Fear,falsebeliefs
Allahabad in March, 2017.
Scientists attributed the tears to the presence of mercuric oxide in vermillion applied by devotees on the idol. But devotees saw it as a bad omen and claimed the God was unhappy with the state of affairs in the world.
Sometime later, the idol stopped shedding tears, ending the hysteria over the phenomenon.
Thousands of people thronged the Chamatkari Nalka, a ‘magical handpump’, in Fatehgarh Sahib district in 2016 with the belief that its water can cure all their “ills and end all grief”. At times, the queues went up to a kilometre.
It all began after an old woman suffering from joint pain claimed of a cure on drinking water from the pump. The hand pump overnight became a pilgrimage site.
It all ended abruptly after local villagers got fed up with the rush of people. One night, the hand pump was uprooted. No one knows who did it.
Residents of Tikamgarh, Chhatarpur and Bhind of Madhya Pradesh began spotting mysterious scratches surfacing on their mortar and pestle (Sil-Batta) and grinding stone (Chakki) in 2015. Similar phenomenon was also reported from Jhansi and Mahoba of Uttar Pradesh.
It led to consternation and locals claimed supernatural powers were behind the scratches. Entomologists — those who insects — disagreed. They said the scratches were caused by aggressive beetle species and their caustic excreta resulting in the whitish abrasive marks on stone. The panic subsided after it had raged for weeks.
Lucknow and other parts were swept by rumours in 2012 that people would turn into stone “if they slept tonight”.
None knew who started it all, buttherumourscausedimmense disquiet. Neighbourhoods stayed awake overnight and many took out noisy processions after midnight to keep people awake.
The rumours ran out of steam after a few weeks. No one turned into stone and there were no arrests.
Hundreds of men, mostly belonging to Hindu families of four districts in western Assam, complained of their genital shrinking in 1982.
The recurring complaints caused panic, though doctors blamed it on genital infections leading to a psychological epidemic called Koro. Those who suffered from it felt their penis disappearing into their abdomen.
The psychiatry department of Gauhati Medical College intervened and a mass awareness campaign was launched, which helped dispel the fear after it had a free run between July and September of that year.