Learning that he had terminal cancer of the stomach, and knowing that Basava Premanand, the 79 year old doyen of Indian rationalism, did not have much time left to live, I went to visit him in Coimbatore in South India earlier this year. When I landed, I learnt that Premanand's younger brother and neighbour, the famous Dayanand, President of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, had died a few hours earlier that day. Saying “Death is a part of life, and we must take it as it comes”, and holding my hand for support, Premanand walked me to Dayanand's home where his body was lying in state. Standing next to Dayanand's body, and talking with pride about the half-a-dozen Ph.Ds that his brother had acquired after an education in Santi Niketan, a university set up by Rabindranath Tagore in West Bengal, and of his extraordinary interest in learning new things all the time, Premanand looked at me in the eye and said “He was greater than me, Babu”. It was a single, intimate, unguarded moment in the two decades that I had known him when Premanand revealed that he was aware of his own greatness.

Premanand was not only great, he was also unique. When you first met him, you were struck by what you saw: a short man with a face framed with abundant flowing hair, and usually a cigarette and a glass of South Indian coffee in hand. He looked almost like the Hindu gurus whose miracles he fought fearlessly for nearly four decades.

“I am a man in search of miracles,” he would say, and he had been looking for them ever since he and his brother were expelled from school in his 9th standard because of their nationalist views during British colonial rule. He left home at an early age, not wanting to be dependent on his rich Theosophical parents, and wanting to earn his own livelihood. It was an attitude he carried with him throughout his life time, never asking for donations from anyone, though a few benefactors like the industrialist G.D. Naidu always supported his work. As a young man, he joined several religious ashrams and stayed with many gurus, hoping to find a 'true miracle' - he even joined Satya Sai Baba's group, India's most infamous god man and trickster, who heads a religious empire reputedly worth USD 6 Billion.

Premanand never found even one 'true miracle', having investigated some 1500 miracle claims, all of which he exposed as fraudulent. But to do this he learnt magic and prestidigitation; he understood how to handle snakes and scorpions without getting bitten; he learnt how to pierce his body with tridents and hooks; how to pierce his cheek with a rod without it hurting; and how to hold burning camphor in his hand. He practised how to swallow and regurgitate religious symbols, and he taught activists to hang from hooks pierced in their back, and to even pull cars. He learnt, taught and demonstrated the secrets behind the fraudulent miracle claims of god men and gullible believers. He did this so that the general public could understand the scientific principles behind these extraordinary feats, which they attributed to mystic, magical or religious power. Using the money he earned through his businesses, he travelled many times from one end of India to another, to share with others what he had learnt. He stopped by the roadside, he performed on the street, he went into villages, he slept in his jeep – and he took the message of science and its spirit into rural India in a way that few could have done.

Premanand was the obvious spiritual and intellectual successor of the legendary Dr. Abraham Kovoor whose campaigns for rationalism shook up the Indian sub-continent, and he took Kovoor's work to its logical conclusion and into rural India: Premanand's tireless travels led to the founding of innumerable local rationalist organisations that sprouted after his visits, now federated under the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations to whom he bequeathed the copyright of his works and his books. To keep the activists continuously educated and informed, he published the Indian Skeptic, to produce and to distribute which he laboured at the printing press and carried heavy loads to the post office himself. His singular and single handed efforts took the message of skepticism and rationalism to hundreds of schools, colleges and universities.

If the all-powerful Satya Sai Baba, who had kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers falling at his feet, had one person to fear, it was Premanand. Premanand led a media and judicial battle against Satya Sai Baba, but he never received support from the police even when six murders were committed in Sai Baba's own bedroom – a sordid saga on which Premanand brought out a 1000 page tome. The Skeptics Book Club, which he ran, produced and reproduced some gems which are valuable reference works for fellow activists aiming to fight bad science and superstition.

I was baffled by his frequent statement that he had no money – a man who ran a successful business manufacturing French Polish, one who had travelled to 49 countries with his own money, a man who has been featured in innumerable television documentaries by the BBC, by Discovery Channel and National Geographic as also in the non English world. How could such a man have no money? I learnt the answer when I visited him: the money he earned, he had already donated for the care and education of many physically and mentally challenged children. He had no money because he had given it away!

In the twilight years of his life he lost both his sons, and he had the regret that his personal life was never a happy one. But he died happy that his idea of a Method of Science Museum, based on the work of his close friend, India's top and internationally acclaimed scientist, the molecular biologist, Prof. P. M. Bhargava, was built in his home town, Podanur. He supervised its construction even through his illness and got it inaugurated not by a celebrity but by a girl in a local municipal school, 'because it is meant for the children', he said.. “No, my dream is not fulfilled. I want such a Museum of Science in every village in India, if not in every school” he said to me and to his successor Prof. Narendra Nayak, the biochemist who resigned from his teaching job to continue Premanand's work, and who is now President of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations with some 70 member organisations.

Premanand died as he lived: selflessly and thinking of others; fearlessly, and being true to himself, despite the several murderous attacks on him by those aggrieved by his attacks on superstitions. He gave away all of himself not just in life, but also in death. His main worry towards the end was whether his body would be donated to the local medical college after his death, because his daughter-in-law was religious. He made her promise to him that this would happen. At Abirami hospital in his last days, despite the heavy medication he had received, he woke up with angry surprise when it was whispered to him that there were rumours about his deathbed conversion to religion. He issued through Prof. Nayak a final statement that he was dying as a rationalist. He also instructed Prof. Nayak not to cancel any anti-superstition show to get a glimpse of his dead body.

As a great man passes into history and legend, the family of rationalists grieves the loss of not only a living inspiration, but a dear and affectionate senior friend, who was, above all, a great human being.

Babu Gogineni is International Director of IHEU