She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth
but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled
but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic
smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan
school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were.
Queen took over the administration of
Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A
lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon
is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land
and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that
led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and
Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in
making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake
of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hundred+ acres.
He is believed to be a master of
spirituality, a Guru who leads his disciples to the divine. But his deeds have
little to do with the divine. A couple of years back, one of the former
disciples of Dhillon, drew the world’s attention to the
dismally dark side of the godman’s soul.
Dhillon had acquired land in the
Waraich village in Punjab and probably made some illegal invasions into the
neighbourhood which is his usual style. The people of Waraich filed a case
against him. His threat to the villagers was ominous: “I am a son of a Jat
(upper caste and aggressive in nature) and my village is next to Bhindranwale’s
(a terrorist) village.” The implication is clear enough.
It is as the ambassador of this
Dhillon that Queen entered Sawan campus. One of the first things she did was to
displace the principal from his office and place herself in his chair. Her
ruthless reign began in Sawan. She smiled a lot and with every smile of hers
somebody lost his/her job in school. Many staff had legal cases fabricated
against them. One was even thrown into jail on a false charge of molestation
attempts against some RSSB women. When Queen couldn’t handle the volatile
situation all alone, Pranita was brought in.
Both together succeeded pretty easily in bulldozing the entire school.
Whenever I think of these women, who
were acting on behalf of a godman and who held top positions in the godman’s
cult, I am left stunned by the meaning of spirituality.
What does religion mean to people?
Since spirituality is not a concern of most people, I’m looking at religion
though, strictly speaking, RSSB is not a religion. For ordinary people,
religion means just a few simple things:
1. certain rituals such as
initiation of a child into a community, marriage of the adults, and burial of
the dead.
2. a feeling of belonging to
a community
3. a place for unloading
one’s sins and guilt
Life goes on as usual outside of
these rituals and practical considerations. You can pray at your mosque many
times a day and then one day go and kill 49 people just because they don’t
follow your religion. Refer: Omar Mateen, 29, shooting 49 people to death and
wounding 53 others at a nightclub in Orlando in 2016.
Andrea Yates was a deeply religious
person. She drowned all five of her children in a bathtub in 2001 driven insane
by her piety. Remember the murder of Graham Staines and his innocent children
by the Bajrang Dal in 1999. Just a few examples. There are millions of such
examples to show that religion can make people worse than Satan.
Most ordinary believers don’t indulge
in such crimes, of course. For them, religion is little more than a practical
agency for helping them fulfil the above-mentioned human needs. But for a few
like Dhillon and his Queen, religion is a tool for establishing their kingdom
on earth.
Two years of my association with
Queen didn’t ever give me a feeling that she had even a trace of the spiritual
in her being. If one’s association with a religious cult could make one a good
individual, then just sitting in a garage would get me a car. Queen was fake through
and through. She used spirituality as a tool for exploiting people.
The ultimate tragedy is that people like her
are accepted as leaders by too many and the really good people are victimised
by them all together. 
Queen changed Sawan's green to RSSB-saffron
PS. I'm participating in #BlogchatterA2Z
Previous
Posts: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P
How did you survive this deadly association I wonder!
ReplyDeleteThe truth is I didn't survive, I fled. I was one of the last to flee, however. But there were a few brave souls who stayed on until they got some financial benefits at least. Kudos to them.
DeleteSpecial place for these people in the 'Hell' prescribed in their religion or whatever tall tale the Leader has propounded. I like to appease myself, whenever i found out about these people, by imagining them being born as a cockroach in the next life, only to be trampled again and again, like they did to innocents.Feels good~
ReplyDeleteYou made me laugh, Careena. Particularly because I crush cockroaches under foot whenever I see them.
DeleteSpirituality is a much misunderstood and also much misused word. In today's world, it's a challenge to figure out who is genuinely spiritual.
ReplyDeleteThose who preach spirituality today are diabolical characters!
DeleteWhen Sawan was about to be razed, Just to please the queen & her royal highness(Pranita), some of the teachers became die hard devotees of RSSB. They started visiting 'satsang' on every weekend, that was a calculative move though.
ReplyDeleteVery true. My S post will be about one such person who didn't become a devotee of RSSB openly but licked the boots of their women.
DeleteA few others played very nasty games with me too and some of them were given jobs in RSSB institutions like Fortis. But those institutions died soon.
It was all a terrible game which revealed the shameless shades of certain 'big' personalities of SPS.
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteSeems she out-Machiavellied Machiavelli... YAM xx
Quite!
DeleteExactly...This blog couldn't accommodate many other atrocities metered out by her to Sawan. She brought a ridiculous man from a residential school as Principal, paid him a fat salary, demolished a part of the reception and office area and set up a new Principal's office with state of the art ambiance with highly expensive furniture, renewed the reception, etc. and played a game of Los Angeles gamblers to make the staff believe that she was revamping the system and renewing the school. She even promised that the sxhool will be relocated to a new site and the new locality had a board proclaiming the same. When we doubted and questioned about it in person, she replied, I quote: "Yes, Chaku fadke dhikaavoon?" (Can I cut open the skin to prove it?)I unquote. She pulled wool over the eyes of the entire staff of Sawan. I admire her for such a calibre! What shall I say! Oh, Queen...rightly named!
DeleteI love this. This sort of response is what I wanted right from the beginning of this series. Thank you, dear friend. A lot of bad things are escaping my memory nowadays. Maybe, that's how old age is. Forget a lot. And forgive too.
DeleteHow can your small brain accommodate a long series of atrocities meted out by the queen? Why? I forgot about the spacious Air Conditioned staffroom-cum-conference room which used to be 2 simple classrooms ! Would anyone think that such posh constructions were made only to be demolished and bull-dozed within a year's time!? . Aftrr the first Managing Committee meeting, the then Manager before Queen promised that they would pull down the auditorium and construction a new air conditioned one with modern sound systems and furniture like in a theater. Later, they would have thought of "cost cutting" in their conspiracy and limit it to renewing the school building! Who can afford such costly games? Are they spiritual? No, it is better to forget. Forgiving is a different story. You are helpless! We are helpless! That's all!
ReplyDeleteYou have refreshed my memory quite a lot. Could the previous management have averted the sad fate of Sawan? RSSB was after the campus land for years. There was a tremendous pressure on the owner, not only from the godman but also from his family. Too many things came together in a complex conspiracy.
Delete(Sorry for a few typo errors.)
ReplyDeleteAll these took place at the cost of the children's education and innocent parents' pocket. hmm!
ReplyDeleteSadly, yes. What RSSB did was inhuman injustice to a lot of people.
DeleteYou got it right! 100%
ReplyDeleteThose who rise to positions of power in religious institutions did so because of the power, not any claim to spirituality. Power attracts a certain sort. Just because it's associated with a religion doesn't change the nature of the pursuit of power.
ReplyDelete