Every few years the media in our country erupts with the news of another self-styled ‘Godman’ (and in the memorable case of Radhe Maa, Godwoman) embroiled in some form of legal trouble. What form this legal trouble takes, ranges from land encroachment and money laundering to rape and murder. In the most recent instance, where the self-styled ‘Guru Dr. Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insaan’ was found guilty of raping two disciples in a case dating back to 2002. The case for murder of the journalist who exposed his misdeeds is still in court.
In anticipation of the verdict, lakhs of ‘followers’ of the ‘Guru’ converged upon Panchkula with the stated intention to cause damage to property and life if their leader was to be found guilty of the crimes he was accused of. When that did happen, they made good on this stated intent by indulging in rioting on a mass scale.
We can debate about whether the state of Haryana should have responded in a better manner or more efficiently, but the fact remains that there were lakhs of people willing to come out and commit violence to defend a man found guilty of such a heinous crime.
Neither was this the first time this happened. In 2014, Sant Rampal’s ashram saw a stand-off between police and well-armed ‘security forces’ of the Godman when he was due to be arrested on murder charges and refused to surrender to the authorities.
Closer home, we all would have friends or family who are in the thrall of such Godmen. They attend ‘sabhas’, change their diets and choose their life partners on the instructions of these spiritual leaders. TV Channels blare orations by multitudes of them 24 x 7. Newspapers report that each and every one of these has assets in the crores of rupees, if not hundreds of crores.
How does it happen? Why does it happen? Why do so many people follow these self-styled men of God, giving over their money, their minds and the control of their lives to charlatans who misuse their power for their own ends?
The first thing we need to understand is that this phenomenon is neither new nor is it confined to India. A part of human evolution has been the need to attribute a Godhood. There remains no rational, demonstrable proof for the existence of any God, and yet atheism remains a tiny minority. Why does it surprise anyone, then, that those who follow the fictional ‘Man in the Sky’ are easily brought to believe in a real ‘Man on Earth’? Spread across the history of Europe and the Catholic Church are stories of those who took advantage of man’s gullibility to perpetuate their own cults. The stories would not vary much through the Middle-East or elsewhere, and to this day, especially in the United States of America, ‘mega-churches’ are in the spotlight for duping their members.
Yet, the cult of the Indian Godman – and their sheer numbers – are something that baffles the world. Perhaps because they appear to be almost independent of established religions, an entity unto themselves, or because the nature of their following so resilient and fanatical. The fact is, cults grow around personalities and cultists are often those who seek succour from a world that appears to have failed them in some measure. In the increasing complexity of human society, simple maxims of the old religions no longer seem to apply. To those who feel left out, marginalised by society, a dera run by a man like Gurmeet Singh is preferable to a continued existence in hopeless poverty. To a rich man lacking faith in himself or the family, the inherent hypocrisy of a spiritual leader who demands money is not very apparent.
It is also interesting that education and achievement do not seem related to rationality, and in this lies a failure of scientific thought. Where else but India would we have scientists capable of sending a mission to Mars on a budget that is a fraction of the developed countries – and have those same scientists falling at the feet of Gods and Godmen. Instead of finding the strength in their learning to repudiate Godmen, they prefer to ‘play along’ at best, or compartmentalise their minds to such an extent that they do not see the hypocrisy they indulge in.
Add to this the unique aspect of the Hindu religion – its tolerance for a variety of Gods. A mind already accustomed to accepting a multitude of deities find now anomaly, or nothing unusual, about adding a living God to the list.
It begins, perhaps, with an innocent, exploratory visit, listening to the lectures, being attracted by what seems to be a strength of conviction, and goes on to become something larger, something almost sinister over a period of time. Before they realise it, they have invested time and money in finding a sense of belonging they did not get from conventional religion or from work and family, and it is too late to turn back.
For politicians, this becomes an easy votebank to nurture, a vast horde of people answering to the call of a single Godman. The man of the moment, Gurmeet Singh himself, displays photos of himself with a number of major politicians from Haryana and Punjab.
Ultimately, the rise of Godmen reflects a failure of society in caring for its poor and in educating its children. We push them into such desperate situations that the seductive words of these cheats are more attractive than the voices of their own reason.
And there lies the real tragedy of India’s love affair with the ‘babas’.
