This is the story of a little girl of fourteen and the ambitions of her mother whom we met at the studios of Live India TV channel on the evening of 18th June. The story begins on this date, when I received a call from the channel asking if I could visit their studios if I was in Delhi. When the call arrived, Shubrum, Rakshi and I were on our way over to their house, after a very important and successful meeting with the present director of Vigyana Prasar Network, Dr.Anuj Sinha. Since Shubrum had a meeting, Rakshi and I decided to go for the live broadcast to investigate the case of this girl, Ranjana. It was the claim of her family and some others that she had the unique power to see blindfolded. Some of these folks also accompanied her to the studio. It was claimed that she had been given a certificate by the Ministry of Human Resource Development that she had the power of seeing with a cloth tied over her eyes! That was supposed to be in recognition of her ‘unique talents’. It was quite clear that this girl who was from a village near Varanasi wanted to go places! Read the full story

In my previous article we discussed how Sai Baba satisfied his sexual appetite by abusing innocent children with complete disregard to consequences to their welfare. Sexual abuse serves another purpose for Sai Baba: Dominating these children and converting them into his lifelong devotees and henchmen. In a sense, the sexual abuse is ritual castration by means of which he is telling them literally, “From now onwards I have you boys by the balls.” In a highly shame-oriented society such as India, victims feel great deal of shame to admit that they are sex abuse victims, and they are fearful of exposing such a powerful and revered person. This is further made difficult because of social pressure from victim’s fearful well-wishers; fear of corrupt police who do not hesitate to torture or murder accusers in cold blood; distrust of incompetent prosecutors, and lack of faith in the judiciary incapable of separating state and religion. Read the full story

This is about those brave ’souls’ who were very keen to teach us a lesson and then learnt the lesson that they had much more to learn than to teach, and hence chose the easy way out - run away! There are quite a number of people who have taken that path, however I am going to write only about those few that I can recall off hand. There is a lot of publicity being accorded to the one who was threatened by a Tantrik in 2008 on a TV channel. Two years later, it is still being talked about. It brings to my mind an incident that happened about a decade ago in a place called Charvathur, 75 kms south of Mangalore. Read the full story

Long before the arrogant West coined the term “pseudoscience”, the ancient Indians already knew about it. It is an art that is inherent in the self and manifests through inner pro-activeness, yogic leverage and spiritual actualization. Unfortunately, the modern mind which has been corrupted by western thought, cannot comprehend the sublime supremeness of the ancient art. So I, who is dubbed “Sri Sri….∞ ” Anantananda Swami, will explain the divine art in modern terms, using the science of Gayatri Mantra as an example.

The Gayatri Mantra is a primal force in the Universe. The scientific nature of it has been explained by an ecstatic soul sometime back in the incoherent past. Allow me to demonstrate how the art of pseudoscience was put to use in the creation of that exalted piece of literature. Read the full story

Tamilnadu, formerly known as Madras State, is where the Self-Respect Movement was first started by E.V.Ramaswamy in the early years of the twentieth century. It was for the first time that the so-called ‘lower castes’ rebelled against the hegemony of the Brahmins, and started a movement that rejected all superstitions, religious rituals and the highest superstition of them all- god! In this state whichever party comes to power has to conform to the ideology of EVR Thanthai Periyar as he came to be known. So, in this state one can expect the ideology of the rationalist movement to be accepted without any significant opposition.   Read the full story

(Professor Narendra Nayak has been traveling into the rural areas of India, promoting rationalism on the ground for over 30 years. His rationalism tours include demonstrations and training sessions for young rationalists in schools and colleges across the country. He is the successor of Basava Premanand, the world famous skeptic and rationalist, in his role as the president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations)

This is a brief account of some of my visits to the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh. It is neither a chronicle of events, nor a comprehensive report of our work there. It is a write-up about some of the incidents that have taken place in the region, which I can recall. We have been working in this area for quite some time now.

Itarsi, a town in the state of Madhya Pradesh, is an important railway junction that connects the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western parts of India. During my train journeys I would take what are known as a ‘break journeys’ in this town, while on my way to other places by rail. The prominent Indian rationalist, Premanand and I have been there together quite a few times. Read the full story

Introduction:

The recent trend in some sections of the Indian visual media is the topic of rebirth and associated quackery. In one of the channels the show started with sessions of ‘hypnotism’, taking people back to their past births, and ‘treatment’ for many of their problems of the present birth which are allegedly caused by deeds in the past life! Read the full story

In this sequel to what I had written about my last trip to Uttarakhand, I am reporting on my latest visit to this state. This is my third visit to this area; the first was in 2006 when I had been to Kotdwar and Pithoragarh and the second was in April,2009 when I had been to Uttarakashi and Hardwar.

Like the previous two this visit is also to train youngsters in developing scientific temper in connection with what we call as our “Miracle Exposure Program“. We have been conducting hundreds of these in collaboration with various organizations, mainly the National Council for Science and Technology Communications, popularly called the NCSTC. This organization had started supporting our mentor Premanand in his training programs and had already published a book called “Seeing is not Believing” in Hindi and English. They had also made a kit for presenting the same, and have been engaged in such activities for nearly three decades. Read the full story

For the last few weeks Humanists, Rationalists and Human Rights activists have been waging a huge battle against the forces of fundamentalism in Andhra Pradesh. This is a battle that involves all sections of society, and in which the media, the police, the justice system, aggressive fundamentalists, the Dalai Lama as well as the Humanists and Rationalists.. It is a battle that is being watched with keen interest by millions of homes as it unfolds on live TV and through public discussions, newspaper articles and also in homes.

The campaign started publicly with a complaint made by Babu Gogineni in the name of IHEU along with a dozen collaboratoring intellectuals and organisations with the Andhra Pradesh Human Rights Commission. The campaign’s slogan Sambhavi Gudilona Badilona? has now become the byword for TV programs, for newspaper articles and also discussions as all citizens are challenged to take a stand whether Sambhavi, a child of 7, who it is claimed is a reincarnation of a Buddhist goddess should be in school or remain in the temple. This is also a story which has catapulted Humanists and Rationalists into the limelight as superstition, religious privilege and human rights clash publicly in Andhra Pradesh state which is home to 90 million Telugu speaking people - the second largest language group in India. Read the full story

These challenges were released to the Nepal press on the occasion of a press conference at Kathmandu on the 25th of October and the same are applicable to those in India too! Read the full story