I’ve written before about criminal charges being filed against Sanal Edamaruku, the head of Rationalist International, for daring to debunk a fake Catholic shrine. Now the police are actually looking for him and trying to arrest him over it.
This morning, officers of the Delhi Police reached Sanal Edamaruku’s house to arrest him. They came upon directions of a Delhi court to execute an arrest warrant issued by a Mumbai Metropolitan Magistrate Court (second highest Criminal Court). If Sanal had been at home, he would be in jail now….
The officers were informed that Sanal is presently out of Delhi and traveling. They insisted on details of his whereabouts, addresses and contact numbers. Some hours later, they came again to press for information, to no avail.
With this dramatic turn of events, Sanal Edamaruku’s persecution has reached a dangerous new level. Exposing the “miracle” of the water-dripping crucifix at the Velankanni church in Mumbai as a plumber’s problem, he incurred Catholic fury beyond all trademark forgiveness. Highly alarming is the fact that the Catholic side has managed to secure considerable support from Indian government agencies. The Catholic Church is representing only a small minority of believers in India. But it is backed by a powerful worldwide apparatus, driven by great ambitions to conquer India and make up for its losses in the western world…
It is obvious that the Catholic Church is trying to pull the strings to silence its most vocal and courageous opponent in India. If there is one person who could cross their ambitious plans, it is Sanal Edamaruku. So there is much at stake, for both sides. How far will they be able to go? That cannot be foreseen. We have to be prepared for the worst.
More to come, I’m sure. Remember this the next time you hear the pope prattle on about supporting religious freedom. He never has and he never will.
14 comments
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raven
July 9, 2012 at 11:53 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Nothing much has changed for the Catholic church.
You get the strong impression that they would still be burning heretics and witches alive on stacks of firewood if they could. They never stopped, those mean old secular authorities made them stop.
Hitchens: Xianity lost its best defense when they stopped burning people at the stake.
There are times when I wish I was Catholic so I could run screaming out of the sect. At least some of my ancestors did their part. They were Protestants who fought a bloody war that killed millions to free parts of Europe from…the RCC. (Of course, the other half were Catholics but that is the way it goes.)
krucz36
July 9, 2012 at 11:53 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This case gets more and more astonishing. It really seems this poor guy is going to have to go to the mattresses over this. There’s few institutions more willing to take things beyond sense in defending their myths and phantoms than the Catholics. Hopefully he’ll have some support from the rational/freethought/skeptic community.
eric
July 9, 2012 at 11:55 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This whole thing baffles me. I thought the official church hierarchy moved beyond defending weeping statues a century or two ago. With the amount of sectarian violence in India, I wouldn’t have been suprised if locals had decided to do something while the official hierarchy said nothing. That sort of response would’ve been par for the course. But to have Rome legally pursue someone for describing capillary action? Its crazy.
No Light
July 9, 2012 at 12:01 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric – they’re haemorrhaging believers in the developed world. They’ll go along with absolutely anything to recruit in. places like India. Horses for courses and all that.
Desertphile
July 9, 2012 at 12:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It looks like the crime he is being persecuted for is “$Interfering $with $future $donations.”
ashleybell
July 9, 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s weird that the Catholic church somehow thinks that this tactic is going to work. Who, besides Blowhard Bill O’Donahue sees this with anything but bewlderment. The vatican could do some serious damage control by issuing a cease order to the bishop persuing this. As it is, I feel bad for Sanal, but this in the end is another nail in the coffin of the RCC.
Pierce R. Butler
July 9, 2012 at 12:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
A modest proposal: we take some crackers hostage, and release them only when Edamaruku returns safely home with all charges dropped.
d cwilson
July 9, 2012 at 12:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Just think, India has hundreds of millions of small boys who have never been warned not to be alone with a priest.
abear
July 9, 2012 at 12:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The pope should either intervene to get the lynch mob off this guys’ back or be hauled up in front of the UN on human rights abuses.
As this is unrealistic, possibly the threat of a tourism/business boycott of India might have some benefit. After all, if they do this because of some religious bullies, maybe they will respond to some financial threats.
Erp
July 9, 2012 at 1:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As far as I can see it is the Donohue equivalents in India that are pursuing this case. The Catholic hierarchy has not gotten overtly involved[1] hence the petition to the local hierarchy (the Archdiocese of Bombay) to tell the authorities they aren’t concerned and to back down. If anything these sorts of tactics are far more dangerous for the Catholic Church in India which though worldwide is quite powerful is only a very minor religion (17 million in 2001). These tactics could be used against them (after all the Catholic church considers Hinduism (and Islam the largest by far minority religion in India) to be false religions). The hierarchy may be taking a wait and see position. if it backfires on them, they can wash their hands of the proponents; if it works, fine.
BTW Sanal may be the most courageous opponent of Catholicism in India but I doubt he is the most outspoken; I would suspect some within Hinduism are especially over the issue of conversion.
[1] One auxiliary bishop has been quoted as saying something in support a few months back but I’m not sure whether it is in support of the legal case or only in support of those writing/speaking against Sanal’s criticisms.
grignon
July 9, 2012 at 4:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know if convincing the RCC of the bad PR is significant. Hinduism and its offshoots are as dependent on the miraculous as any christian sect. If India allows this fellow to disprove bleeding staues, next he might prove that yogis don’t fast for 20 years in perfect health.
John Hinkle
July 10, 2012 at 9:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wow, Mumbai must be very low in other criminal activity for the cops to pursue this. Why, I’ll bet Mumbai is on all those “best of” lists of places to live.
“Mumbai: Gateway to Pimpri Chinchwad.”
Raging Bee
July 10, 2012 at 9:44 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is the same guy who challenged a famous Indian “tantrik” to kill him using magic on national TV. The bogus magician failed, despite lots of ritual posturing, sprinkling of water, incantations, waving a knife about menacingly, etc.
http://rationalistinternational.net/article/2008/20080310/en_1.html
The show got a huge audience; so I guess that’s why the RCC got so scared when he turned his attentions to them. The fact that the Church is freaking out this badly because ONE so-called miracle got debunked, pretty much proves the Church under Pope Palpadict has becpome completely unhinged, and, like the IRA and their opponents, have gone from pretending to serve a noble cause to just plain organized crime and thuggery.
What’s doubly disgraceful is that I just googled “Sanal Edamaruku” and got ZERO hits on Western mainstream news sites other than the Guardian. Looks like the child-rapist gang is winning this one.
Raging Bee
July 10, 2012 at 12:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Here’s another disgusting bit about this campaign of bullying: Sanal Edamaruku could easily defend himself in court (there are laws protecting free speech in India), but he’s been denied bail pending trial, which means that if he turned himself in, as someone suspected of a crime ordinarily should do, he’d be in jail until the trial, which could take months or years. So the Church gets to punish him — rather severely, given what we know of Indian prison conditions — without a trial, just for disproving a claim of a miracle.