First, the Greeks discovered theoretical atheism, which “can be seen to be one of the most important events in the history of religion” [W. Burkert]. Second, the Greeks invented the term atheos. […] Third, Greeks and Romans, pagans and Christians, soon discovered the utility of the term “atheist” as a means to label opponents. The invention of atheism would open a new road to intellectual freedom, but also enabled people to label opponents in a new way. Progress rarely comes without a cost (2007, p.22)

This is really interesting. If we broaden the picture to include India, we can see that “one of the most important events in the history of religion” occurred in more than one place in the history of religions and that this applies also to terminology. By contrast, the use of “atheist” as an offensive label is not shared by Indian thinkers, who rather used in a polemical sense the label nāstika. This nicely frees the concept of atheism from its polemical bias in a South Asian context.