Black Magic Guru Shoots Blanks

File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

It began when a Hinduvta politician (the racist and nationalistic political movement in India) publicly claimed she was being harassed by tantric black magicians:

Everything started, when Uma Bharati (former chief minister of the state of Madhya Pradesh) accused her political opponents in a public statement of using tantrik powers to inflict damage upon her. In fact, within a few days, the unlucky lady had lost her favorite uncle, hit the door of her car against her head and found her legs covered with wounds and blisters.

In an effort to inject some sense into the Indian mediasphere, Sanal Edamaruku, the president of Rationalist International, organized The Great Tantra Challenge, a TV ratings bonanza and proof these so-called tantric black magicians are nothing more than impotent con men with criminally-utilized pathological imaginations:

The encounter took place under the open night sky. The tantrik and his two assistants were kindling a fire and staring into the flames. Sanal was in good humour. Once the ultimate magic was invoked, there wouldn’t be any way back, the tantrik warned. Within two minutes, Sanal would get crazy, and one minute later he would scream in pain and die. Didn’t he want to save his life before it was too late? Sanal laughed, and the countdown begun. The tantriks chanted their “Om lingalingalingalinga, kilikilikili….” followed by ever changing cascades of strange words and sounds. The speed increased hysterically. They threw all kinds of magic ingredients into the flames that produced changing colours, crackling and fizzling sounds and white smoke. While chanting, the tantrik came close to Sanal, moved his hands in front of him and touched him, but was called back by the anchor. After the earlier covert attempts of the tantrik to use force against Sanal, he was warned to keep distance and avoid touching Sanal. But the tantrik “forgot” this rule again and again.

Now the tantrik wrote Sanal’s name on a sheet of paper, tore it into small pieces, dipped them into a pot with boiling butter oil and threw them dramatically into the flames. Nothing happened. Singing and singing, he sprinkled water on Sanal, mopped a bunch of peacock feathers over his head, threw mustard seed into the fire and other outlandish things more. Sanal smiled, nothing happened, and time was running out. Only seven more minutes before midnight, the tantrik decided to use his ultimate weapon: the clod of wheat flour dough. He kneaded it and powdered it with mysterious ingredients, then asked Sanal to touch it. Sanal did so, and the grand magic finale begun. The tantrik pierced blunt nails on the dough, then cut it wildly with a knife and threw them into the fire. That moment, Sanal should have broken down. But he did not. He laughed. Forty more seconds, counted the anchor, twenty, ten, five… it’s over!

Note that this was the third attempt to kill Sanal on live TV. All three failed of course, the last in front of 300-million viewers. It's no wonder we haven't been vanquished yet, as the reader who tipped us to this wonderful event jokingly warned us about.

This is one of the great tragedies of the Hinduvta. As long as the superstition of Hinduism, including ideas about black magic, gets promoted as canonical truth, India will never become the great world power these nationalist folks expect her to be. They are shooting themselves in the foot with every politician who hires black magicians, or fears them, making demonstrations like Sanal's one of the best things that can happen for the future of India.