Atheist Gora remembered
Depiction of certain superstitions, unreal situations, supernatural horror sequences in movies and other media, is taking away the average citizen in India from the right scientific thinking process, opined neuro-psychiatrist Indla Ramasubba Reddy.
Delivering a lecture on ‘Witchcraft and Sorcery: Social and Psychological dimensions’ as part of 110{+t}{+h}birth anniversary of well-known atheist Gora, Dr. Reddy traced the roots of such beliefs to several centuries Before Christ (BC) and expressed dismay at the practice of Banamati in some parts of Andhra Pradesh.
Describing the popular serial Tulasidalam by popular novelist Yendamuri Veerendranath in a Telugu magazine in 1980s as one of the contributing factor to such beliefs, he dished out statistics of women killed as an outcome of witchcraft and sorcery in India between 1987 and 2003, which was 2,556. The worst-affected states were A.P., Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and U.P.
In his power-point presentation made to a gathering of young students at the Atheist Centre near Benz Circle here on Thursday, he said that following a Guru Godman blindly was called Transference and John Weyer had made a study in the 16th Century and identified illness of mind and a medical situation. His study had laid the roots for the modern psychiatry.