Born Again! The Indian way
Sanal Edamaruku exposes reincarnation claims in live TV
The belief in reincarnation is widespread and deep-rooted in India. It is inspired by Hindu religious beliefs and fuelled by the wish that there should be some kind of escape route from pressing social realities into another, better life. Tales of rebirth are catching people's imagination and get fast currency, especially among the poor in rural India.
Sanal Edamaruku with a "reborn" girl from Punjab
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In cooperation with Star TV, one of the big channels in Hindi language with nation-wide outreach, Sanal Edamaruku exposed two reincarnation cases within a few weeks, encouraging and enabling millions of viewers all over India to confront this superstition with reality, wherever they meet it.
Five questions to a parroting boy
In a live program on 30th March 2006, Star TV introduced a reincarnation case in Bagpat village in the north Indian state of Haryana. Villagers were thronging in a courtyard, where one of them, a man in his thirties, presented his four-year old son to the TV cameras. Some months ago, the boy expressed fear seeing a tractor, the father told the reporter. Strangely, he soon started insisting his name was Pavithra - the name of a well-off farmer in a neighboring village, who had been killed by robbers five years ago. They shot at him, when he was driving his tractor. The bullet hit his neck and he died on the spot.
To prove that his son was Pavithra's reincarnation, the father held the boy towards the cameras and quizzed him repeatedly: What is your name? What is your father's, mother's sister's name? And where did the bullet hit you? The boy answered in accordance with his father's tale. Without any hesitation, he gave his name as Pavitra and the names of his relatives as those of Pavitra's. When asked about the bullet, he pointed to his own neck: here! The villagers were impressed and completely convinced that the boy was Pavithra's reincarnation. And so was the dead man's family, who had already taken the child into their house and thought about adopting it.
Sanal Edamaruku pointed at some flaws and discrepancies of the case. The dates of Pavithra's death and the boy's birth, for example, did not match. There was a gap of two years between the two, where the "soul" wouldn't have had a body. Most disturbing, however, was that the boy's answers were obviously tutored. After he reacted several times "correctly" to his father's never changing sequence of five questions, the reporter put the same questions in a different order, and the child gave regardlessly his monotonous set of answers like a parrot: What is your father's name? - Here! (He pointed to his own neck.) Strangely, nobody was disturbed by this fact, before it was pointed out.
Since the farmer's fate had been on everyone's lips some years back, there was also nothing special or even miraculous about a child being aware of names and details. Reincarnation claims usually start as a child's fantasy in an age, when dream and reality are not yet distinguished, Sanal Edamaruku explained. By repeating their fantasies again and again, children use to grow and modify them according to the reactions of their surroundings into perfect stories and are convinced they are reality. In this case, the fantasy was obviously taken up by the boy's father, who became the operator of the claim.
Interestingly, nearly all reincarnation stories are - knowingly or unknowingly - suitable to serve social uplift. It is always a child from a poor family that claims - mostly supported by its parents and well-wishers - to be a re-born member of a comparatively richer family, never otherwise round. That explains that such stories use to be quite resistant. They offer benefits to all those involved. For the child and its parents, the story is a ticket into a better future; the other family finds consolation in the idea that their ill fated kin allegedly returns as a child. And the audience finds relief in the belief that there could be a better life waiting for them after death.
A Hindu woman reborn as a Muslim girl
In another program on Star TV, nine members of a family from a village in Punjab were brought to the TV studio in order to piece together the story of a three-year-old girl, who was believed to be a reincarnation. Sanal Edamaruku started his investigation before the beginning of the program in the visitor's waiting room by casually interviewing all family members. There was something special about this case: the little girl's family was Muslim, while the deceased, a young woman from a far off village near Delhi, had been Hindu. The woman had been deserted from her husband, when she was pregnant. She died, according to a medical certificate, of pneumonia. This happened some three years back, fitting with the time, when her "reincarnation" was born. The little girl claimed to bear the woman's name and would proudly show her earlobes to everybody, which allegedly showed pressing marks of the heavy earrings, the deceased used to wear.
Sole representative of the deceased woman's family in the TV studio was her fifteen-year-old niece, who had been very close to her. It was through this niece, who happened to live in the same Punjabi village as the child's family, that the "reincarnation" was identified. The niece's school was adjacent to the kindergarten, visited by the little girl, and the two befriended each other. It is easy to guess, how the child's knowledge about her friend's aunt and her earrings transpired. It was also obvious that the niece, who never overcame the death of her beloved and unlucky aunt, was extremely happy to see her living on as the friendly little girl. On inquiry another interesting aspect of the story came to light. There had been strong criticism in the village about the close friendship between the Hindu niece and the Muslim kindergarten girl. It was silenced at once, when the reincarnation story came up.
The suspect that the niece was the operator of this reincarnation claim proved correct. It turned out that she had successfully spread confusion about the woman's cause of death. According to the belief, only victims of a violent death - by murder or accident - are entitled to be reborn. Since the niece had a strong desire to establish the reincarnation, she fantasized a different death for her aunt. She insisted that the aunt had died of a bicycle accident and that she herself had seen bruises and wounds caused by the accident on the dead body. There were many contradictions in her tale, but still the girl's family and obviously also some (absent) members of her own family believed her. The medical certificate, however, exposed her.
Sanal Edamaruku's sensible and careful handling of both the cases called to mind that exposing superstitions without consideration for the individuals entangled in them can cause much damage. In a live TV program of one hour, it is hardly possible to help victims of superstition to resist the social and psychological drives behind their unreasonable thought and behavior. With tact and great skill Sanal Edamaruku succeeded, however, in exposing the absurd claims of reincarnation and their roots and mechanisms uncompromisingly for the audience to understand without inflicting pain and personal embarrassment on the victims that could disturb their mental balance.