A Miracle in Chakwal?

The sudden appearance of Prophet Mohammed’s (PBUH) alleged footprint in the sleepy village of Dharabi near Chakwal has sent a wave of religious
excitement across Pakistan. At a three-hour drive from Islamabad, Dharabi
is now attracting tens of thousands of visitors from Swat to Karachi. They
seek blessings, spiritual enlightenment, miracle-cures, and relief from
life’s other stresses. A road that is sparsely traveled in normal times is
now clogged with traffic, vendors of food and drink are having a field
day, new businesses selling pictures and holy paraphernalia have sprouted,
and a permanent shrine is under construction. The village could not have
hoped for better.

Mohd’s foot

My encounter in mid-March with this phenomenon was accidental and preceded the heavy rush that came in subsequent weeks. While on the way to Chakwal, I became curious about the heavy police presence. Upon inquiring, I was told of a recent momentous event - a giant footprint was said to have suddenly appeared, which the local ulema promptly declared as belonging to the Holy Prophet. But this had ignited a fierce war of words between various religious factions in the larger Chakwal area. Some believers insist that the Prophet had left the earthly world once and forever, while others contend that he revisits it periodically to remind followers of his
presence. The police had been called to prevent physical violence.

Conversations over tea with the Dharabi’s inhabitants gave me some facts. However, the entire story soon receded to the back of my mind. It was
revived several weeks later when it hit the national press and television.
To augment my understanding I made phone calls to several villagers I had
met but discovered that new embellishments and inventions are being added by the day to the original narration of events. Village skeptics, on the
other hand, are being silenced and speak only on the condition that their
identities not be revealed.

The story begins on 12th Rabi-ul-Awwal, the Prophet’s birthday, when
celebrations were held as per village custom. This involves cooking "sooji
ka halwa" in large flat iron dishes called karahis. Since there are no
stoves large enough for the purpose, shallow holes are dug and then filled
with twigs, charcoal, or other flammable material. After the cooking is
done and the fires had dimmed, the holes are filled with loose earth. On
that particular evening, I learned that there was a heavy rain shower.

And now the story goes like this: that evening a woman looked out into her
backyard and saw a glow that appeared to move. In her excitement, she
summoned her mother-in-law who says she also saw the glow. It appeared
very briefly and was not seen subsequently (although a six-week later
version is that it lasted for three days and was so bright that the house
did not need electric lights!). The women also claimed that the glow was
accompanied by a sweet smell. In the morning, the cooking area was
discovered to have a mysterious ground impression (see attached photo).
The rest is history.

What scientific explanation exists for this phenomenon? As a starter,
readers of this article are invited to Google the "Dharabi miracle" where
they will see countless uploads of photographs and hastily made
celebratory videos. By straining one?s imagination, some may be able to
see a footprint. But its enormous size - between 3-4 feet long (see
attached photo) - would indicate that it belongs to the long-sought
mythical Himalayan Yeti rather than any human. The shape of the impression can be more plausibly explained as that of loose earth, brought together by rainwater, from two adjacent irregularly rounded cooking holes. It could also be the water-distorted image of two heavy round karhai’s of
different sizes placed on the soft earth. Or it could simply be deliberate
fraud.

Assuming that the women had their wits about them, and had not been
overpowered by the devotional intensity of the day’s celebrations, the
softly glowing ephemeral light could have multiple explanations.

First, it is possible that a swarm of phosphorescent insects was somehow
attracted to the cooking area. Bioluminescence in insects is a well known
phenomenon. As in the common firefly known as jugnoo, "cold light" is
produced via chemiluminescence.

It could also be that the organic matter buried in the holes, assisted by
the heat of imperfectly quenched coals or twigs, could have converted into
methane and phosphine gases. The latter is known to oxidize spontaneously
upon coming into contact with air and can burn at a low temperature
causing glowing light. Appearances of apparitions in western folklore,
such as Jack-o’-the-Lantern or Will-o’-the-Wisp, have been traced by
scientists to various flammable gases and insects.

A detailed investigation would involve looking at the soil composition,
local entomology, and recorded statements of different witnesses. It
seems, however, that the Dharabi event will be ignored by Pakistan’s
scientific institutions, of which there are well over two dozen. With
exorbitant budgets but zero or little scientific output, some are housed
in shiny new buildings on Islamabad’s Constitution Avenue. These include
the Pakistan Academy of Sciences, Committee on Science and Technology in
the Islamic World (COMSTECH), COMSATS, Pakistan Science Foundation,
Pakistan Council on Science and Technology, etc.

Unfortunately not one of the above or, for that matter, any other
Pakistani scientific institute, has ever debunked the unreasonable and
anti-scientific attitudes that one sees all around. For example, after the
October 2005 earthquake that killed nearly 100,000, none challenged the
view in the public media that this tragedy was a consequence of our bad
deeds such as, for example, watching television or allowing unveiled women
to go out of the house.

To be sure, superstitious beliefs exist in other countries as well. One
recalls the hysteria in 1995 following the discovery that Lord Ganesh, the
Elephant God, would "drink" milk if a spoon of milk was held up to his
trunk. Even minor temples in India overflowed with superstitious devotees.
So great was the rush of devotees that a traffic gridlock resulted in New
Delhi and sales of milk jumped up by 30%.

Fortunately for India, an independent body, the Indian Rationalists
Association, was quick to show that Ganesh’s milk drinking had a simple
physical explanation. It was shown to be simple capillary action - what
everyone learns about in school science books. The surface tension of the
milk was pulling the liquid up and out of the spoon, before gravity caused
it to run down the front of the statue. To its credit, India’s Ministry of
Science and Technology confirmed the explanation and the country’s
religious craziness slowly abated. With such precedents, surely it is time
for Pakistan’s Ministry of Science and Technology to investigate the
so-called Chakwal miracle, as well as the many similar superstitions that
delude our people and keep them in a state of stupor and backwardness.

(The author is professor of physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad)