Lhendup Bhutia - Evangelists of Logic: The killing of Dr Narendra Dabholkar
In September 2009, the famous rationalist Basava Premananda of Kerala fell severely ill. He had stomach cancer and many of his major organs were close to collapse. He was admitted to a hospital in Coimbatore where he would eventually die a few weeks later. During this period, a rumour began to circulate that the fearless atheist Premananda, who had survived innumerable assassination attempts, exposed and challenged many godmen and even taken Satya Sai Baba to court, had turned to God in his last days. When Premananda’s long-time confidant and protégé Narendra Nayak visited him, the 80-year-old was drowsy and unresponsive. But when Nayak informed him of the rumour, he opened his eyes to ask, “Who says that?”
On Nayak’s suggestion, Premananda issued a declaration that he was still a rationalist and believed that his death would leave nothing other than his body—which was to be donated to a medical college—with no soul or spirit to trouble anyone. Recalling the rumour campaign now, Nayak says, “This is just one of the many ways [in which religious fanatics] have been trying to break our spirit. All of them unsuccessful.”
On 20 August this year, that spirit was thought to have suffered a blow when Dr Narendra Dabholkar, a well-known rationalist and friend of Nayak, was gunned down while out on a walk in Pune, Maharashtra. A tireless campaigner against superstition, Dabholkar was an overarching figure in India’s rationalist movement. He had transformed the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti (MANS)—a group founded by him in 1989 to fight superstition—from a handful of individuals to a mass movement that boasts over 2,000 volunteers across 200 branches in Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka.
The assassination was a shock. But it has taken just a few days for the gloom to be replaced by a redoubled dedication to Dabholkar’s cause. One of the late leader’s closest associates, Deepak Girme, a rationalist based in Pune, is busy readying a couple of science vans for a roadshow. “We’ll soon affix two inflatable domes for the projection of visuals,” he says, “Imagine… won’t children love it?”
Girme and Dabholkar had set these Vidya Bodh Vahinis rolling in 2003, each van stacked with books, posters and DVDs on science and environmental issues, aimed at reaching school children in rural Maharashtra. The mobile project was so popular that the vans’ itinerary would be chalked out a year in advance. Three years ago, sadly, both vehicles broke down. The two rationalists had planned to have them up and running—refurbished with projectors and domes—later this year.
“It would have been easy to feel helpless after his murder,” says Girme, “However, [Dabholkar] wouldn’t have wanted us to get dissuaded by what happened. He would have wanted us to carry on.”
+++
No matter what appearances suggest, the rationalist movement in India is actually expanding, with groups emerging not just in Kerala and Maharashtra, which have long had such campaigns, but also in various other states. The Tarksheel Society, a group with its origin in Punjab, now has branches in Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary in Canada, which the group claims came up to challenge the superstitious practices of many Sikhs in those cities.
At the core of the rationalist ideal is the primacy of science and logic. The argument is that in order to lead a content life, one needs no religious or spiritual guidance derived from the unproven assertions of fellow humans, fallible as they are, much less the diktats of godmen and gurus. The power of reason and a scientific temperament are enough.
Rationalists are thus atheists, but they do not push people to abandon religion altogether, focusing their efforts on attacking superstitions instead. According to them, Indians have for far too long been held under the sway of mystics claiming divine powers. “We need to disenchant people,” Girme says, “We need to show that everything in the world can be explained by logic and science without any reference to supernatural entities. This is our mission.”.. read more:
See also :
