Babas and their Babes

Those who are familiar with Babas (godmen, sadhus, and whatever names they are known by) won’t be surprised by what followed the arrest of that Ram Rahim fellow.  We know that most of these men (and women too these days) clad in religious robes are sheer criminals.  Religion is merely a mask for them, a façade put up to hide the hideousness behind.

There are thousands of people in India like this Ram Rahim chap.  Most of them are not known beyond their limited circles.  Some are rich and powerful enough to have made their presence felt beyond their circles and even beyond the national borders.  Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB], for example.  Like this Ram Rahim fellow, Gurinder Singh of RSSB enjoys fabulous following and high category security too.  This security is a big joke for me personally.

This guy Gurinder Singh is greedy for land while most of his counterparts are greedy for women and food and petty conquests like the old kings of little kingdoms.  RSSB arguably owns more area of the earth than any other dera.  I was a victim of its latest land acquisition.  The school where I was working was bought by them with its fifteen acres of campus just a year after Narendra Modi came to power in Delhi.  The school, hostels, and all other buildings on the campus were razed to ground and the whole thing today stands as wasteland except three times a year when Gurinder will lecture to his bhakts whose vehicles will be parked in the parking lot which was a school until two years ago.  RSSB was reported earlier to have conquered about hundred acres of forest lands in the Delhi-Haryana border.  Nobody is concerned about such things.

When the staff of the school complained to the AAP education minister about the imminent destruction of the school in 2015, the minister said, “We are helpless.  If we support you, we’ll get a few hundred votes.  The Baba’s devotees number to five lakh.”  The votes matter more than any principle.  Moreover, AAP’s premier, Arvind Kejriwal had already received some favours from Sitaram Jindal who had sold the school to Gurinder Singh and Jindal is a bhakt of the godman.  So we knew we were fighting a futile war.  The school died, we lost our jobs and I migrated to Kerala where godmen won’t fool the people easily.

Oh, I was saying that Gurinder’s security is a joke.  I digressed after that.  That’s how I am.  Sorry.  Gurinder visited the school when the deal was being settled.  It was rumoured that he bought the campus for ₹900 crore.  We were curious to see this wealthy ascetic and so were happy to know that he was visiting us.  But when the time came, we – the staff and students – were all asked to stay in the auditorium and never come out until we were told.  The ascetic came with a few police vehicle in front and behind.  Even the MPs who came to the school for various functions never had such security.  I wondered what kind of an ascetic this was.  One small boy escaped the attention of teachers and moved out.  He was chased back by the security police.  When asked by a teacher why he had gone out the boy said that he had to visit the washroom.  Baba must have gifted him constipation. We were let out of the auditorium only after the Baba left the campus with all the police vehicles in front and behind his vehicle.

After my school was converted into a parking lot I came to know that Gurinder has a different face when he visits his foreign ‘ashrams.’  He flies the business class and has the class’s due entertainments.  All his followers I met while I worked in the school during the two years after their takeover were villainous to the core.  They knew how to distort simple truths into circuitous lies. They assaulted rebellious teachers on the roads.  They fabricated false cases against some teachers. One charge was attempt to rape.  In order to fabricate that charge they sent some ancient (very old, I mean) women to the house of a staff member and created a ruckus.  What followed was hilarious comedy seen from the distance of today but acute tragedy for that family at that time.

I could go on and on.  My experience with one godman is fit for a novel (which I am writing).  You can imagine what the other godmen would be like.  I leave it to you to judge.  But I know that bhakti makes people blind to truths. 

PS. My latest short story collection, The Nomad Learns Morality, is dedicated to RSSB, especially one woman of that cult.