Rationalist Via Media

MEDIUM Shashikanth Kadilkar sat before the ouija board staring at the rolling planchette. Seated before him were rationalist Sham Manav and a 'bereaved' friend who was keen on 'talking' to his 'dead daughter'. As their seemingly motionless fingers skidded over the board, the "daughter's spectre" came visiting. As Manav's friend tearfully asked if she had committed suicide as her in-laws reported, the 'spirit' painstakingly spelt out she had been 'murdered'. For Manav this was proof of the hocus-pocus in medium-ship. "My friend didn't have a daughter. The ghost's suggestion was ridiculous. We exposed Kadilkar in Lok Prabha magazine. He folded up his board and left town."

The rationalist, who has exposed over 5,000 babas, mantriks, tantriks and spiritualists, maintains mediums take the susceptible for a spiritual ride. Says Manav: "Ghost-possession is used to act out a person's anxieties. Notice how most of these mediums and possessed persons are women. In India, where women are suppressed, this is their way of reaching out. Men react differently, beating up wives or drinking their sorrows away. For women, such 'spiritual' behaviour gives societal sanction for contacting a world otherwise closed to them. About 60 per cent are malingering or faking it, 20 per cent may be really sick, needing treatment. Some 20 per cent believe in it truly since they are susceptible to suggestions and behave in a preconditioned way after seeing others undergoing it." He should know. As a child growing up in a superstition-ridden village he'd been 'possessed', needing exorcism.

Though mediums may start off by believing in spirit contact, they fake it after savouring the impact it creates, he says. "Notice how when a person in a trance does not lose consciousness in a secluded spot. It's always before others, even if the 'otherworldly experience' may have occurred while alone. Even in that imagined state, the person takes care against injury and ensures desired audience and effect." Try explaining that to the thousands flocking to establish contact with the dead. Indeed, Manav has a challenge on his hands.