John Varghese
James “The Amazing” Randi’s death last month, after a lifetime of exposing charlatans and chicanery, raked up a seven-year-old wound I didn’t know I was carrying. In August 2013, a similar life of struggle against irrationality, superstition, and exploitation of the credulous ended when Dr. Narendra Dhabolkar, a mild-mannered, soft-spoken rationalist was shot to death in Pune, India — a penalty for raising consciousness toward a rational approach to living together.
Since Dr. Dhabolkar’s assassination, my worldview has been one laced with a sense of victimhood and a lurking fear that the most likely outcome of standing up to bigoted irrationality is persecution; from the cold-shoulder in families, blackballing in organizations, ostracism in communities, and sometimes, in the polarized and inflexible other-world of intolerance, even death. In a way, I actually rejoiced that James Randi died of natural causes at a ripe old age after a fulfilling life! Dr. Dhabolkar’s life was fulfilling too. But from a selfish perspective of a consumer of the positivity his work effects in our collective well-being, I felt there was much more to come in the years that were stolen from him.
The youngest of ten siblings, Narendra grew up a true renaissance man. A scholar with almost photographic memory, he was a prolific writer and editor and went on to get his medical degree. While in college, he also represented India against Bangladesh in a major tournament of kabaddi, an intense contact sport that originated in India. A genial but incredibly disciplined rationalist, he took it upon himself to improve the lot of the illiterate masses around him through various organizations that came up in a resurgent India in the 1970s and 1980s, eventually giving up his medical practice to take on social activism as a full-time way of life.
This was a period when the rationalist movement was taking form in India. In 1963, Abraham Kovoor — a pioneer Indian-Sri Lankan rationalist who challenged psychics, mediums, and other mystics — set up a 100,000-rupee prize (about $140,000 Canadian today) to anyone who could prove the existence of the supernatural under reliably studied conditions. Kovoor’s successor and the eventual founder of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations, Basava Premanand, among many other scientific undertakings, had initiated a Vigyan Yatra (Rally for Science) in the 1980s, travelling from village to village across India encouraging the application of science in people’s lives and demystifying the work of crooked godmen who preyed on the uneducated. It was Dr. Dhabolkar’s involvement in the Vigyan Yatra movement that crystallized his thoughts and shaped his next steps.
While his emancipation activities for the illiterate masses of Maharashtra were numerous, Dr. Dhabolkar’s fame as a debunker took root in the minds of people he touched. He found he impacted more lives throwing the harsh light of scientific and public scrutiny on hokum. He ended up battling not just ideas and cultural norms but even the people who profited from the propagation of such ideas — the self-styled holy men, mystics, and quacks who performed rituals and promised miraculous cures.
In 1989, he co-founded the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (MANS) — superstition eradication committee — which brought to bear the clout of the press and organized campaigns against irrational practices while uplifting marginalized sections of society. MANS’ work included encouraging school children toward a scientific temperament, conducting inexpensive weddings, and increasing awareness of social negatives like black magic, animal sacrifice, paranormal claims, witchcraft, misogyny, cults, and other superstitious beliefs.
In 2003, Dr. Dhabolkar drafted and presented an anti-black-magic bill to the state government aiming to criminalize practices related to human sacrifice, suffering, and magic remedies. This was where the stakes rose from a mere propagation of science to crossing into the legislative no man’s land of church and state, or in this case temple and state. Hindu fundamentalists commenced the machinery of hate speech, threats, and actual physical violence to stop Dr. Dhabolkar from his work to pass an anti-black-magic bill in the state legislature, claiming the bill insulted ancient religious culture. Dhabolkar’s persistence in the face of danger culminated with two motorcyclists shooting him in his head as he took his morning walk. Four months after his assassination — ten years after he first presented it — the government passed the bill into law which is now being used successfully to bring frauds and tricksters to justice.
Reflecting on his work when asked by an interviewer in 2007, Dr. Dhabolkar admitted he never had a “do or die” attitude towards his stances in life. “I do not believe in tough, belligerent action; it is not my nature. I believe in perseverance and adopting pure and clean means to achieve the goals and that is my method of work.” To achieve his targets, he once said he required 125 years and so exercised regularly, ate healthy, slept well, and walked miles. He clearly did not expect his opponents to stoop so radically low.
As the largest democracy in the world, India has one of the freest and most active press corps on Earth. Its output is consumed with a voracious appetite by the masses. Indian society is a petri dish of new ideas, social advancements, and human well-being. There are, however, pockets of bigoted resistance all over India that are still hot enough to use violence, even to the extreme, to preserve redundant ideas. Rationalists in that part of the world truly are heroes for continuing to be who they are. It is their courage that strengthens my resolve.
Luckily for us in the Americas, and most of the so-called West, the collective temperature of ideological conflict has been cooling away from violence. Arguments, disagreements, and pressure points arising out of ideological variance are increasingly being neutralized via dialog and/or an impartial, secular legal system. This lower temperature allows the fringe edges of society — activists, criminals, or political firebrands — to be managed in relative nonviolence via politics, press, and police.
Even as we lose these bright stars of rationalism and critical thinking, we can rest assured that there is a new batch of thinkers ready to stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before and look further into a more rational future.