5 September 2013

by Praful Bidwai

The assassination of Indian anti-superstition activist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune is an ugly black mark on society. The forces of fanatical intolerance, superstition, irrationality and social reaction which killed Dabholkar did so not because he threatened their faith or freedom of expression, but because he believed that it’s wrong to exploit people through black magic, sorcery, and sleights-of-hand while invoking supernatural powers.

Personal rivalry cannot explain Dabholkar’s killing. As those knew him would testify—including this writer, who had the pleasure of knowing him and writing for the remarkable weekly “Sadhana” which he edited—he was too amiable and disarming a man to inspire a personal animus.

Dabholkar was an independent intellectual with strong anti-superstition convictions, which are anathema to obscurantists, religious bigots and reactionaries. A society in which rationalist intellectuals are killed, but violent rituals to exorcise “evil spirits” are condoned, cannot be called minimally civilised. India is hurtling towards that status: over the last 15 years, 2,500 women were killed in witchcraft rituals, according to anti-superstition activists.

The police still haven’t determined who planned Dabholkar’s killing, but it would be no surprise if caste panchayats or Hindutva groups like Sanatan Sanstha and Hindu Janajagriti Samiti—which hated his committee for the eradication of superstition—plotted it, their denials notwithstanding.

Sanatan Sanstha founder Jayant Athavale wrote a sinister obituary on Dabholkar: “instead of dying bedridden through illness, or a painful death following a surgery”, he died instantly: this was, “in a way, a blessing of the Almighty”. This can rationalise any murder, however revolting.

Three days later, activists of the Akhil Bhrartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (the Bharatiya Janata Party’s student wing) broke up a memorial meeting for Dabholkar in Pune, and assaulted members of the Left-wing music band Kabir Kala Manch. They branded the organisers “Naxalites” because one of them refused to chant “Jai Narendra Modi” when ordered to do so.

Another pointer is the last anonymous threat to Dabholkar: “Remember Gandhi. Remember what we did to him”. This lays claim to Nathuram Godse’s hideous legacy. Even the normally mild-mannered Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said that Dabholkar’s killers have “the same mindset” as Gandhi’s assassins. One must sincerely hope that the police investigation is scrupulous and “gets to the bottom of the conspiracy”, as Chavan promises.

The assassination is the latest in a series of explosions of intolerance witnessed in Pune, including the ransacking of the prestigious Bhadarkar Oriental Research Institute by the Maratha-chauvinist Sambhaji Brigade in 2004 over a book on Shivaji, killing of five progressive social activists in 2010, and the cancellation of a screening of Sanjay Kak’s film on Kashmir in 2012.




Dabholkar’s killing marks a new low in Maharashtra’s cultural retrogression. This is especially tragic because Maharashtra was the crucible of India’s progressive social reform movement for a century, led by Shahu Maharaj, Jyotiba Phule, Savitribai Phule, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, DK Karve, MG Ranade, Ramabai Ranade, and not least, BR Ambedkar.
Social reform took roots among ordinary people mainly in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, where its leaders articulated the plebeian masses’ aspirations. The mobilisation of Dalits and Other Backward Classes, which followed later in North India, owes much to this early movement.




Maharashtra saw the flowering of India’s first Bahujan Samaj (non-Brahmin) mobilisation against religious orthodoxy, casteism, sati, gender discrimination, and barring of temple entry to Dalits. The movement championed girls’/women’s education and widow remarriage. It firmly embraced the Enlightenment values of reason and critical inquiry.




The reformists always faced venomous opposition, including social boycott, from traditionalists and upper-caste status quoists. But they heroically resisted—and at times succeeded in pushing through pro-people measures.




The balance changed in the 1960s with the rise of the chauvinist-communal Shiv Sena, which worked to reverse the gains of social reform, with support from the ruling Congress. With this, says social critic Shanta Gokhale, the needle that had oscillated “between Maharashtra’s progressive and regressive heritage stopped on the side of regression.”
Dabholkar was a rationalist. But he didn’t campaign against faith per se, only against blind faith and exploitation of gullible people through witchcraft, tricks passed off as “miracles”, and infliction of harmful “magical” rites such as beatings and torture to drive out the “evil spirits” to which people’s health or financial problems are falsely attributed.
He trenchantly opposed tantrik-shamanic practices such as preventing medical treatment for illnesses, and relying on mantras instead; animal and human sacrifice to ward off ill-luck; falsely branding people as Satanical agents or carriers of misfortune; or claiming to perform surgery or change the sex of a foetus with one’s fingers.
Dabholkar lobbied hard for the Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Bill, which hung fire for 18 years thanks to the Hindu Right’s opposition. This seeks to prosecute people for claiming supernatural powers; defaming saints/gods by claiming to be their reincarnation; and ill-treating people in psychological distress in the belief that they are smitten by evil spirits.
It covers rituals performed to beget a male child, and claims to omniscience by virtue of being “possessed” by supernatural powers. After Dabholkar’s killing, the Maharashtra government brought an ordinance to implement the Bill.
This only completes one part of Dabholkar’s unfinished agenda. The rest lies in extending such laws to the whole of India, and vigorously promoting the scientific temper and a spirit of critical inquiry—not just in classrooms, not just to earn degrees or jobs, but in daily life, while making crucial decisions about individual freedom, marriage, the family and religion.




This agenda has acquired great relevance and urgency in today’s South Asia. Liberalisation and globalisation have disrupted old social balances and faith systems and given rise to a politicised religiosity in our region. A “pop Hinduism” thrives in India, centred on temples, pilgrimages, god-men and –women, with new, more ostentatious rituals—amidst an explosive growth of superstition, especially among the middle class.




In the 1960s, being superstitious was considered incorrect and infra dig among educated Indians. Now, it’s fashionable to rely on astrological predictions, wear flashy gemstones, get advice from outright quacks, and deify sadhus and self-proclaimed holy men.




Weird practices like wiccanism (literally, practising witchcraft), regression therapy (when you delude yourself to be the reincarnation of a mythological figure like Kaikeyee), and performance of elaborate havans and yagnas to bring fortune have pervaded middle class life. Observances like kathas, jagrans and bhajans are getting more public and raucous.




As Meera Nanda argues in The God Market, this religiosity is cultivated by “the emerging state-temple-corporate complex”, which is corrupting secular public institutions and embedding Hindu rituals and symbols in the affairs of the state. Hindu religiosity is also getting fused with national pride and the idea that India’s recent (and alas, fast-eroding) economic success is rooted in the superiority of its ancient (read, Hindu) civilisation.

This religiosity is supported by the state, temple-related bodies, and business groups. It’s easily harnessed to political causes and to greater intolerance towards the religious minorities. This is nowhere more evident than in Ayodhya, where a new kind of parikrama was invented to sow communal hatred. Opposing such pernicious practices and defending rationality would be the right homage to Dabholkar.




Bidwai is a writer, columnist, and a professor at the Council for Social Development, Delhi.