After my last post on Shobhan Sarkar and the gold hunt,  I was looking at a few debunking videos of famous skeptic and former stage magician, James Randi.  In one of those videos,  I got to know about an Indian rationalist called Sanal Edamaruku.   Sanal is an incredibly brave rationalist who put his life and safety at risk in taking on conmen posing as godmen.  He was unfortunately hounded out of India by certain influential Christian missionaries who took offence to Sanal's debunking of a so-called 'miracle' in a Mumbai church;  A statue of Jesus Christ was supposedly oozing water which was being offered to the faithful as 'holy' water.  Sanal discovered that the water actually originated from a leaking sewer!  Needless to say, this revelation was not what was desirable for the Church and its supporters and Sanal had to relocate to Finland where he is continuing his rationalist activities.  His followers in India continue to run a rationalist organization in India.

Sanal and those like him constitute the minority in India.  While most people are not superstitious and don't encourage conmen/godmen, they don't do anything to stop it either.  Those remaining are the ones who fall victim to these crooks.  Going through video after video on youtube, I was frankly flabbergasted to see the sheer variety of these 'Babas' and Gurus.  One of the more interesting ones that I came across was this guy who calls himself Nirmal Baba.  Nirmal Baba has a most interesting modus operandi: he doesn't claim supernatural powers outright, but uses several variations of techniques described by James Randi, to con people.  He poses innocuous questions to people and proceeds to link that to a problem and then suggests a solution!  The questions are really bizarre and don't really have any right or wrong answers.  No matter what the answer is,  Nirmal Baba has a suggestion.  It's a lot like the twenty-questions technique that many fraud psychics use.   What kind of questions, really?  He might tell somebody that he's getting vibes of peanut butter sandwich from him.  Hmm. When was the last time he ate peanut butter sandwich?  Oh, he hasn't eaten in years.  Ah, so he should eat it and also distribute some to ten poor people in his locality.  Oh, he ate one just the previous day? It's a favorite? Ah yes,  the Baba knew that already! Please distribute sandwiches to ten poor people.  Next person!

The questions are really silly, commonplace and no-brainers really!  Yet people throng to him and attribute their enhanced happiness to him! What about those who are there and are moaning about misfortunes? He asks them whether they contributed ten percent of their earnings when things were going well.  No? Well, there's your answer! How can you expect blessings if you are such a selfish person? And he blithely asks people to donate ten percent of their earnings to his organization and many people actually do that!  He's a millionaire several times over already and has started attracting devotees among the expatriate Indian communities and has already attended events in America as an honored guest! Last heard, he's on his way to purchasing a chain of restaurants with his ill-gotten money.  New Godmen with newer modus operandi seem to be constantly getting added to the list and it's not a heartening development.

Here's a video of Sanal explaining a few common tricks pulled by conmen in India