No food, no water for 60 years!

Indian Ministry of Defence and NASA taken in by a village fraud

The Indian Rationalist Association has criticized the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) and America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for promoting gullibility and undermining the development of scientific temper in India.

"The Indian Ministry of Defence and the NASA have obviously been taken in by the absurd claims of a village fraud," wrote Sanal Edamaruku, Secretary General of the Indian Rationalist Association, in a letter to the Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes. "It is shocking to see that government officials and scientists are so gullible to believe that a human being can survive 60 years without food and water! The claim does not only contradict experience and common sense, but also our well-established biological and medical knowledge about the functioning of the human body. It is absolutely impossible that it is true - if it was, it would disprove the laws of physiology and we would have to rewrite our scientific text books!"

The MoD had sent a team of physicians to Charada village in Gujarat state to conduct medical tests on one Prahlad Jani, a 78-year-old man, who claims he lives without food and water since 60 years. "We are trying to understand how he has been able to remain without food and water for so many years", said neuro-physician Dr. Sudhir Shah, who heads the team, very seriously. "NASA is involved in the project which is being coordinated by the MoD and has issued specific guidelines not to disclose any details about Jani."

"By 'testing' this man for 10 days without exposing him, the mysterious operation of MoD and NASA gives enormous credence to his absurd claims. Why this mystic mongering? The public has a right to know the nature and the results of the tests. It is an affair of public interest like any crime", wrote Edamaruku. "If your physicians have been able to expose the false claims, it is your duty to come out with the truth. If they are still marveling at the 'unexplainable miracle' due to inexperience and lack of skeptical faculties, we demand urgently that the opportunity to be given to the Indian Rationalist Association's experts to overtake and complete the investigation."

The Indian Rationalist Association has experienced specialists for such cases and a long track record of successful investigations into similar claims. Up to now, all of them have been exposed as frauds.

In 1999, there had been the widely reported case of Kumari Neerja from Jalaun district (Uttar Pradesh state), who claimed that she was the reincarnation of the Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of letters and literature. She stayed alone in a small closet and allegedly did not take any food for five years and did not excrete urine or stool. Since her managers announced that she would soon transform into a lifeless statue of Saraswati, the police was alarmed.

In cooperation with the police, our young rationalist investigators and physicians verified her room and found the entry to a little toilet hidden behind a shelf and a brick hole, through which she received food. Blood tests revealed the presence of glucose, indicating the intake of food. When finally a harmless gas, causing vomiting sensation, was released into her room, she vomited pieces of chapatti and potatoes. The confused woman turned out to be a mental case and was admitted to the local government hospital.

In 1992, Sanal Edamaruku exposed the godman Pilot Baba who claimed that he survived in meditation under water for five days without breathing. Pilot Baba's under-water feat attracted national and international attention. He constructed a huge swimming pool in a Delhi public park, climbed down in front of a crowd of 4000, ordered water to be pumped in and stayed there underwater for four days. That was at least the claim.

But Edamaruku and his assistants exposed him. They found out that there was a special secret pipeline connection. Though water was pumped in, the tarpaulin-covered pool did not get wet inside, and the Baba had a comfortable time on its dry ground. Four years later, in 1996, he tried it again. This time he claimed to stay for four days buried under the earth. Edamaruku exposed him again in front of television cameras. This time he was sitting comfortably in an underground dug-up room.

Vatican: The runaway archbishop

For more than two years, Archbishop Emanuel Milingo has been held under Vatican arrest in a monastery in Zagarola near Rome. Now he escaped. The Vatican press office keeps mum about the absconder.

In May 2001, the Zambian Archbishop Milingo caused embarrassment to the Vatican, when the news of his marriage with a Korean member of the Moonie sect in New York hit international headlines. He denounced the marriage under pressure of the Vatican and was put under arrest. Now he escaped with an Italian painter, Alva Vitali, to Lecco in northern Italy.

In 1983, the rebel cleric had been removed from Zambia, allegedly because he performed exorcism and faith healing and included tribal rites and witchcraft in his masses. This was obviously a pretext, as exorcism is an officially recognized practice for the Vatican, which has even been performed by the Pope himself. Faith-healing can open the way to sainthood, as the much celebrated ovarian miracle of the late Mother Teresa shows. And the blending of Catholicism with local rites and believes is John Paul II's special recipe for successful proselytizing. He calls it "inculturation".

Milingo, however, was not proposed for sainthood for his miracles. He lost his job and was taken as archbishop emeritus of Lusaka (sinecure) into custody in the Vatican. But the dispute about his performance continued. Milingo could not bear life in the holy cage and under the watchful eyes of his critics. Finally he got so frustrated that he took to the adventure of his Moonie marriage, as he explains in his recently published book "Fished from the mud".

India: Communist government in Calcutta bans Taslima Nasreen's new book

The Indian Rationalist Association has strongly condemned the ban of Taslima Nasreen's book Dwikhandita (Split in Two) by the Left Front government of West Bengal state led by the Communist Party of India –Marxist (CPI –M).

"Banning books is a violation of freedom of expression and freedom of information and against the spirit of the Indian Constitution and the spirit of civilization", the IRA wrote in an open letter to Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattarcharjee. "It is no justification for this act of censorship that it was done with the 'good intention' to prevent communal violence: Books don't cause violence. The mob does not read. There are certain people who use books to incite and operate the mob. If there is no blasphemous book at hand, they will find some other provocation."

Dwikhandita appeared recently in Bengali language as the third part of Taslima Nasreen's autobiography. Some Muslim intellectuals in Calcutta felt it could hurt Muslim sentiments and recommended banning. Chief Minister Bhattacharjee obliged and banned the book under Section 153 A, Indian Penal Code to prevent communal tension. In the night of 28 November, he had Calcutta's book shops raided and all available copies seized. The opposition (Congress Party) welcomed the move.

Taslima Nasreen is an Honorary Associate of Rationalist International.

Thailand: Feminist temple revolution

Chatsumarn Kabilsingh (59) did not want to become a Buddhist nun. She wanted to become a monk. Nuns are only low level assistants to monks. Since 700 years, the Buddhist clergy of Thailand is exclusively male. Today, there are about 300.000 monks in the country.

Chatsumarn, who studied religion at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, some thirty years back, got ceremoniously ordained in Sri Lanka in 2001 and returned to her temple near Bangkok in saffron robes and with a shaven head. That sparked a revolution. Not only the conservative clergy was outraged. She was criticized, threatened and abused in public and in the media. But she held her ground and insisted to be accepted as the first female member of the clergy.

Slowly the idea caught the imagination. Meantime there are five more women monks, ordained in Thailand, and young girls have started queuing to become novices. A member of parliament has proposed to legalize female ordination, and even the supreme governing council of Thai Buddhism is thinking about the possibility to accept the end of the male monopoly.

USA: 'Ten Commandments' judge ousted

In an extraordinary decision, a special ethics panel of Alabama judges has stripped the state's chief justice, Roy S Moore, of his office as he "placed himself above the law".

Moore, better known as Alabama's 'Ten Commandments' judge, had a huge granite monument with the Decalogue installed in the lobby of the Supreme Court of Alabama. Atheist and civil liberties organizations took up the grudges against this "monumental violation of the constitution", which prohibits the display of religious symbols on public property. In September, a federal court ordered the removal of the unconstitutional stone. Moore defied the order adamantly. The ruling was upheld by a federal appeals court. The US Supreme Court refused to hear Moore's appeal.

The two and a half ton granite monument, personally designed by Moore and silently pushed into the court building in the night of 31 July 2000, has meantime been rolled into a storage room. Now the chief justice himself is on his way out for willfully and publicly ignoring the law.