Writer becomes unwilling messiah, can’t unconvince believers

Not me, if you’re wondering. No, it’s some fellow who has written books about the need to change how we deal with world issues like poverty and famine.

Portions of Raj Patel’s life appear to mirror the predictions made by Scottish mystic Benjamin Creme and his believers have bombarded Patel to let him know they think he’s the ultimate world changer. He’s been denying it, but

his denial merely fanned the flames for some believers. In a twist ripped straight from the script of the comedy classic, they said that this disavowal, too, had been prophesied. It seemed like there was nothing to convince them.

“It’s the kind of paradox that’s inescapable,” he said, with a grim humour. “There’s very little chance or point trying to dig out of it.”

Benjamin Creme isn’t coming forward to insist Patel is this messiah, either.

He suggests that it is not up to him to rule either way, instead blaming media coverage, rather than his own mystical predictions, for making people “hysterical”.

“It is not my place,” Creme told the writer Scott James, a friend of Patel, recently. “People are looking to Mr Patel because they are looking for the fulfilment of a story which I’ve been making around the world for the last 35 years.”

And the last time he tried to claim the messiah was around the corner, journalists were around to record the event — and therefore were around to record the non-event. Nobody turned up in 1985 to prove Creme right.

In the end, the promised saviour failed to materialise. (One candidate, “a man in old robes and a faraway look in his eye”, turned out to be a tramp begging for cigarettes, our correspondent wrote at the time).

These people aren’t just looking for fulfillment, they’re looking for hope. They’re looking for a better world and they think Raj Patel has the means to create one.

I can’t see them losing interest in him anytime soon.