Preface: A Milk Miracle§
Prastāvanā Kshīra Chamatkāra§
प्रस्तावना क्षीर चमत्कार§
On September 21, 1995, just days after I had completed the final editing of Loving Gaṇeśa, something quite wonderful happened. Lord Gaṇeśa began sipping milk, first in India, then in nearly every country where Hindus reside, as devotees rushed to temples and shrines to offer milk to the elephant-faced God. It was a great spiritual experience for us in Hawaii, where we publish the international news journal, HINDUISM TODAY, to receive the many phone calls and fax messages with positive, uplifting testimony as to His drinking milk in so many places. As perhaps the most fitting preface to this benevolent Lord’s book, we are pleased to present the story of the milk miracle—kshīra chamatkāra—from HINDUISM TODAY, November, 1995.§
IT ALL BEGAN ON SEPTEMBER 21 WHEN AN OTHERWISE ORDINARY MAN IN NEW Delhi dreamt that Gaṇeśa, the elephant-headed God of Wisdom, craved a little milk. Upon awakening, he rushed in the dark before dawn to the nearest temple, where a skeptical priest allowed him to proffer a spoonful of milk to the small stone image. Both watched in astonishment as it disappeared, magically consumed by the God. What followed is unprecedented in modern Hindu history. Within hours, news spread like a brush fire across India that Gaṇeśa was accepting milk offerings. Tens of millions of people of all ages flocked to the temples. The unworldly happening brought worldly New Delhi to a standstill, and its vast stocks of milk, more than a million liters, sold out within hours. Just as suddenly as it started in India, it stopped, in just 24 hours.§
But it was just beginning elsewhere, as Hindus in India called their relatives in other parts of the world. Soon our HINDUISM TODAY offices were flooded with reports from around the world. Everywhere the story was the same. A teaspoonful of milk offered by touching it to Gaṇeśa’s trunk, tusk or mouth would disappear in a few seconds to a few minutes—not always, but with unprecedented frequency. Reuters news service quoted Anila Premji, “I held the spoon out level, and it just disappeared. To me it was just a miracle. It gave me a sense of feeling that there is a God, a sense of Spirit on this Earth.” Not only Gaṇeśa, but Śiva, Pārvatī, Nandi and the Nāga, Śiva’s snake, all took milk.§
This “milk miracle” may go down in history as the most important event shared by Hindus this century, if not in the last millennium. It has brought about an instantaneous religious revival among nearly one billion people. No other religion has ever done that before! It is as if every Hindu who had, say, “ten pounds of devotion,” suddenly has twenty.§
Miracles witnessed by many people happen from time to time in Hinduism, as in other faiths, but they are rare. As a young boy, the tenth-century saint Nambi Anbar Nambi inspired Lord Gaṇeśa to actually eat the offerings placed before Him. Saint Jnanesvara of Maharashtra became famous 600 years ago for having a water buffalo recite the Vedas before a group of arrogant priests.§
Naturally there are skeptics—10 percent of Hindus, according to our very unscientific poll—all of whom moved swiftly to distance themselves from the phenomenon. “Capillary action,” coupled with “mass hysteria,” is the correct explanation, concluded many scientists within a few hours. Aparna Chattopadhyay of New Delhi replied to these scoffers in a letter to the Hindustan Times: “I am a senior scientist of the Indian Agriculture Research Institute, New Delhi. I found my offerings of milk in a temple being mysteriously drunk by the Deities. How can the scientists explain the copper snake absorbing the milk I offered with a spoon kept at a good distance away from it?” Scientific or not, gallons of milk were disappearing with hardly a trace. A leading barrister in Malaysia was dumbfounded when he watched a metal Gaṇeśa attached to an automobile dashboard absorb six teaspoons of milk. In Nepal, King Birendra himself made offerings to the God. Deities in Kenya and other countries took gallons of milk while sitting in shallow metal trays with no drains.§
The worldwide press coverage has been nearly as amazing as the miracle itself. Of course, the event dominated the news in India for days. But once it started outside India, local and leading national papers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post in America, and the Financial Times in UK, picked up the story. The international wire services Reuters and Associated Press carried a dozen articles a day on what had now been named the “Milk Miracle.” Many in India are unaware of how warmly the Western press embraced the miracle. In many countries reporters came to the temples and personally offered milk. Of course, they too would put forward a “scientific explanation” in their report, but many otherwise detached Western journalists shared their own joyful experience as a fact.§
Ironically, the reporting inside India was a completely different matter. The English-language press in India, with its Marxist-leaning political bias, has never been a friend of Hinduism. Headlines heralded the attitude: “People go Berserk at ‘Milk Miracle;’ ” “Scientists Dismiss it as Mass Hysteria,” and “Milk-Drinking Deities Unleash Mass Hysteria, Scientists Ridicule Miracle Theory.” Not every Indian paper was so negative: Tunku Varadarajan of The Times expressed his concern that “Modern Hindus are often all too apologetic about the apparent angularities in the beliefs of their countrymen. In this, secular Indians are in danger of denying the very logic which has allowed India to be secular in the first place. If that tolerance is now under strain, the blame lies in part with those who would regard as dangers any celebrations of the country’s underlying Hindu identity.”§
Hinduism has its own science to apply to this miracle, that of the interpretation of portents—unusual or supernatural events. Portents are the specific domain of astrologers to interpret. The “milk miracle,” under this analysis, is not the end in itself, but rather signals a future event of great import. Sri K.N. Rao, one of India’s most noted astrologers, explained that the involvement of Gaṇeśa means that harm will come to the “commanders of armies.” The acceptance of milk, however, is an auspicious sign. Therefore, the final result will be a greater good. The portent will take effect in eight months, just about the time of an eclipse in April, 1996.§
H.H. Sri Tiruchi Mahaswamigal of Bangalore said incidents of Deities accepting offerings occur every 100 years, usually eight or nine days after Gaṇeśa Chaturthī. Swamiji believes it is a very good omen, as do other swāmīs, astrologers and pandits we have contacted.§
Testimony of the Milk Miracle Worldwide§
INDIA: It was around 7:30am that my father came back from his morning walk and told me, “Rajiv, go to the temple. A great miracle is taking place. Lord Gaṇeśa is having milk. This is happening all over Delhi.” I and my wife rushed to the Deepali temple which is next to our house. There were hundreds in a long queue waiting to offer milk. Inside the eight-by-ten-foot sanctum a dozen people at a time were offering milk in spoons to the small Gaṇeśa. My wife offered milk twice. I could clearly see the milk disappearing in a few seconds. Many temple priests said they had dreams of Gaṇeśa asking for milk, which they then offered in the early morning. The Deepali temple priest told me, “Somebody came and knocked on my door at 4:30 in the morning. He called, ‘Gaṇeśa is having milk! Gaṇeśa is having milk!’ The man was gone when I answered the door.” Life in Delhi was almost at a standstill. The markets were deserted. Banks and official institutions had very thin attendance. In the last few days I have spoken to about 100 people. Ninety percent of them told me that they had experienced it, and the milk had really been accepted by the Deity.§
Rajiv Malik, New Delhi, Journalist§
NEW YORK: Even in cynical, hard-edged New York the miracle was happening. The milk was actually disappearing. Manisha Lund, a young college student, went to the Hindu temple in Queens and says it was a virtual stampede. When she offered milk to Lord Gaṇeśa, “It was sucked up like someone was drinking it with a straw.” Gaṇeśa seemed to be in a whimsical mood: sometimes He refused the spoonfuls offered by devotees and slurped up that given by nonbelievers. At the Hindu temple in Flushing, a young African-American woman who is not a Hindu but loves Hindu philosophy wondered aloud whether Śiva would accept her offering. She extended her spoon and before the eyes of many worshipers, the milk disappeared into Śiva’s mouth. Tales of faith and joy were repeated in many homes and offices where devotees offered milk to idols of stone, brass and silver. Young people seemed to have better luck, and delighted in the miracle: Pummy Singh, 14, called Indra, her mother, at work and gave her the exciting news: Gaṇeśa had taken the milk three times from her and her friends. Such was the frenzy that it was hard to gain entrance into the crowded temples, even at 2:00 in the morning.§
Lavina Melwani, New York, Journalist§
LOS ANGELES: “One of the devotees received a phone call from India about the miracle,” recalls Bharat Shastri, priest of the Hindu temple in Norwalk. By evening he had received 600 phone calls. There was a general air of skepticism here and at other temples in Los Angeles. Only a few devotees had their milk offerings taken by Gaṇeśa at Norwalk. Nothing extraordinary happened at the Śrī Venkateshwara Temple in Calabasas, where milk was offered only by the priests. At the Chatsworth temple, the miracle seemed to have happened big time. “On Thursday morning, temple president Dinesh Lakhanpal offered milk. It disappeared. Then I offered more, and that, too, disappeared,” said Ravi Sharan, vice president of the temple. CNN and local TV channels came and the miracle reportedly happened for them. “One reporter, Sharon Tae of Channel 5, was so excited she hugged me with tears in her eyes,” said Sharan.§
Archana Dongre, Los Angeles, Journalist§
CANADA: The phenomenon began following the 7:30pm pūjā Friday and continued unabated until about 11:45pm Sunday, the 24th, at the Edmonton Gaṇeśa Temple. The atmosphere around the Gaṇeśa mūrti was scintillating. Devotees approached, bowed and offered their prayers and a spoonful of milk. They ran the gamut from sari-clad pious elderly ladies supported on either side to gum-chewing teens in black leather jackets. I simply can’t explain what happened to the milk. It would visibly “wick” up from the spoon to the surface of the stone of the trunk. Spoonful after spoonful was absorbed, sometimes as quickly as one could count to three, usually in 20 seconds. At the conservative rate of two teaspoons per minute for 51.5 hours (milk was offered continuously), some 7.7 gallons of milk were taken up. I could see no significant amount of milk around the Gaṇeśa mūrti. Of course, with the number of devotees and dripping spoons, Gaṇeśa’s garments became wet on the same side as his trunk, but this didn’t begin to account for the volume of milk offered. I was forced to conclude that we were all witnessing something that we could not logically explain.§
Aran Veylan, Edmonton, Barrister§
MAURITIUS: Today, September 25th, I’ve given milk to Gaṇeśa. It is happening at Tulsi Sham Temple in Beau Bassin. I rushed there, leaving all my jobs behind. I took some milk and brought it close to the trunk without spilling any. The milk was absorbed very quickly. This is something great which is happening all around the world and making us better and better Hindus.§
Parmesh Pallanee, Petite Rivière, Computer Systems Advisor§
KENYA: It all started with a phone call from India to a relative in Nairobi that Lord Gaṇapati’s marble statue was drinking milk. Pandit Narinder Kumar Sastri, head priest of Shree Sanatan Dharma Temple, recounts the experience with great emotion. According to him, an unlimited amount of milk was consumed by the two Deities in the temple. People from different religions and nationalities came and made the offering. Many nonbelievers came to test. When the offering was accepted, it changed people’s thinking. The miracle had a special effect on the younger generation. Panditji believes a new generation of staunch Hindus has been born as a result. lt is extraordinary that the miracle occurred even on African soil, and it is equally remarkable that many African non-Hindus visited the temple and have become devotees. I stood inside the temple door for three hours and saw crowds coming and going. The atmosphere was charged and volatile, but peaceful. The people were mesmerized and were not prepared to leave the hall even after having made the offering.§
In the private temple of Jyotin Arvind Bhai Patel in Nairobi, the miracle began at 4:30pm on Thursday and continued till 9:30am on Sunday. He and Minal tried with a spoonful of milk, which disappeared. The spoon was kept under the trunk of Śrī Gaṇeśa and the milk was sucked up. Minal recalls hearing the sucking sound. In four days, 15,000 people belonging to all castes and nationalities—Hindus, Sikhs, Africans and Europeans—made offerings. As the result of the personal experience of one non-Hindu, the Patels have been offered free land to build a Śiva temple in a shopping complex.§
Prabha Prabhakar Bhardwaj§
My Luckiest Day§
By Colonel P. C. Bhardwaj§
It has taken many, many births for millions of us to witness and participate in such a miracle. I was one of the many lucky ones whom God gave the opportunity to feed Him. This miracle was needed to instill faith in people that the temple images do have powers, and to worship them is one path to reach Him. I am an engineer of long standing. The theory that capillary action caused the suction of hundreds of pints of milk by Deities of stone and metal as small as twelve by six inches is not possible. Most of the Deities are carved of solid stone or cast of metal. Lord Gaṇeśa’s trunk takes a bend and makes a twist at the tip. Its tip only has a small hole; the rest is solid mass. This tip is not capable of holding even one spoon of milk. In some of the mūrtis, the trunk falls straight and the tip does not have a hole. It sucked hundred of pints of milk in a few hours. No milk was seen flowing out of the body, and no mist was formed around the mūrtis. What shall we call it, other than Godly miracle?§
We Are So Close to God§
By Jay Dubashi, a columnist for New Delhi’s
Organiser, the publication in which this article first appeared§
It was a small boy who first alerted me as to what was happening. “Come, come,” he said, “Gaṇeś-jī is drinking milk.” We went to the nearby temple together, he and I, and the crowd was thick. A small girl, not more than three or four, was raising a spoon to the lips of Gaṇeś-jī, and as we watched in awe the milk disappeared. “What did I tell you?” said the small boy. There was nothing to argue. A miracle is a miracle. Even if it was not a miracle, it is still a miracle in the eyes of those who see it. There are too many things in this world which cannot be explained by the simple theories of physics or chemistry, for the theories themselves are changing with the times.§
But it is not milk that interests me. The miracle was seen not just in India, but almost all over the world, wherever Hindus congregate. And it did not take days, not even hours, probably a few minutes to spread. It shows how close the Hindu community is when it comes to things that affect its identity, even closer than the Internet. There were throngs of Hindus in temples in London and Leicester, New Jersey and Chicago, Denmark, Canada, Bangkok and Singapore. And the whole thing was breathtakingly spontaneous.§
It also revealed how close Hindus are, not only to each other but also to their Gods. This is something nobody but a Hindu understands. To us, the Gods are not external to us, but very much a part of our being. The relationship is affectionate and intimate, as between members of a family. There is nothing in the world as close-knit as a Hindu family, and the Gods are as much a part of this family as anyone else.§
When I grew up as a boy in Goa, we had, of course, temples and maṭhas, but what we liked best was the time when Gaṇeś-jī came home for the Gaṇeśa Visarjana festival. We used to have made a serious-looking idol as befits a family of teachers and officials, but somehow we never thought of Gaṇeś-jī as a serious person. How can anybody be serious if He chooses a small mouse to carry His plump weight? But we never asked such questions. It was enough that He was in our house for a few days, and we treated Him like a king. He wore the finest silks and ate the finest food. He was bathed in enough milk and honey to wash a grown elephant and his family. We kept Him in the house only for a day or so, and then it was time to take Him to the river for immersion. That was the hardest time for all of us, particularly for my uncle, whose job it was to prepare Him for immersion. We children went to the river, shouting all the way, but overtaken by grief at the impending departure. After a brief pūjā on the bank of the river, the idol was slowly let into the swirling waters as we all wept, including my uncle, a grown man who actually ran the district. Our Gods do not ask for votes or for money. All they want is your love and affection, for that is the only bond between a Hindu and his God, like the bond between a father and son, or between brothers.§
In no other religion is there such a deep and lasting bond between Gods and men as there is among Hindus. For we are, after all, descended from the Gods, and from the mountains and rivers where They stand guard and watch our holy land. And, if once in a while they come down and sip a little milk from our spoons, why should it be a miracle? It’s the most natural thing in the world.§
A few of the news stories of the Milk Miracle are shown on the following pages.§
