New Delhi

The Hindu Milk Miracle

On the morning of 21 September 1995 word went round Delhi that statues of Ganesha were drinking milk from a spoon. By midday milk was being offered to images all over India, and then in temples in Britain, Canada and Nepal; Delhi sold out of milk and the traffic stopped. That same day India's Ministry of Science and Technology sent a team to the temples, which showed that the milk leaves the spoon through surface tension and the capillary action of porous stone and marble, and then runs down the statue in a thin film. When food colouring was added to the milk the trace became visible over the whole figure. By the evening of the next day the phenomenon had stopped of itself.