Sanal Edamaruku is the president of the IRA. No, not those guys—the Indian Rationalist Association, a demystifying beacon of common sense in a place where people are still terrified of bogeymen and ritually slaughter children for good luck. He travels around the country disproving religious misconceptions, paranormal events, and swindling god-men. We asked him what it’s like to make a living out of unraveling giant knots of crazy.

Vice: How did you become involved in all this rationalist stuff?
Sanal Edamaruku: The IRA came into being in 1949. Joseph Edamaruku, my father, was the leader of the rationalist movement in Kerala and was elected its president in 1995. My parents came from two different religions and their families’ opposition to their relationship gave me new ideas about living without religion. In 2005, I was elected the IRA national president.

What would you say is at the root of all the superstition in India?
Most of what we have to counter are superstitions coming from the various shades of Hinduism. Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist superstitions are also widely spread. The nationwide belief in karma—all of your problems and success in this life is due to what you did in your previous life—makes people lazy, takes away confidence, and they cease to do anything useful to change their lives and situations. Astrology, reincarnation, vastu [a Hindu version of feng shui], mantras, witchcraft, sacrifices—it is an endless list. In my TV shows I set out to counter every new version of age-old superstitions.

What’s the worst situation you’ve had to deal with in the past year?
Last year in Mumbai, a group of children playing near a mosque claimed that the seawater had turned sweet and people started drinking it. Thousands of people flocked to the seashore to collect the water and were feeding it to their children, thinking it was a miracle. We had the water samples examined and found it was filth from a recently moved drain that made it taste this way. While our campaign was going on, news about another miracle came in. In hundreds of Hindu temples statues started drinking milk fed to them from spoons.

Milk-drinking statues? How did you quash that one?
To explain this “miracle,” I demonstrated how a Gandhi statue would drink coffee and tea. Once a statue is wet, milk fed from a spoon will drain down and give the impression of drinking. The night before we aired the show, there were telephone calls made to all the major temples, instructing followers to pour milk over Ganesh statues and then feed it more milk. Interestingly, all these miracles subsided when we explained them through the media. I have revealed the trick many times, not only with statues of Ganesh but even with basic pieces of brick. Thirsty stones!

Later, along with the BBC, I traveled to find the people who initiated the milk-miracle campaign in a holy town called Haridwar. It was a group of sadhus supporting a politically powerful god-man facing corruption charges. They even had a dress rehearsal of the miracle one day before the actual event.

You’ve uncovered a lot of religious frauds. Which “guru” posed the biggest threat to the public?
There are several very interesting guru exposures. Sathya Sai Baba’s tricks were shown on video all over the country. I have trained several volunteers to replicate and expose all of his trademark miracles, including the seeming production of “holy ash” or jewelry from thin air. There are also people like Pilot Baba who claims to meditate underwater and inside the earth for several days at a time to maintain world peace, and Balti Baba who claims to be able to hold fire in his bare hands. He attacked me with fire when he was publicly exposed! But the results of my work are encouraging. It puts many charlatans out of a job.

You helped debunk two mass “monster scares”—the Face Scratcher and the Monkey Man. How did these guys manage to snowball into such major issues?
The Monkey Man was an ideal case of urban legend. New details kept developing as the story spread. Over the first few days the initial stories evolved from a large, black monkey to a robot, an alien from space, and then a spy machine from Pakistan. There was a mistaken report in the press that said all who were attacked by the monster would be given a reward of 50,000 rupees [approximately $1,000]. Not surprisingly, this caused more sightings. Three thousand policemen were sent out in the streets to “capture” the monster, and I talked to hundreds of victims. My conclusion was that it was nothing more than mass hysteria. Several months later, a commission appointed by the police and the administration came out with a report that confirmed my findings.

The Face Scratcher was a very different thing. Groups of people at many places witnessed a small fireball moving past them and some got hit with an electric shock, which caused burn injuries that looked like scratches. It must have been ball lightning. Having already been through the experience of dealing with the Monkey Man, police played it down as pure fantasy.

You mentioned sacrifice earlier. Are human sacrifices still happening in India?
Human sacrifices in India are connected to Tantric belief, and many people secretly use the services of Tantrics. They tell clients to perform strange rituals to get success or hidden wealth. Some parents agree to sacrifice their children, often with the wrong expectation that they will later be given their lives back. Both animal sacrifice and human sacrifice are crimes in India. Still, animal sacrifice is performed in some Hindu temples as part of rituals. There are even some Orthodox Christian churches that perform mass child sacrifices.

Have you ever actually witnessed a human sacrifice?
Human sacrifices are done in secrecy. In most cases the news come out later. Whenever a Tantric is identified promoting or performing human sacrifice he is arrested and prosecuted. The Tantrics mainly go after children. Recently two parents were condemned in court for conspiring with a Tantric to kill their son. They seriously believed that the ritual would bring them wealth—gold treasure kept beneath the ground and protected by serpents. They also thought their son would regain life eventually. Some of the rituals require the internal organs of virgins, and young girls are targeted for this. I have also talked to boys whom the Tantrics tried to sacrifice but escaped. They told gruesome stories…

Just so we’re on the same page, these are the people who also have sex for hours and days, right? Where do they get the killing from?
There are ancient texts that contain the rituals of human sacrifice. A Tantric priest chants mantras and kills the victim in order to attain healing powers, sexual potency, wealth, success in business or politics, power, and victory over opponents. But not all Tantrics are not involved in human sacrifice—some use lizards, snakes, spiders, and fire, along with mantras.

How do you convince these guys otherwise?
It is difficult. We tell people that mantras have no power. Our public awareness campaigns take false Tantric beliefs seriously. We ask people to reject all magic-cure methods. But it is extremely difficult to convince a Tantric himself, like it is difficult to convince a successful astrologer. We target the common people and try to help them come out from these dangerous beliefs.

Have you ever seen anything that was simply unexplainable?
As a rationalist I am deeply convinced that there are no supernatural occurrences. Sometimes it may take time to understand a phenomenon. It took years of study for us to find the truth behind certain miracles.
For example, every year there is a pilgrimage in south India and immediately after sunset a bright fire-light appears in the distant sky three times. There was an explanation that the hill tribes living there were lighting bonfires, but the holy light continued even after the tribes moved from the forest. Expedition teams of rationalists found that groups of people sent by the government were making huge campfires to fake the light. The money collected at the temple professing this “miracle” went to the state government of Kerala and it was performed every year to dupe the pilgrims. After a protest march under my leadership in 1991, the chief minister admitted in a tape-recorded conversation that the government was behind it. The officials who did this were caught red-handed and photographed by rationalist volunteers. Sadly, it is still performed even now and still sponsored by government.

Do you believe in any facet of religion or spirituality?
Absolutely not.

How do you feel about the West in terms of spiritual beliefs?
It is astonishing for me to see that a section of Western society still tries to follow old superstitions and embrace the Middle Ages. Christian miracle mongering is meaningless, and sometimes dangerous. Our public awareness campaigns target them as well. While we try to educate the gullible masses in India to come out from blind beliefs, the faith healers from the West descend like vultures.

INTERVIEW BY DARBY BUCK