Silver bullet

By: Vithal C Nadkarni

It was a bullet and not black magic that killed Narendra Dabholkar. Had it been otherwise, his assassins wouldn’t have had to use metallic firepower: mental/magical shots would have done the trick of silencing his clarion call against superstition.

Nor does irrational belief provide relief: Mai-Mai rebels in Africa, for instance, believe they can repel bullets with magic water blessed by a witch doctor. But it does not save the wizard himself from machetes!

Dabholkar paid the price for his beliefs: that only superstition exists and not magic, and the resulting “Sleep of Reason” unleashes great many evils on society, like bats streaming out of a cracked belfry.

Your columnist had several interactions with the activist over the years. In a TV show, we got him to replicate some of the tricks that self-styled godmen used allegedly to con or bamboozle their followers.

In another adventure, this writer spent a night with Dabholkar’s activists in a cemetery in the Konkan — we were after a Vetal, or a Vampire, that was allegedly haunting a valuable piece of land nearby. Needless to add, the spirit failed to materialise despite our most earnest entreaties.

But the goons of the local land-grabber had no such compunctions: they were the ones spreading rumours to scare away potential buyers. This highlighted the sort of dangers Dabholkar faced in his crusade against superstition. He’s gone; his ideas remain.

His death could galvanise the rationalist movement. If that happens and we get a law against superstition, he’ll have had the last laugh on his killers.