The sins of a holy man

Book Review

Title: Dera Sacha Sauda and Gurmeet Ram Rahim

Author: Anurag Tripathi

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2018

Pages: 198       Price: ₹299

When criminals are attributed godly stature, depravity spreads among people like a malady. Gurmeet Ram Rahim is one of the many godmen who attained godhood in India with the help of politicians, businessmen, goons and sub-mediocre common people. Anurag Tripathi’s book shows us how depraved a man Gurmeet was though he extracted worship from millions of devotees among whom were also powerful politicians and wealthy capitalists.

“Gurmeet’s philosophy was far from spiritual,” says the book. “It was oriented from the beginning towards acquisition and accumulation of power.” When Gurmeet became the head in 1990, the Dera owned some five acres of land. By 2017 his empire in Sirsa alone extended to over 700 acres of land excluding the many benami properties belonging to the Dera.

The book explains in detail the various strategies employed by Gurmeet’s thugs (devotees) to force landowners to sell their land to the Dera at dirt cheap prices. Intimidation of the landowner, converting the farm into a garbage heap by asking devotees to dump garbage as well as defecate there, destruction of cultivation by letting loose animals on the farms, and various other techniques were put to use as suited the occasion.

Gurmeet had his own private army specially trained and brainwashed to do all sorts of nefarious things for him including killing opponents and intimidating into silence women who were raped him. The godman had a multi-speciality hospital where two doctors were always available to castrate young men who would become his slaves in the form of Qurbani Dasta. A kind of opium (fanki) cultivated on Dera lands in Rajasthan was mixed with food so that the inmates would always be under its influence and hence obey the master without any questioning.

Honeypreet, the woman who shot into notoriety when the godman was arrested last year, was projected as his adopted daughter but was in fact his concubine. Here was a man who had no qualms about shedding his lust upon his own ‘daughter’! What is more, he used her as a trap to snatch the entire wealth of one rich Gupta family by getting the young Gupta to marry her.

The book is divided into three parts. While the first part shows the sleazy side of the godman’s personality, the second gives us a brief history of the Dera with a focus on how Gurmeet corrupted it totally and the third shows us how difficult it was for justice to catch up with this man who had the backing of the entire political system with both Congress and BJP trying to subvert the investigations and a whole personal army ready to kill for him.

Those who are interested to learn about the inner secrets of cults led by fraudulent godmen will find this book interesting as well as rewarding if not shocking. Any sane reader will be left wondering why millions of people are ready to follow such fraudulent people though the book does offer an answer to that too. The social situation forces people to do certain things. When agriculture took a backseat in Haryana and Punjab and the big farmers brought in cheap labourers from Bihar and UP, the Dalits in the two states were left high and dry. Deras gave them opportunities to live a more dignified life with free education for their children and work opportunities for themselves. Moreover, at the Deras they were treated with equality while outside they were low-caste people held in contempt. It is also easy to manipulate helpless people and get them to do what powerful people want them to do.

The book is easy to read being written in a simple and straightforward style. It took me about five hours to finish it. I found it engrossing especially because I am an implicit victim of another godman who gobbled up my entire school in Delhi with its 15-acre campus. This godman of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) is another land-grabber in the shape of a spiritual leader. Recently the Delhi government demolished many of his illegal constructions and retrieved the forest lands that had been encroached by him. Along with my wife once I got an opportunity to visit the headquarters of RSSB in Beas, Punjab. I was astounded by the kingdom that the godman had built up there, a kingdom which extended right from the Beas railway station to kilometres and kilometres on the bank of the Beas River. You cannot enter the enclosed kingdom unless you are a member of the cult. Inside the kingdom there is another Constitution with its own rules and regulations including traffic regulations apart from regulations on food, use of mobile phones and cameras, and so on. Most of the devotees looked like slaves some of whom were happy with the security offered by the system while others seemed mostly women who escaped from unhappy married lives into a less unhappy life of shady spirituality. The two women of RSSB whom I knew at close quarters were as villainous as Gurmeet at heart. I know many men of RSSB who were no better than those two women, though my acquaintance with the men was more distant. Anurag Tripathi’s book revived my memories of the three years I was destined to spend under the leadership of RSSB people who had taken over my school with nefarious motives. But even without any such personal associations, you can find this book rewarding if you are interested in knowing how fake spiritual organisations work in India and how depraved they can make thousands and thousands of people.