Our success stories
Having been enlightened by our campaign, quite a few astrologers, snake charmers and occult practitioners have given up their ‘profession’ and became our followers.
‘Religion’ column in the admission form of some universities and colleges has either been abolished or made optional, by the persuasion of our relentless campaign. Government of west Bengal has, in one of its circulars issued to the head of all educational institutions, asked not to deem insertion of religious identity in the admission form as mandatory.
The ‘Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisement) Act, 1954’, which bars advertising magical cures, was lying un-applied and inactivated since its enactment, until we demanded to the authority for the regular application of this act, and went on campaigning about the issue, and also submitted several complaints regarding cases of violation of this act. A good number of fraudulent practitioners thereafter have been accused and arrested under this act.
Domination, credibility and reverence enjoyed so far by the conjurers are now falling into a decline, due to increase of mass awareness. People now prefer to go to the hospitals rather than relying on the occult power of the charlatans. Despite wretched condition of the tertiary health sector in the state, something positive has occurred. Anti–venom serum (AVS) and anti-rabies vaccines are now being preserved and administered at so many rural health centres and block-level hospitals. For changing this scenario we had to motivate people by means of mass signature campaign, rallies and hundreds of street-corner meetings. And in one case, our activists even had to go on a hunger strike.
Our protest induced the ‘Science City’ authority in Calcutta to remove horoscope vending machine from its premises in 1999.
It must be mentioned here that, behind such achievements, apart from our own contribution, there are also important contributions of other rationalist/science organizations, as well as committed individuals.
More than 50 occult practitioners have either been defeated and ravaged by our challenge, or have simply escaped the challenge. Here are furnished below a short list of who figures top, among them.
(1) Witch queen Ipsita, (2) Vice Chancellor of Sai Education International, (3) Tantrik Nirmalananda, (4) Huzur Saidabadi of Bangladesh, (5) American faith healer Morris Cerullo, (6) South Indian Faith healer Father N. Perambel and P.P Jobe, (7) Fakir S. P. Ali, (8) Subhas Thakur, (9) Sidhha Subal of Tripura, (10) Binduam, are only a few to name. Besides, there are a band of astrologers and palmists : (1) Paramita, (2) ‘King of astrology’ Dr Asit Kumar, (3) Sukdev Goswami alias ‘Vreegu Acharya’, (4) Manimala, (5) Sri Rabi Sastri, (6) Arun Kumar, (7) Ramkrishna Sastri, (8) Debjani, (9) Acharya Satyananda, (10) Sri Aditya etc.
India witnesses some thirty thousand deaths of snake bite every year, a large portion of which occurs due to adoption of various irrational means. Besides insufficiencies of government health services, unscientific notions and dependence on ojhas, add to the misery of the people. Our challenge and consistent campaign against the charlatans have helped curb the problem, especially in the West Bengal. Here furnished below is a brief account of the defeated ‘ojhas’ — rural faith-healers of snake-bite.
In a public show in 1993 at Chakdah in Nadia district a group of seven ojhas acknowledged their defeats and promised to give up their practices. In the same year Nikhil Ojha of Bangaon was challenged and defeated at the ‘townhall ground’ there, before the eyes of a strong crowd of least seven thousand people. Another powerful ojha and priest of a local Manasa temple, Ajit Pramanick, was also challenged but did not dare to turn up. The whole programme was video- taped by a team of a documentary film ‘Guru Busters’ for Channel IV of BBC. The film was later telecast world wide in 1995.
A group of four ojhas and snake charmers of ‘Chatni’ village in 24 parganas (north) was also challenged, defeated, and finally undertook to leave their ‘profession’.
Renowned female-ojha Smt Lakshmi Biswas, alias ‘Shantima’ of Bhabanipore village in Bangaon, was put to jail for practising magical healing of snake-bite patients, following our complain against her to the authority.
The American faith healer Morris cerullo’s public show in 1993 at the Park Circus ground ended up in his arrest and later removal from country after being branded as ‘Persona non grata.’ This event was greatly covered by the mass media.
Dr. P. P. Jobe, another prominent faith healer of south India, had to undergo a bitter ordeal here in Calcutta after several successful miracle jamborees in other states. His 3-day miracle faith healing public show at St. Thomas School ground under the guise of ‘New Millennium Musical Dhamaka’ simply turned to a religious congregation after our interference. We strongly demonstrated at the venue against such open public deceiving, before the local and international press and the attending crowd. We were arrested by the police, but the cause of public deceiving could actually be defeated. Deception was exposed before the crowd, and media covered the incidence.
Our massive protest against the ‘Parliament of Religions’ in 1993 created some stir, and also some embarrassment for Ramkrishna Mission, the organizer of the conference. The meet was arranged to commemorate Vivekananda’s Chicago Address. The then president of India, Dr. Sankar Dayal Sharma, was to inaugurate the meet. All union ministers and ministers of the left front government of the State of West Bengal were invited, and among other dignitaries invited was the renowned Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama. Ramkrishna Mission’s intention behind this extravaganza was to broaden its political influence in the political-administrative milieu, under the shield of religious assemblage. Their attempt sparked off wrath of the rationalist activists and good thinking citizens, because they thought that, presenting administrative public figures in a religious program goes sharply against the secular stand of the Constitution of India. We brought them all in a contending platform. So many more individuals and organizations also joined us. Among them the most notable was the employees’ union of an R. K. Mission hospital, who wanted to rally with us to bring to light the deprivation and humiliation of the employees of that hospital. A motion was passed by a mass convention against R. K. Mission’s unconstitutional attempt of mixing up religion with politics. Our move got a wide media coverage. We requested the public dignitaries over a facsimile message, including the Dalai Lama, not to attend the meet. The Dalai Lama, and ministers of the State of West Bengal, in fact kept themselves abstained from attending the conference. We organized a rally at esplanade to register our protest on the day. Among us were radical politicians, educationists, journalists and columnists. Two foreigners were also there in the queue — a Swedish journalist and a German professor. Faces wrapped with black cloth and placard bearing bantering slogans and cartoons, moved towards the venue but were restrained midway by the police, though the procession was very much peaceful and disciplined. Police arrested 102 activists of our association including 22 women, and we were taken to the ‘Central Lock Up’ of ‘Lalbazar’, the Police Headquarter of West Bengal. We were finally released by the night, after long altercation with the authority. In the history of our movement, this achievement still remains to be a resounding one.
Under the Chief Ministership of Jyoti Basu, the government of West Bengal in 2000 advanced to set up a nuclear power plant in the Sunderbans, a biosphere reserve declared by the United Nations. Like other organizations, working on environment issues, we too, expressed our strong resentment against setting up of this plant. We arranged so many street corner meetings, symposiums, poster exhibitions and held rallies to make our views public. At Durgapur our local branch organized a seminar on the issue entitled ‘Nuclear Power Plant : Problems and Potentials’. Besides other stalwarts in the field, Member of Parliament and hardcore initiator of the plant Dr. Radhika Ranjan Pramanick was also present on the dias. Arguments placed by Radhika Ranjan and others in favour of the project were hashed to pieces by their counterparts Pradip Dutta, an activist in the field and others. The myth that nuclear power being the cheapest, the cleanest and the safest than other forms of power was debunked categorically. A large portion of the audience were greatly moved by these arguments and stood against the strategy of the government. Rallies and procession arranged in other parts of the state also got sound response. Thus our campaign played some role in the postponement of the project.
Bleeding hoax of a statuette of Jesus Christ at the residence of a Protestant lady was exposed in 1998. Ajanta Chatterjee, a criminal lawyer by profession and his husband masterminded the act of deception. We carried out through investigation and successfully indicated the source of the blood stain in the statue. Complaint was lodged against the duo with the local police station accusing them of perpetrating a fraud, cheating and misleading people in the name of religion, provoking religious frenzy and causing public nuisance by spreading rumours about the bleeding of Jesus. We also announced a prize of Rs. 50,000/- challenging them to prove that the blood was indeed that of Christ. Following our challenge and police intervention, visitor’s access to the premises was forbidden and the Chatterjees fled the city.