And when there is a genocide taking place, and we've been overtaken, we're swamped by genocides, even before the Gaza genocide is has concluded, or and certainly before a chance for accountability for war crimes has been imposed and criminal proceedings. We've been overtaken by events in Sudan that have hideously spiked in the past month, another genocide unfolding there. So unfortunately, this is the world that we're living in, and it certainly is depressing. It certainly is. In the discussion we had recently, I'm talking to some Jewish friends in the Lum's humanist community, they're swamped by it. They're just overwhelmed by it. They don't even want to look at the news. And same for my Palestinian friends. And I understand that we have to understand, we have to, we're not saying that everyone, just like we're talking about spirituality earlier, we're not forcing everyone to be in the spirituality conversation. We don't want every humanist needs to do everything, but certainly some humanists, and there are plenty of humanists, just by dint of being humanists and by being human, that are affected by these things. So we need to have that voice. I'm lucky to be joined on the Palestine Solidarity marches, both this year and last year, by many London humanist activist friends, as well as other religious friends and activists as well from both Jewish and Muslim communities. So we need to be, again, a voice in that room, a voice at that table. And we need to be visible there. And I think it's just doing the basics. No one's asking it for humanists to come up with a precise solution to the Israel-Palestine occupation and the Palestinian cause and Israeli cries for security in the Middle East, surrounded by Arab countries. No one's asking for a 20-point peace flying from the humanists. But we just, for example, humanist internationalists try to lead the way. When the United States hideously, bizarrely sanctioned the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese earlier this year. We spoke out, we released a statement straight away. So it's the basic things that we take for granted, which we let this creeping, like with fascism, it's creeped up on us. We can easily stop that just by forming that wall of solidarity. That doesn't solve all the problems, but at least let's do the basics. So for example, when human rights are threatened, when the basics of the UN system, the International Court of Justice, are the respected human rights organizations, which are imperfect like everything is, but at least they're a good, they're the best that we have, that they're a good first attempt. A human rights watch, Amnesty International, the International Court of Justice, UN commissions of inquiry led by people who led the Rwanda Genocide Inquiry, for example. So these respected international instruments and tools available to us, when they're under attack, when they're undermined, either cynically or by people who are too ignorant to realize the facts, humanists need to be there educating. We need to be there defending multilateralism, defending democracy at the global level, at the UN, at other international fora as well, listening to the voice of the global south. In some conversations from the UK, especially for speaking as a British citizen from the UK, certain conversations don't need to come from Brits. Certain messages we don't need to hear from Brits, especially given the history of the British influence in the Middle East, in West Asia. We can have that coming from our humanist friends in Ghana, from our humanist friends in India, for example, humanist friends in the Philippines. We don't have to only have the Western humanists leading the conversation on this. Because again, unfortunately, the reality is there are credibility issues. But the power of the global movement, and again, the power of and the advantage of having purchase and having credibility globally, including in the global south, we don't have to carry everything on our own shoulders. We can express solidarity and see that the humanist values are reflected and echoing around the world. So again, we don't have to be the atlas carrying the world on our shoulders here. Just doing the basics can be done very well. And I think, yeah, humanist UK, Humanist Society Scotland certainly as well released very powerful statements on this. And humanists around the world, we've tried to raise the Humanist International General Assembly, certainly the very basics of human flourishing, human right to life, freedom of expression, both in Israel and Palestine on the ground there. For example, access to journalists, to investigators investigating war crimes, that is an issue. But also the indirect sort of knock-on effects, the domino effects of where journalists and activists, as we said before, for example, Palestine Action, other Palestine solidarity groups as well, and also people from communities who are speaking out, minority voices, say, for example, in the Jewish community, they're being attacked with freedom of expression, chilling as well. So all of these human rights defenders or human rights causes, I think are relevant to humanists' stance on these issues. And we lose credibility again if we only get exercised and wound up and very angry about anti-blasphemy laws and freedom of speech there. And we don't do that when also it's the convenient traditional enemies, Iran, Pakistan, where of course humanists and many others are under threat and they're not allowed to express themselves freely and think freely. But that same energy has to be kept when very close to home, say in the UK now, as I think one of the worst uh set of, as we heard from our speaker yesterday at CLH, the professor talking about the freedoms and the rights to protest. We have one of the most recro Dracronian 1984 George Orwell style crackdown on freedom of speech, on right to assembly. Even if you risk bothering or slightly disturbing people in the surrounding area, that protest can be shut down. You can be shut down for just planning a protest, a non-violent protest. So these are things that we have to, again, let otherwise, just like fascism, our rest with fascism, this will creep up on us. So both for a credibility point of view, from a self-interested humanist movement building point of view, and also from a moral point of view, categorically, we need to have our voices raised and to be heard in all of these conversations.

James Hogson:

And we're back to those themes of duty and resistance once again. No, thank you so much, AJ, for taking time out of your very busy schedule. So before we go, a standard closing question. What is something which you've changed your mind on and what inspired that change? Oh, wow. Yeah, it's been a while since I've been on humanism now.

Alavari Jeevathol (AJ):

I forgot this. My closing question. It's a good one. Something which I've changed my mind on recently. In the past couple of years, I would say. I never used to be one for conferences and congresses and conventions, both either at the local level or national level or internationally. But I've changed my mind on that. And mainly due to the humanist movement, the national conventions and conferences we have in the UK, for Humanist UK, Humanist Society Scotland, have a the festival, and we're now calling them festivals of humanism rather than conferences. But basically that idea of activist organizers getting together, because I thought previously it's basically just sometimes just say academics or activist organizers patting themselves on the back. There's no real relevance, there's no real kind of energy or plans. It's all just talking. That's the feeling that I had before. But maybe I was doing conferences wrong or I was going to the wrong conferences. And again, with Ottawa and the HI Congress coming up, the World Humanist Congress coming up as well. I really now think that there's so much to be gained from it. And even if it requires people to be traveling and we try and provide scholarships and travel reimbursements and so on from the global south, I think that there's nothing quite like emerging into that kind of international or national scene from your local regional humanist work and seeing the relevance, seeing those values carry forward and seeing that sort of wider family. There's a again, maybe a spiritual kind of like moral force, certainly. There's that force of community that you don't get anywhere else. So I think that's certainly I've changed. And now I'm the evangelist for conferences and congresses and trying to get as many people there as possible. Whereas before I was more of a cynic. So certainly I would say that's something with the Congress in mind that I've changed my mind on.

James Hogson:

AJ Alvari Jeevathor, thank you so much for joining us once again on Humanism Now. My pleasure. Thanks, James.

Humanise Live:

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James Hodgson

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Alavari Jeevathol (AJ)

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