Dripping crucifix sparks Indian blasphemy row

[troung]

Dripping crucifix sparks Indian blasphemy row
AFP | 15 hours ago
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...93062e5998.681

Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, has spent the last three decades exposing what he says are fake miracles and fraudulent gurus across India, whose top mystics and yoga masters have amassed huge followings and fortunes. — File Photo by AFP

MUMBAI: Angry Catholics have accused an Indian sceptic of blasphemy after he argued a dripping crucifix was caused by faulty plumbing rather than divine intervention, leaving him facing a possible prison term.

Thousands of believers flocked to a suburban street in the west of Mumbai in March, when drops of water began to fall from the feet of Jesus on the cross, drinking the prized liquid in the hope that it had holy powers.

Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, suggested otherwise. He said he inspected the site and found the source of the water to be leaking toilet drainage, making it dangerous to imbibe.

“It’s a case of miracle-mongering,” Edamaruku told AFP from his home in New Delhi. “Any kind of miracle-mongering is ultimately to get money and power.”

Accusing him of spreading “anti-Catholic venom” during televised debates on the crucifix, outraged religious groups in Mumbai have filed police complaints that could see Edamaruku jailed for up to three years under India’s blasphemy law.

“Don’t try to bring dark ages in India,” Edamaruku had warned in a TV discussion.

One complaint was lodged with police by Joseph Dias, general secretary of the Catholic-Christian Secular Forum, who objected to the rationalist’s “very obvious and stridently anti-Christian bias”.

In a statement emailed to AFP, Dias denied the dripping crucifix had been hailed as a miracle, a status that requires an official Church pronouncement, but he also dismissed Edamaruku’s theory.

“A plausible explanation which makes sense is still elusive,” he wrote.

Superstitious beliefs are still widespread in India, a fast-developing and officially secular country where Hinduism dominates but a diverse range of ethnic groups, religious practices and languages co-exist.

As a prominent sceptical campaigner Edamaruku is no stranger to controversy.

His association, which claims 100,000-plus members, was set up in 1949 to campaign for scientific reasoning over superstition, a job that has become his mission in life.

The 56-year-old has spent the last three decades exposing what he says are fake miracles and fraudulent gurus across India, whose top mystics and yoga masters have amassed huge followings and fortunes.

Edamaruku’s targets have included powerful spiritual leaders such as the late Sathya Sai Baba, who was revered by millions and famed for producing baubles out of thin air.

Now Edamaruku welcomes the moves against him as “an opportunity, not a thing to be afraid of”, he said, and is challenging India’s blasphemy law.

The legislation bans “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs”,a rule Edamaruku believes runs counter to freedom of expression.

His lawyers are preparing to lobby India’s Supreme Court to overturn the colonial-era section of the penal code, as well as asking a court in Delhi to prevent his arrest.

Edamaruku said the Catholics’ response had been “like Islamic fundamentalists speaking” and drew parallels with the opposition to Mumbai-born British author Salman Rushdie.

Rushdie’s 1988 book “The Satanic Verses” remains banned in India for allegedly insulting Islam and the writer withdrew from a literary festival in January this year after death threats and angry protests.

“I always think there are two Indias,” said Edamaruku. “The 21st century, which is progressive, modern, scientific” and “17th-century India, which is pulling us back to the dark ages of intolerance, bigotry, superstition”.

[Double Edge]

Now Edamaruku welcomes the moves against him as “an opportunity, not a thing to be afraid of”, he said, and is challenging India’s blasphemy law.

The legislation bans “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs”,a rule Edamaruku believes runs counter to freedom of expression.

I wish him the best of luck

Hate speech laws in India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In my experience 9 out of 10 Indians has no problems whatsoever with such limitations

When i took a lawyer to task over it he told me provocation was valid grounds to seek redressal.

In reality this has political overtones, if you tolerate such affronts on trivial things today, they might not be so trivial tomorrow. Leads to public unrest and that is how such laws are justified.

Its for our security

[bolo121]

I wish him the best of luck

Hate speech laws in India - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In my experience 9 out of 10 Indians has no problems whatsoever with such limitations

When i took a lawyer to task over it he told me provocation was valid grounds to seek redressal.

In reality this has political overtones, if you tolerate such affronts on trivial things today, they might not be so trivial tomorrow. Leads to public unrest and that is how such laws are justified.

Its for our security

Tell me about it.
Trying to convince people that freedom is more important than soothing some ruffled feathers is just impossible.
We are such superstitious idiots!

[kato]

That's because it's not.

[USSWisconsin]

Thousands of believers flocked to a suburban street in the west of Mumbai in March, when drops of water began to fall from the feet of Jesus on the cross, drinking the prized liquid in the hope that it had holy powers.

Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, suggested otherwise. He said he inspected the site and found the source of the water to be leaking toilet drainage, making it dangerous to imbibe.

eeeww

[Double Edge]

Sanal Edamaruku's Blog

India's god laws fail the test of reason | The Hindu Op-Ed | may 7 2012



Police investigation of Sanal Edamaraku for debunking a “miracle” at a church is a crime against the Constitution.

Early in March, little drops of water began to drip from the feet of the statue of Jesus nailed to the cross on the church of Our Lady of Velankanni, down on to Mumbai's unlovely Irla Road. Hundreds began to flock to the church to collect the holy water in little plastic bottles, hoping the tears of the son of god would sanctify their homes and heal their beloved.

Sanal Edamaruku, the eminent rationalist thinker, arrived at the church a fortnight after the miracle began drawing crowds. It took him less than half an hour to discover the source of the divine tears: a filthy puddle formed by a blocked drain, from where water was being pushed up through a phenomenon all high-school physics students are familiar with, called capillary action.

For his discovery, Mr. Edamaruku now faces the prospect of three years in prison — and the absolute certainty that he will spend several more years hopping between lawyers' offices and courtrooms. In the wake of Mr. Edamaruku's miracle-busting Mumbai visit, three police stations in the capital received complaints against him for inciting religious hatred. First information reports were filed, and investigations initiated with exemplary — if unusual — alacrity.

Real courage

Mr. Edamaruku isn't the kind to be frightened. It takes real courage, in a piety-obsessed society, to expose the chicanery of Satya Sai Baba and packs of lesser miracle-peddlers who prey on the insecurities of the desperate and gullible. These actions have brought threats in their wake — but never from the state.

India's Constitution obliges all citizens to develop “scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”. India's laws, though, are being used to persecute a man who has devoted his life to doing precisely that.

Like dozens of other intellectuals and artists, Mr. Edamaraku is a victim of India's god laws — colonial-era legislation obliging the state to punish those who offend the faith of others. Section 295 of the Indian Penal Code criminalises the actions of “whoever destroys, damages or defiles any place of worship, or any object held sacred by any class of persons”. Its sibling, Section 295A, outlaws “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class”. Section 153B goes further, proscribing “any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities”. Alarmingly, given the sweeping generalities in which these laws are written, truth is not an admissible defence.

In the decades since independence, these laws have been regularly used to hound intellectuals and artists who questioned religious beliefs. In 1993, the New Delhi-based progressive cultural organisation, Sahmat, organised an exhibition demonstrating that there were multiple versions of the Ramayana in Indian culture. Panels in the exhibition recorded that in one Buddhist tradition, Sita was Ram's sister; in a Jain version, she was the daughter of Ravan. Even though the exhibits drew on historian Romila Thapar's authoritative work, criminal cases were filed against Sahmat for offending the sentiments of traditionalist Hindus.

Punjab has seen a rash of god-related cases, mainly involving Dalit-led heterodoxies challenging the high traditions of the Akal Takht. In 2007, police filed cases against Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the head of the syncretic Saccha Sauda sect, for his purportedly blasphemous use of Sikh iconography. Earlier, in 2001, similar charges were brought against Piara Singh Bhaniarawala, after he released the Bhavsagar Granth, a religious text suffused with miracle stories.

Islamic chauvinists have shown the same enthusiasm for the secular state's god laws as their Sikh and Hindu counterparts. Earlier this year, FIRs were filed against four writers who read out passages from Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses — a book that is wholly legal in India. Fear of Islamic neo-fundamentalists is pervasive, shaping cultural discourse even when its outcomes are not as dramatic as Mr. Rushdie's case. In 1995, writer Khalid Alvi reissued Angaarey — a path-breaking collection of Urdu short works banned in 1933 for its attacks on god. The collection's most-incendiary passages were censored out. India's feisty media didn't even murmur in protest after the magazine India Today was proscribed by Jammu and Kashmir in 2006 for carrying a cartoon with an image of the Kaaba as one among a metaphorical pack of political cards.

Even religious belief, ironically enough, can invite prosecution by the pious. Last year, the Kannada movie actress, Jayamala, was summoned before a Kerala court, along with astrologer P. Unnikrishna and his assistant Reghupathy, to face police charges that she had violated a taboo against women in the menstruating age from entering the Sabrimala temple.

For the most part, judges have shied away from condoning criticism of the pious, perhaps fearful of being held responsible for public disorder. In 1958, the Supreme Court heard litigation that grew out of the radical politician, E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker's decision to break a clay idol of Ganesha. Lower courts had held, in essence, that the idol was not a sanctified object. The Supreme Court differed, urging the lower judiciary “to pay due regard to the feelings and religious emotions of different classes of persons with different beliefs, irrespective … of whether they are rational or otherwise”.

‘Insult to religion'

Earlier, in 1957, the Supreme Court placed some limits on 295A saying it “does not penalise any and every act of insult to or attempt to insult the religion”. Instead, it “only punishes the aggravated form of insult to religion perpetrated with deliberate and malicious intention” (emphasis added). The court shied away, though, from the key question, of what an insult to religion actually was.

Hearing an appeal against the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to confiscate Naicker's contentious Ramayana, the Supreme Court again ducked this issue. In 1976, it simply said “the law fixes the mind of the Administration to the obligation to reflect on the need to restrict and to state the grounds which ignite its action”. “That is about all”, the judges concluded.

That hasn't, however, been all. In 1998, the Supreme Court upheld Karnataka's decision to ban P.V. Narayanna's Dharmakaarana, an award-winning re-reading of the Hindu saint, Basaveshwara. In 2007, the Bombay High Court similarly allowed Maharashtra to ban R.L. Bhasin's Islam, an aggressive attack on the faith. There have been several other similar cases. In some, the works involved were scurrilous, even inflammatory — but the principles established by courts have allowed State governments to stamp out critical works of scholarship and art.

Dangers ahead

Indians have grappled with these issues since at least 1924, when Arya Samaj activist Mahashe Rajpal published the pamphlet that led the state to enact several of the god laws. Rangila Rasul — in Urdu, ‘the colourful prophet' —was a frank, anti-Islam polemic. Lower courts condemned Rajpal to prison. In the Lahore High Court, though, Justice Dalip Singh argued that public outrage could not be the basis for legal proscription: “if the fact that Musalmans resent attacks on the Prophet was to be the measure [of legal sanction]”, he reasoned, “then an historical work in which the life of the prophet was considered and judgment passed on his character by a serious historian might [also] come within the definition”.

In 1927, when pre-independence India's central legislative assembly debated the Rangila Rasul affair, some endorsed Justice Singh's message. M.R. Jayakar likened religious fanaticism to a form of mental illness, and suggested that those who suffer from it be segregated “from the rest of the community”. This eminently sane suggestion wasn't, however, the consensus: the god laws were expanded to expressly punish works like Rangila Rasul.

Perhaps Indians can congratulate themselves that the god laws have not been used to persecute and kill religious dissenters, as the ever-expanding blasphemy laws which sprang up in Pakistan. Mr. Edamaruku's case ought to make clear, though, just where things are inexorably headed. If Indians wish to avoid the fate of the dystopia to the country's west, its citizens desperately need to accept the right of critics to attack, even insult, what they hold dear.

In 864 CE, the great physician, Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakaria al-Razi, wrote: “The miracles of the prophets are imposters or belong to the domain of pious legend. The teachings of religions are contrary to the one truth: the proof of this is that they contradict one another. It is tradition and lazy custom that have led men to trust their religious leaders. Religions are the sole cause of the wars which ravage humanity; they are hostile to philosophical speculation and to scientific research. The alleged holy scriptures are books without values”.

Following a rich scholarly life, and a tenure as director of the hospital in Baghdad patronised by the caliph Abu al-Qasim Abd 'Allah, al-Razi died quietly at his home in Rey, surrounded by his students. In modern India, his thoughts would have led him to a somewhat less pleasant end.

[lemontree]

Thousands of believers flocked to a suburban street in the west of Mumbai in March, when drops of water began to fall from the feet of Jesus on the cross, drinking the prized liquid in the hope that it had holy powers.

Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalist Association, suggested otherwise. He said he inspected the site and found the source of the water to be leaking toilet drainage, making it dangerous to imbibe.

The rationalist is quite wrong in stating that the source of water is a leaking toilet drain.
See the picture below of the cross in the Irala Church, Vile Parle (west), Mumbai. There is open sky above the cross. The source of the water is unexplained.

This happened during lent, so people then to see this as a divine message.

[Double Edge]

It took him less than half an hour to discover the source of the divine tears: a filthy puddle formed by a blocked drain, from where water was being pushed up through a phenomenon all high-school physics students are familiar with, called capillary action.

What do you make of this explanation LT ?

[tankie]

Water water everywhere

[lemontree]

What do you make of this explanation LT ?

The possible explaination could be dew or any thing else.

Expaining the phenomenon by capillary action is too fine, but what expains the dripping from the feet and not any other part of the cross. Why not from the arms of the cross. The cross and the statue of christ are separate. The cross existed since 1873, the statue was attached in 2001.

The Catholic Church has not declared it a miracle, but the people who worship there call it so.
Interestingly the water dripping phenomenon was discoved by a hindu lady who prayers at the cross after she had finished her "Narayan puja" at her home.

[Double Edge]

The possible explaination could be dew or any thing else.

Expaining the phenomenon by capillary action is too fine, but what expains the dripping from the feet and not any other part of the cross. Why not from the arms of the cross.

Would that rule out dew then. As dew would be visible all over the statue as on any other surface in the vicinity that was relatively cooler in comparison to the ambient temperature.

Another question is how much water does this statue produce, a few drops a day or more. if its more then dew is less likely.

Dripping from the feet because the torso has a larger area and gravity would pull the water down after it appeared on the surface. There is less surface area for the arms.

The cross and the statue of christ are separate. The cross existed since 1873, the statue was attached in 2001.

The Catholic Church has not declared it a miracle, but the people who worship there call it so.

yep

Interestingly the water dripping phenomenon was discoved by a hindu lady who prayers at the cross after she had finished her "Narayan puja" at her home.

When was it discovered ? since 2001 or more recent than that.

[lemontree]

Another question is how much water does this statue produce, a few drops a day or more. if its more then dew is less likely.

Really, dont know as I have not see that happening. The area is notorious for lack of parking space, so I dont go there unless its for a 6:30 am mass on 8 Sept.

Dripping from the feet because the torso has a larger area and gravity would pull the water down after it appeared on the surface. There is less surface area for the arms.

Possibly if they would have conducted an experiment with coloured water they would have had an answer.

When was it discovered ? since 2001 or more recent than that..

This is the first time we heard about it during lent in March this year.

[tankie]

Really, dont know as I have not see that happening. The area is notorious for lack of parking space, so I dont go there unless its for a 6:30 am mass on 8 Sept.


Possibly if they would have conducted an experiment with coloured water they would have had an answer.


This is the first time we heard about it during lent in March this year.

Enter the pilgrims to boost the tourist coffers at another pilgrimage

[lemontree]

Enter the pilgrims to boost the tourist coffers at another pilgrimage

Lol...not really. This particular church is dedicated to Mother Mary, and lent or no lent each mass is packed, especially the novenas every Wednesday.

[tankie]

Lol...not really. This particular church is dedicated to Mother Mary, and lent or no lent each mass is packed, especially the novenas every Wednesday.

Ahh ok