I said to them, “I am Ramakant Parekh,” and immediately the girl recognized me as her husband. Then I told the parents, “Don’t try to take advantage of a belief in Hinduism. I am not Ramakant Parekh; I don’t own any garage. I don’t have any wife, so the question of her death does not arise. This man is Ramakant Parekh. His wife has died, and you must have known when. Please tell me exactly the truth; otherwise I am going to the police. And you will be in trouble because your daughter has recognized me. She knows nothing about who Ramakant Parekh is. It is not even certain that this is Ramakant Parekh; only I am saying so. So don’t think that you can change your mind in the police station and say that this man is Ramakant Parekh. You tell me exactly what you were trying to do.”
Her father became very much afraid and told the whole story of how he had prepared the girl. One of his friends had suggested this name, and the date, because he knew Ramakant Parekh. He was going to bring the photo of Ramakant Parekh, and then we were going to Jabalpur with the girl, with the media people, so she could recognize the house. My friend was going to give us all information because he knows everything about Ramakant Parekh – his wife, his house, his garage. Then the girl was to go inside the house and find things that she used to keep. Then she was going to go and find the garage, and show the car that she used to love.
“Please forgive me,” he said. “We were just creating a business.” In India, once a reincarnation is established, then the girl becomes almost a goddess, and people start worshipping her, bringing money, and bringing sweets and fruits: it is a great business. And he was a brahmin, and the thing would be managed perfectly well.
If this man, Ramakant, had not come to a wrong man like me, he would have been befooled perfectly. Once the girl had seen the picture, then she would have found the man in a crowd of hundreds of people. And behind the whole thing was a friend of Ramakant’s himself I said, “What was he going to gain?”
The man said, “Half-half, fifty-fifty.”
In India it happens almost every day, in one place, in another place, that there is a child who remembers; and immediately you have a business without any investment or publicity. And no Hindu, no Buddhist, no Jaina is going to inquire into it really because they are afraid their theory may prove wrong. They are ready to support it.
You will be surprised that when I exposed it and gave a statement to the newspapers that this was all a bogus thing, the brahmins and the Jainas approached me, their leaders approached me; they knew me perfectly well. They said, “You should not have done that. What does it matter if that poor brahmin gets a little money out of this? That is not important. The important thing is our theory, our philosophy. Just to expose a single case of fraud does not mean that the theory is wrong.”
I said, “Yes, it does not mean that, so why are you worried? You can still believe in your theory, and if I find anybody else, I am going to expose him too. That too does not mean…hundreds of people can be exposed and still it does not destroy the theory. Perhaps all these people are frauds; that does not mean that reincarnation is wrong. But why have you come to me if it does not mean that reincarnation is wrong? I am not saying it is wrong; all that I have said was that this man was trying to exploit the superstition, the belief of the whole country.” Now you cannot do that in a Mohammedan country. You cannot even think of it.