They are contributing to the fight against superstition in Karnataka

At a time when godmen are doing rather well materially, and rationalists are being murdered, a school headmaster in Karnataka has been carrying out conversions of a unique kind: turning messengers of god into rationalists.

From the outside, Hulikal Nataraj’s house in Doddaballapura town, 50 km from Bengaluru looks like any other. But inside, amid the numerous trophies and certificates, ‘miracles’ are commonplace.

On this day, Mr. Nataraj, 55, and his daughter are enacting the ‘camphor miracle’. She places one each on his head, tongue and palm, and lights them up. Her father doesn’t flinch. “You dip the bottom half of the camphor ball in water. Then the fire does not touch your skin or hair,” he explains. Mr. Nataraj began his miracle-busting in 1994, and has since inspired a small army of rationalists, some of whom were formerly godmen and astrologers.

One such, Husen Basha, 23, from Sindanur town in Raichur district, was an expert in “curing those possessed by the devil.” But a visit to the temple of his “mane devaru” (family god) a year ago changed Basha’s life. “The priests did not let me in. Then I stumbled upon the speeches of Nataraj and other rationalists online. My beliefs crumbled. Around the same time, we heard that a fake godman was duping people in a nearby village. I invited Mr. Nataraj over and we exposed this godman. Since then, I have been going to schools and colleges to dispel superstitions,” Mr. Basha said.

G.S. Rajkumar, 42, was an auto-rickshaw driver-cum-godman who believed he could parley with spirits. “Then I came across a few programmes by Hulikal sir, and I realised that what I was doing was wrong,” he said. Today, Mr. Rajkumar is a social worker. “I started a movement in Channarayapatna town in Hassan district to dispel superstitions,” he said.