At the age of 99, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, ‘the great anarch’ and ‘scholar extraordinary’ authored a significant book, Three Horsemen of the New Apocalypse (1997, Oxford University Press). The book highlighting the decline of Western civilization created ripples among the intelligentsia at Oxford and other universities in the United Kingdom. But this highly acclaimed book has hardly been read in India, partly because of its exorbitant price (Amazon sold the paperback edition at Rs 11443 sometime back, now reduced) and also because of many Indians’ unexplained apathy towards this great intellectual, who like V S Naipaul, always tells the bitter truth. Highly controversial as he has always been, Chaudhuri, one of the finest writers in English, can be disliked or despised but cannot be ignored.

The word “Apocalypse” comes from the Greek word apok’alupsis meaning revelation or disclosure, presumably by a supernatural being about the cosmic mysteries. The word assumed deeper meaning and connotations between 250 BCE and 250 CE in the Jewish Bible (The Old Testament) and the Christian Bible (The New Testament). In Jewish literature, this refers to the persecution of the Jews and the coming of Moses and in Christian literature, one of the references relates to the prediction of Jesus about the destruction of Jerusalem and coming of ‘abomination of desolation’. The concept goes back further ~ in Zoroastrian literature and the mythologies of the East, especially Indian mythology.

In common culture, apocalypse has come to be used as the synonym of catastrophe or the end of the world. Prophesies about the end of the world has been going round through centuries. The earliest reference to some form of apocalypse can be found in the ancient Indian scriptures – the Puranas, Vishnu Smriti, Manusmriti and the Mahabharata (1500 ~1000 BCE) where the beginning and the end of the world in a cyclic fashion have been elaborately discussed. According to the Brahma Purana and Bhagavata Purana, the world’s life-time is divided into four Yugas (cyclic age, era, epoch) ~ Satya Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dvapara Yuga and Kali Yuga, each Yuga marked by the advent of an Avatar (God-self) of Lord Vishnu who incarnated in different forms to restore peace and dharma: Matsya, Kurma,Varaha and Narasimha in Satya Yuga; Vamana, Parasuram and Sri Rama in Treta Yuga; Balarama and Sri Krishna in Dvapara Yuga; and lastly Kalki Avatar in Kali Yuga. The Kali Yuga spans for a period of 432,000 years believed to have started in 3102 BCE. Near the end of the Kali Yuga when morality and virtues will reach the nadir, when ‘man will eat man’, a cataclysmic apocalypse will occur and Kalki is prophesied to arrive to usher in a new cycle with Satya Yuga and reestablish dharma. That was the explanation offered by Indian Mythology. Predictions and prophesies about catastrophes and the end of the world pronounced by priests, astrologers, sadhus, seers, and saints started coming on a regular basis from the beginning of the Common Era and are still going on. It is estimated that since 66 CE till today, at least 175 prophesies for the end of the world or major cataclysm have been made but leaving out the futuristic predictions, all past predictions have proved wrong. In this context, soothsayers Nostradamus and Baba Vanga have become household names worldwide. Michel de Nostredame, popularly known as Nostradamus (December 1503-July 1566) born at Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France to an originally Jewish family (his father’s family converted to Catholic Christianity before he was born) had been an extraordinary person ~ physician, astrologer, writer, translator, and apothecary. Owing to the outbreak of plague in France, (during the first wave, he lost his wife and children), he could not complete his studies in the University of Avignon which was shut down because of plague and later his dream of getting a doctorate in medicine from the University of Montpellier was shattered as he was expelled from the university for his past practice of apothecary which was forbidden by the university statutes. But he was still regarded as a ‘doctor’ because of his relentless fight against plague along with the famous physician Luis Serre and his discovery of the “rose pill” as an antidote to plague. Nostradamus gradually moved away from medicine to occultism and astrology. He wrote an Almanac in 1550 and encouraged by its success, decided to publish one or more annually, in which he had made altogether 6,338 prophesies. He also started publishing a calendar annually starting from January 1 instead of 1 March, which was the practice then. But it his Les Prophe’ties (The Prophesies) published as a book in 1555, which made him famous as a prophetic astrologer. The omnibus edition published in 1568 after his death contains 942 poetic quatrains (in 9 sets of 100 quatrains each and another 42 quatrains) supposed to represent future prophesies of apocalyptic events. After his death, The Prophecies gained extraordinary popularity as evidenced by about 2,000 editions of the book and more than 2,000 commentaries within a short time. Nostradamus became very much a part of common culture in the 20th and 21st century. Hundreds of books, fiction and non-fiction, have been written on his life and The Prophesies as well as numerous films and videos which still captivate people’s imagination.

Nostradamus had based all his published predictions on judicial astrology ~ astrological judgment or assessment, which had been severely criticized by the contemporary professional astrologers like Laurence Vidal. Supporters of Nostradamus (there are too many) claim that Nostradamus did predict the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution, the rise of Napoleon and Adolf Hitler, World War I and II, and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Popular authors also credit him for predicting the major modern events like Apollo’s landing on the moon, disaster of the space shuttle Challenger, death of princess Diana and the blowing up of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. Some commentators attributed to Nostradamus the Mayan Prophesy that the world would end in December 2012, but Nostradamus himself said in the preface of his book that his prophesies were “from now to the year 3797.” While millions of people believe that Nostradamus’ prophesies are genuine, a large number of scholars, academicians and critics are skeptics such as James Randi who suggested that Nostradamus’s reputation as a prophet “is largely manufactured by modern-day supporters who fit his words to events that have either already occurred or are so imminent as to be inevitable, a process sometimes known as ‘retroactive clairvoyance’ (postdiction). No Nostradamus quatrain is known to have been interpreted as predicting a specific event before it occurred, other than in vague, general terms that could equally apply to any number of other events.”

According to Jacques Halbronn, an academic, Nostradamus’s Prophesies are nothing but ‘antedated forgeries written by later authors for political reasons.’ As one who has closely followed the alleged predictions, I have always felt that Nostradamus’s quatrains containing undated predictions are too vague, nebulous, too general and too ambiguous, which are susceptible to multiple interpretations. Perhaps, they are hyped to sustain a big prediction business! Vangeliya Pandeva Surcheva (October 1911-August 1996) commonly known as Baba Vanga is another mystic and herbalist who became famous in popular culture for her supernormal abilities. Baba Vanga was a semi-literate Bulgarian who lost her eyesight in childhood due to an accident caused by a tornado (it is believed she was lifted up by the tornado and thrown into a sandy terrain, which damaged her eyes). Because of her intelligence and uncanny intuition, she earned the reputation of seer and soothsayer and was widely known in Eastern Europe for her alleged supernatural powers. Hundreds of people including high dignitaries of Bulgaria and the Soviet Union including Leonid Brezhnev reportedly visited her for consultation. Baba Vanga had not written any book nor did she cause her prophesies to be documented during her life time. According to The Weiser Field Guide to Paranomal, Baba Vanga did predict the break-up of the Soviet Union, sinking of the Soviet submarine Kursk, Chernobyl disaster, Stalin’s death, September 11 attack, Topolov’s victory in World Chess, World war III etc. But Bulgarian sources and new evidences indicate that “Baba Vanga did not make many of the predictions now attributed to her, but rather people frequently attribute new fake ‘prophesies’ to her since her death.” It is presumed that she must have played with the theory of probability for her alleged predictions, none of them has perhaps come true. (To be concluded)

[The writer is a former Dy. Comptroller &Auditor General of India and a former Ombudsman of Reserve Bank of India. He is also a writer of several books and can be reached at brahmas@gmail.com]