When Bollywood actress Bipasha Basu and all-powerful cricket icon and Rajya Sabha MP Sachin Tendulkar need help, they share a faith healer. When Tendulkar scored the world’s first double century in One Day Internationals at Gwalior against South Africa, he gave the credit to Eliyantha Lindsay White, “the miracle doctor from Sri Lanka helped me. I must thank him and the President of Sri Lanka”.
The miracle doctor’s latest celebrity fan is Bipasha Basu. She was in Colombo to entertain Lankan rugby fans at the Carlton tournament. Hours before the show, her arm was dislocated during rehearsal. A local doctor fixed it, but the pain would not go away. She could not even raise her arm. When Namal Rajapaksa, son of President Rajapaksa heard about this, he informed his father, who in turn called up White and told him: “Somehow put her on stage this evening.” Bipasha claims she cured in two hours, in time for the show. “It was amazing”, she said.
White has been Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s unofficial “personal physician” for a long time, though they have kept it under wraps until Tendulkar blew the lid. Most of the faith doctor’s patients were direct recommendations from the president. White, of British-Sri Lankan ancestry, uses a mixture of Ayurveda and spiritual power offering to cure people of an amazing variety of ailments ranging from sports related injuries to cancer and AIDS. However, he has no formal qualification to be an allopathic or even an ayurvedic doctor. His detractors deride him as a “quack” and “shaman”. However, his “spiritually charged” oils, potions and tablets, are much in demand, including by many VVIPs.
It was through Rajapaksa that Tendulkar saw White, in either late 2007 or early 2008, when he was suffering from a painful and persistent knee condition which was threatening his career.
“On the first occasion I treated Sachin, I gave my medicine in front of the President because I wanted to give Sachin the assurance that the medicine was safe,” said White. The medicine worked. Tendulkar returned to White when he injured his fingers during the final stages of the Indian Premier League matches.