Gandhi and the Non-Prophet Motive

Mahatma: dreamed of freedom for his people
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Just ahead of the 59th anniversary of his death at the hands of an assassin, we look back at a troubling set of prohesies attributed to Mahatma Gandhi and glimpse the curious legacy of a little known relation. Today in Amazing Story Updates, from Korea, Reverend Moon explains his astrological reservations to Dr. Hosokawa and the regular feature, This Date in Amazing History, recalls the day San Franciscans gave up good grass.

Ten years ago, a US supermarket tabloid exclaimed that, according to a series of previously secret Edgar Cayce-style predictions, before the end of 1997 the AIDS virus would become as prevalent as "the common cold". The startling prophesies, were said to have been issued by (of all people) Mohandas Karamchand (aka Mahatma) Gandhi and said to have turned up in a weathered notebook discovered at a former ashram in Sevagram, India. They were also purported to have foretold a terrorist mass assassination that would end the lives of seven top world leaders in March 1998 and that three months later the planet would see the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Needless to say, each of these prognostications fell as flat as a soggy pappadam.

At the time, news of these "Mahatma Prophesies" came as something of a surprise to most Indians who had never heard of the Father of the Nation, a confirmed Hindu, making psychic predictions of any sort, least of all regarding Jesus Christ. He did forecast the end of the British Raj and predicted continued strife with Pakistan but these were deduced by prevailing political developments and not oracular intuition.

However, after a nine year investigation, author-researcher Rajiv Perlmutter Patel of Walnut Creek, CA is convinced the ashram writings may be partially authentic: they were penned by Gandhi, he says, but not Mohandas the Mahatma. Actually they were the work of his irascible little brother Ganesh aka "Garrett" Gandhi of East Ipswich, England. The younger Gandhi, said Patel, was not above contriving outrageous pseudo-psychic scams throughout much of his adult life in the United Kingdom. Ganesh first followed his older brother to London in March 1931 for a conference on India's future and remained in the UK until after the end of World War Two.

"Garrett" Gandhi: Soho hypnotist

Ganesh, who always sported a jaunty VanDyke beard and powder-blue turban, parlayed his brother's famous name into a notable nightclub and music hall act as a stage hypnotist known variously as the "Fakir of Finchley," the "Ipswich Swami" and during the most celebrated point in his cabaret career just prior to the Blitz, the "Picadilly Pandit." "It was an entertaining blend of sideshow fortune-telling, "telepathy" stunts and Eastern mystical mumbo-jumbo," says Patel "and war-jittery Brits ate it up. He even used a snake in a basket until the RSPCA stepped in."

Garrett married four times, dated Merle Oberon briefly after the war and eventually settled in East Anglia where he operated a Felixstowe vegetarian restaurant for many years and raised five of his eight children. He died there in 1976 at the age of 89. Garrett was said to have been profoundly shaken by his brother's murder and afterward steadfastly avoided the public spotlight.

Patel himself is no stranger to the psychic realm. He is the nephew of noted sensitive Rhoda Gold Perlmutter of Passaic NJ whose father knew Ganesh Gandhi and wrote an unpublished book about him. Rajiv thinks the so-called "predictions" were part of Garrett's fortune-telling act and may have been accidentally left behind during a 1946 visit to his elder brother's ashram. We may come to know much more about the last and more clandestine phase of Garrett's career, says Patel, when Mordechai Perlmutter's book is released sometime in the coming year. Gandhi reportedly granted the interviews that form the major source of the biography on the condition that nothing could be disclosed until 30 years after his passing. Moredechai himself died in 1994 but Rhoda Perlmutter has vowed to see the work published as her father intended.


AMAZING STORY UPDATES

From his office in Sapporo, Dr. Kenji Hosokawa informs us that Rev. Moon has written from Korea to dispel the notion that his church's weekly financial bulletin the Seoul Sellers Guide and Satanic Star Chart had deliberately misconstrued Hosokawa's Fire Pig Forecast. The clergyman is not, by the way, to be confused with the leader of the Unification Church, but presides over the the United Korean Reformed Four-Square Pentecostal Church based in Pusan. Rev. Moon Joon Song (Moon is quite a common name in Korea) says his organization takes no issue with Hosokawa at all since the church has its own unique system of stock market predictions based upon snake handling and interpretation of arcane Biblical prophesies to which only Rev. Moon and a few trusted associates are privy. Any other attempts to forecast market trends are, by his definition, "Satanic" and no better than the worthless conjectures of professional analysts on Wall Street where, he says, "the Devil reigns supreme." His followers, Rev. Moon added, "do not pay any attention whatsoever to the animals of the Oriental Zodiac unless it happens to be the Year of the Serpent."

The Chupacabra
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The intrepid Herschel Gomez is back from a fresh foray into the West Everglades, south of Lake Okeechobee to investigate newly reported sightings of the notorious Chupacabra, a sort of bipedal vampire-bat more given to attacks on livestock than people. For the moment, Gomez says he's not certain whether the beast being described by Puerto Rican farmworkers is actually a chupacabra or the traditional "Skunk Ape" of the Everglades, thought to be a Southern cousin of Big Foot or the Susquatch. The "ape" is held in high regard by the local Skunkasookie Indian Tribe who revere the creature as an important Guardian Spirit that is NOT to be molested or disturbed in any manner. Herschel is asking his Orlando-based marital in-law Domingo Dombrowski, a noted authority on "chupas" to help him investigater further.

THIS DATE IN AMAZING HISTORY

Capt. Morgan: Yo ho ho and a bottle of him

27 JANUARY 1671 Welsh Pirate Henry Morgan (after whom a famous brand of Jamaican rum is named) lands at Panama City and after winning a furious battle with Spanish defenders promptly burns the place to the ground. The scene will be immortalized centuries later by subsequent hit movies and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction at various Disney Theme Parks but with scant mention of Morgan himself. According to Dutch medium Hiero Thrypplewaart, the vainglorious captain still harangues Uncle Walt about it whenever the two cross paths on the Other Side.

29 JANUARY 1613 Galileo observes Neptune but fails to recognize what he sees. In frustration, he checks the Pisa Yellow Pages for an optometrist only to find there are none, nor any telephones either. Considerably annoyed, the astronomer chucks the volume over the balcony of the Leaning Tower despite its list of outstanding spaghetti and Pisa parlors easily reached by ox-cart.

30 JANUARY 1847 The sleepy bayside Californian village of Yerba Buena is formally renamed San Francisco leaving behind a charming original Spanish appellation of "Good Herb or Grass," a commodity that the new city won't again become associated with for another 120 years, mostly in the Haight-Ashbury section.