Religious gullibility and the monkey man hoax - Mehul Kamdar The recent "monkey-man" hoax in New Delhi and the fear psychosis that it caused over India's capital for over a month before a detailed scientific investigation conclusively scotched it and laid it to rest, raise a number of questions on how the matter gained so much publicity and why an entire nation sat glued to pictures of deserted streets, vigilant committees and a massive police search in a capital that looked like a deserted metropolis. So called "witnesses" claimed to television and press reporters that they had seen a giant ape that could jump 40 feet into the air and fly through windows. One woman even claimed that she saw a computer controlled robot with light bulbs for eyes and a generator in its back! How did so many people get bamboozled for so long? The enormous publicity that this hoax gained in the media could be attributed to one thing alone - sensationalism sells both newsapers and advertisements on television. With dozens of magazines, dailies and TV channels scurrying to compete with each other in carrying a most unusual (to say the very least) story that was bound to catch the ueye. The reason why the public fell for this hoax hook, line and sinker, though, is rooted in India's tradition and religious beliefs. The hoaxsters who thought up the monkey-man story, struck during a slew of media reports about Delhi's massive Rhesus monkey overpopulation. A number of television channels including Star News and the BBC had run stories about a monkey menace in Delhi. Many Indians learned for the first time that Delhi had professional monkey-catchers in the same way that other cities had dog-catchers. During this time, hoaxsters played on the Hindu myth of the monkey-god Hanuman and created a new myth, that of the Delhi monkey-man. It would be prudent to note that all qualities attributed to the monkey-man by the so-called "witnesses" are qualities that the Hindu epics claim Hanuman possessed. These include leaping great distances, changing size, gliding/flying, tremendous physical strength and an aura of invincibility from any opposition. Hanuman is believed to have been able to jump from mountain to mountain, to glide/fly across the sea to Sri Lanka from India and to change his size from that of an ape to a small monkey (when he went to meet Sita in Ravana's garden) and later to a monstrous Titan who grew so large in size that he could uproot a whole mountain and fly with it to Sri Lanka. The Delhi monkey-man was claimed to have been able to fly/glide in through windows and attack people, to jump 40 feet into the air and to change in size from a small monkey to an 8 foot super-ape. This proves that, had we not been a nation nurtured on Hindu epics to become Hanuman worshippers, most people would have laughed at the very idea of a monkey-man and would have considered the so-called "witnesse" liars or demented maniacs from the outset, instead of waiting for the scientific community to debunk this hoax in its own, soft way, and lay it to rest. For, when it comes to religion the first "principle" that is taught by preachers to believers is that of blind acceptance. One may not question any religious dogma if he/she is a believer, and, he/she must necessaraily accept the dogma/doctrine in toto, if relilgious heads are to be followed. Sadly, the monkey-man episode is only the most recent instance of the exploitation of religious people's gullibility - other recent instances that come to mind are the Ganesa milk drinking episode of some years ago which virtually brought life in most parts of India to a standstill as people queued up before temples seeking boons by offering milk to idols of Ganesa. Shortly after that an Indian Muslim migrant to the UK claimed to have sliced open a tomato and found that the internal structure resembled the Arabic characters for "Allahu Akbar", triggering a minor pilgrimage of British Muslims to her home in Birmingham. In India, again, after a spate of bloody clashes between Hindus and Christians in the States of Orissa and Gujarat, a Karnata Minister issued a statement to the press that a huge cyclone in Orissa and a devastating earthquake in Gujarat were god's acts of retribution on thepeople of these States for their persecution of Christians, never mind that people of all religions were killed here and that floods and earthquakes killed scores of Christians in Latin America just weeks before the quake struck Gujarat. And then, in a minor religious episode of sorts, in the States of Tamil Nadu and Andhra, the thali (wedding necklace) of the statue of the Hindu God Venkatramana's consort broke, leading to rumours that all married women would lose their husbands as a result, unless they participated in expensive rituals. Gullibility still seems to rule, leaving charlatans and rogues with umpteen opportunities to practise their vile arts and cheat believers. With the levels of gullibility that do exist round the world, we have definitely not seen the last of such an amusement. July, 2001 Originaly published at the web-site of Modern Rationalist.