For
nearly three decades, an earnest man named Narendra Dabholkar traveled from
village to village in India, waging a personal war against the spirit world.
If
a holy man had electrified the public with his miracles, Dr. Dabholkar, a
former physician, would duplicate the miracles and explain, step by step, how
they were performed. If a sorcerer had amassed a fortune treating infertility,
he would arrange a sting operation to unmask the man as a fraud. His goal was
to drive a scientist’s skepticism into the heart of India, a country still
teeming with gurus, babas, astrologers, godmen and other mystical
entrepreneurs.
That
mission ended Tuesday, when two men ran up behind Dr. Dabholkar, 67, as he
crossed a bridge, shot him at point-blank range, then jumped onto a motorbike
and disappeared into the traffic coursing through this city.
[From The New York Times]
When
detectives began putting together a list of Dr. Dabholkar’s enemies, they found
that it was long. He had received threats from Hindu far-right groups, been
beaten by followers of angry gurus and challenged by councils upholding archaic
caste laws.
But
Dr. Dabholkar never put stock in sudden breakthroughs, said his son, Hamid
Dabholkar, as mourners filtered through the family’s home. “He knew this kind
of battle is fought across the ages,” he said. “The journey we have chosen is
one that started with Copernicus. We have a very small life, of 70 to 80 years,
and the kind of change we will see during that time will be small.”
“Instead
of dying of old age, or by surgery, which causes a lot of suffering, the death
Mr. Dabholkar got today was a blessing from God,” the leader, a former
hypnotherapist now known as His Holiness Dr. Jayant Athavale, wrote in an
editorial in the organization’s publication, Sanatan Prabhat.
His
wife, Shaila, recalled that her family had offered her an array of young men
they considered marriageable, and she had chosen him for his idealism. “We
thought only about society, and that was what we spoke about,” she said. “Even
though we were married, there was nothing like romance, or anything like that.
Both of us were patriots of idealism. We wanted a good society.”
[From
the International Herald Tribune (Pakistan print edition) of August 26,
and The New York Times of August 24, 2013.]
See
the full story: Battling superstition, Indian paid with life
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