WHEN the men on motorbikes shot him, four times in head, neck and chest, Narendra Dabholkar was crossing the bridge by the Omkareshwar temple in Pune, in western India. But he had no intention of offering a garland there, saying a prayer, pressing a coin in a priest’s hand or adoring the Shiva linga. He did not believe in such behaviour. In fact, it appalled him; and he had hoped to spread his scepticism all through the state of Maharashtra.

He was a slight and courteous man, with unfashionable spectacles, in simple khadi shirt, slippers and cotton trousers: no one to notice on the street. Yet over three decades, ever since he had decided to switch his work from curing bodies to curing deluded minds, he had become famous. The organisation he had founded in 1989, the Committee for Eradication of Blind Faith (MANS in its Marathi acronym), had 180 branches in the state. In village after village he and his activists would confront the babas, sadhus and other “godmen” who preyed on the poor and simple, challenging their claims and reporting them to the police. He investigated and demystified cases of black magic and possession by ghosts; he campaigned against animal sacrifice, the prodigious waste of drinking water and good food during religious festivities, and the pollution of local rivers during Ganesha’s birthday festival by the immersion of thousands of idols made of plaster of Paris.

In Kolhapur Dr Dabholkar exposed “Cowfly Baba”, who gave false comfort to people for ten rupees a time by pretending to remove dirt and cowflies from their ears with a glass tube. He poured public scorn on Sathya Sai Baba, a millionaire godman who appeared to make holy ash, gold chains and Swiss watches appear from thin air. Dr Dabholkar also offered 21 lakh rupees (about $33,000) to any sorcerer who, under strict scientific conditions, could stay on fire for a minute without moving, duplicate a currency note, grow a severed limb two centimetres by the application of powder, or turn water into petrol. The sum remains unclaimed.

Much of the “black magic” he dealt with had simple, sad causes behind it. The wild, convulsing women in the temples of Ambabai and Dattatreya were not possessed, but were mentally ill, hysterical after years of poor food, risky births and mistreatment by their families. One case, where a family was petrified by halved lemons strewn outside the house, clothes torn and the milk spoilt with salt, was traced to a daughter-in-law whose husband would not take her to the movies. When the poor came to his “mobile science” vans, bringing their stories of terrifying horoscopes, Dr Dabholkar would hand them a telescope and patiently explain the profound indifference of the stars.

The only inexplicable thing, he would say (all other “inexplicable” things being rationally explained by natural laws) was that India in the 21st century was still so full of superstition. It launched its own satellites, but before a launch the gods would be invoked with flowers and sandalwood paste; its IT was the envy of the world, but even middle-class people would not start a new project on “inauspicious” Saturdays. The cult of the individual was gathering pace, but people still believed that their fates were in the hands of the gods, not themselves. They clung blindly to karma, which was a law for “sheep” and “slaves”.

Following Gandhi

With equal ferocity, he rejected India’s caste system. He himself was Brahmin, educated in elite schools, but with progressive parents. His social work had begun with a campaign to make villages have a single well for everyone, Dalits (then “untouchables”) and others alike. He continued in that vein by urging tolerance and protection for intercaste marriages.

His success rate, though, was slow. For 18 years he campaigned tirelessly for a law against black magic, but his bill was allowed to lapse until, on his death, a severely trimmed version was passed. Babas and politicians remained hand-in-glove. Hindu and right-wing rowdies tried to attack him in the villages; once he was doused with kerosene and almost set on fire. But Dr Dabholkar, a star player of kabaddi (team-wrestling) in his youth, laughed that he could take a tumble or two. He placed his hopes in the young, whose company he delighted in, and set up flourishing teacher-training programmes to encourage rational thinking in the schools.

He also taught by example. His life was pure and simple: vegetarianism, teetotalism, abstention from religious rites of any kind. Even his children were married without pomp or fanfare, in a ceremony that took an hour rather than several days. His office, from which he ran a weekly newspaper as well as MANS, was bare except for a quote from Gandhi on the wall. His reverence for the Mahatma underlined the fact that, though an atheist himself, his organisation was neutral on the subject of God’s existence. He valued the highest reaches of Indian spirituality. It was exploitation by conmen that he condemned.

Naturally, he was also dedicated to non-violence. His critics accused him of wanting to destroy all religion; but even its idols he treated with respect. There was no other way, he said. In this, as in human rationality, he had unshakeable belief. His enemies did not.