Prophecies within prophecies
Dr. Satyapal Anand
I believe there’s something in prediction of doom and destruction. The truth, indeed, must be a grain of salt in such prophecies, but even that grain of salt is enough to make you feel uneasy about the future of mankind. We know of Nastradamus (1503-1566), who made many prophecies about the human race some of which have indeed come true. It is now known that Italian National Library in Rome made an amazing discovery in May 2005. Buried in its archives was a hitherto unknown manuscript by this prophet of doom that he had handed to his son and was later donated to Pope Urban VIII. It did not surface again until 2005, almost 400 years later.
Reading through the cutting edge data and deciphering it by The Nostradamus Code, this manuscript reveals that 2009-2019 would be the decade of widespread war and upheaval in the world in which millions of people would die. Well, we know what is happening in the Middle East and if we go by the words of Prince Hassan of Jordan – “I’m afraid the making of the World War III is actually taking place right in front of our eyes.”
You see, we never perceive of an impending event of death and destruction in political terms. We always think it is going to be natural occurrences like flood or earthquake or plague (Remember the Egyptian soothsayer who had predicted the ten plagues and whose eyes were gouged out by the Pharaoh!) Political occurrences, that are man-made, somehow remain outside the spectrum of our thought when it comes to prophecies of doom and destruction.
What I am going to tell you, my friends, is truth and nothing. but the unadorned truth. It happened when I was just 12 years of age. It was back in 1942 when I was a student of 7th class in Mission High School Rawalpindi. A Hindu astrologer, known for the veracity of his predictions based on astrological calculations, discovered just by chance that the celestial conglomeration of planets predicted that pralaye (پر لے ٓ قیامت) was at hand and within three or four years it would be on us. He toured the length and breadth of the Punjab, lecturing in Hindi temples and pathshalas (religious schools) , Sikh gurudwaras and in hastily arranged neighborhood meetings foretelling the severity of the events that he could see on the horizon.
We all know that Mr. Inder Kumar Gujral (the then Prime Minister of India) hailed from Jehlum city. His father was a well-known Barrister who practiced in the Punjab High Court and was a well-to-do person who liked charitable causes. He helped the astrologer monetarily and set up a fund for propagation of his predictions. It is on record that a few lakh copies of a booklet entitled Chetawani چیتاونی (Warning) were brought out in Urdu, Hindi and Gurmukhi and distributed free of cost in temples and gurudwaras.
I read that booklet in Urdu. It said that within five years hundreds of thousands of people living between the valleys of Sindh and Yamuna (سندھ اور جمنا) in the North and North-Western India would be killed; there would be death and destruction all around from Indus to Yamuna (the two rivers) and the astrologer was so sure of himself that he vowed in print that if his predictions did not prove to be true till the end of 1945, he would commit suicide.
I remember each little detail. My family lived in Mohan Pura, just a kilometer short from the Dhok Ratta across the rivulet Layee and I could see the daily prayers, puja sessions in temples, akhand paths (unbroken readings from page one to the last) of the Sikhs’ holy book Guru Granth Sahib being held day and night. Heathen that I was, even at that tender age, I laughed outright. Whenever the subject came for discussion in our family, with my Father and Mother, joined by my brothers-in-law and others in the neighborhood, I made fun of them in the company of my friends, who were mostly Muslims and said that it was just hogwash.
Well, no one could even think back in 1942-43 that doomsday might NOT be a natural calamity but a political upheaval of violent dimensions. People in their millions read the book but never could think in terms of the Partition of India and exchange of populations. When, finally, the partition came, they had already forgotten the book, because the astrologer, as promised by him, had committed suicide back on the 31st December, 1945.
It is a different story, not entirely unrelated, how (according to unofficial estimates) three and a half million (35 lakh) people lost their lives on both sides of the newly created border. There was an exchange of populations and millions migrated from one country to the other.
During one of my inter-university seminar engagements, back in 1967, I met a well known astrologer in Madras, now called Chennai, a metropolitan city in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He had never heard of the book “Chetawani“, nor had he heard of the name of the astrologer in Rawalpindi who had made these predictions. I explained in detail about its contents. He asked me to come over the next day because by that time he would have dusted the “jantries“(جنتریاں ) of early forties and also calculated the the star tables and the march of planets in relation to Earth. I went the next day and took, along with me, two other Hindu professors who had come from universities in the Punjab. He was beside himself with joy because he was sure to convince professors of national renown that Astrology was not an opiate dream, but a real science based on ancient calculations.
He told us that he had recalculated twice and had come to the conclusion that the only reason why that particular astrologer’s predictions proved to be wrong was that he had slightly miscalculated and pre-dated the event by two or three years. A minute’s miscalculation in the up- or- down and right- or- left movement of a planet in relation to Earth’s movement could make a difference of two or three years. Since astrologers calculate by the lunar month and that too in terms of the Hindu Bikrami Samwat (Calendar), even the littlest departure of one or half an hour, he said, could have taken the Rawalpindi astrologer off course by a few years.
He said, “The astrologers are never wrong; they sometimes inadvertently miscalculate .” Then he added. “Don’t you agree that the Partition and the suffering it caused to millions of people was no less than a pralaya, the doomsday? ” I asked him the critical question, “Can you try and re-calculate it now?” “… “No”! he said vehemently. “I can’t and I I won’t. How can past be predicted? I deal with future and future only.”
So, as predicted by Nostradamus, is there going to be death and destruction in the years to come? We’ve already seen natural disasters like the earthquake in Pakistan. We are watching with dismay, the daily loss of human life in the Middle East. If God forbid, there is war between India and Pakistan, or between the non-nuclear nations in the Middle East and a nuclear Israel, it would be a hellish scenario staring us in the face!
Don’t ask me, friends, if I am still the skeptic that I was at 12 years’ of age? I am … and I am not, for I don’t know.
