Umesh Kumar Rustagi, curator at the Nehru Science Centre, explains how conmen use basic scientific tricks to impress their audience; experts offer an insight into the simple and cheap tricks gurus use
Illustrations/Ravi Jadhav
The Dera Sachcha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's 20-year jail sentence came with heavy security deployed all across northern India. Though Mumbai seemed relatively calm, there was a feeling of walking on eggshells last afternoon as the verdict was being read out.
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Umesh Kumar Rustagi, curator at the Nehru Science Centre, explains how conmen use basic scientific tricks to impress their audience. The most famous among these involves eating a flaming paan to prove the Godly trait of gobbling fire.
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The nail chair at Nehru Science Centre comes with no pain to your posterior
Superstition and Godmen who have a cult following, "Very often come with a package of violence," says Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti's (MANS) state executive president Avinash Patil. The organisation, which is founded by late rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar slain in Pune, has different arms of the organisation spread like tentacles offering Science, to counter bogus claims and sham miracles and take the sheen off superstitious beliefs.
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Double walled vessel which makes water vanish!
Image building
"We have our people in Mumbai, in Dadar and Goregaon and in fact everywhere in Maharasthra, I am in Dhulia, because self-styled Godmen are everywhere in cities and in small towns and villages. They first build an 'image' for themselves beginning with some sort of 'miracle.' Then, when they have amassed followers, politicians follow as the latter believe they have a natural base from which to get a vote bank. In this way, they can address their prospective vote bank at one place."
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Umesh Kumar Rustagi
For Patil, fraud and illegalities go together, with con cult followings spiralling dangerously like "property grabbing, storing weapons in their lairs or ashrams with support from political leaders and influential people all which bestow the sham with further credibility."
Action needed
For Patil, women "are especially vulnerable to the lure because even in cities, in fact everywhere it is up to the woman to pass on the beliefs and rituals of any religious practice to the next generation."
People need to develop a scientific temper and they also need to follow our constitution which says we need to, "create scientific temperament and the spirit of free thinking." The law or police department Patil says "needs to swing into action. Have a list of purported Godmen in every police station like you have of absconders. Investigate their property, their work, their 'miracles' and even their 'followers'. Finally, 'entertain' complaints against them, instead of brushing them off as frivolous," ends Patil.
Deadly allure
For Mumbai's Umesh Kumar Rustagi, curator, Nehru Science Centre at E Moses Road, Worli one of whose aims are the, popularisation of Science, "it is the quick fix solution and the slick way that shams are packaged in, which is the big lure." Rustagi also says that frauds, "have television channels as publicity vehicles which are such a powerful medium." Relatively, Rustagi says, "our tools to blunt that force may seem less potent and as a result less alluring. We need to keep trying though. The Science centre has 'anti-superstition demonstrations' especially for schoolchildren, where the message is driven home early."
Nail that
The curator says, "One of the famous tricks of Godmen is to put a burning paan in their mouth and shut it, telling his awestruck public, he can eat fire. The fire will go out because the mouth is wet and when you shut it, oxygen is cut off, so it is extinguished. They certainly cannot eat fire!" Then, laughs Rustagi, "is another where they sleep on a bed of nails, showing they do not get hurt. We have a chair made of nails in the Science Centre. We tell people to sit on it and you will not get hurt, because the weight is distributed. Tell the Godman to stand on one nail and see how he hops!"
Hoax coax
Other favourite hoaxes are, Rustagi says, "is to make water vanish. This is done in a 'double walled' receptacle, where the water simply goes behind to the second wall so it is not seen. Then, the charlatan makes it 're-appear' magically to his stupefied followers," finishes the curator saying they puncture claims like these in their demonstrations. In the end, like Patil, Rustagi also feels at times it is not just superstition but, it "is also accompanied by violence," in the current case, "it shows not just a lack of scientific temperament, but support for somebody who has committed crimes. It shows the wrong mentality of society," finishes the Science curator, turning back to bust more bogus claims in the leafy environs of the Mahalaxmi centre.
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