Godmen not new to controversy

Rampal Das is finally behind bars but the self-declared “god” is not the first godman to be accused of all kinds of criminal action. 

Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, the founder of the fast-growing Dera Sacha Sauda sect, which has its main centre in nearby Sirsa, faces charges of rape and murder. 

There’s Asaram Bapu, who has been accused of grabbing land, sexual assaults and even murder; like Rampal, he too gave the police a merry chase across several states before he surrendered to the police. 

But it’s not just north India -- Kerala’s mighty Mata Amritanandamayi math has been rocked by controversy after a former follower Gail Tredwell published a book a year ago alleging that there was sexual exploitation and promiscuity among senior ashramites. Earlier this year, devotees roughed up the publisher of a Malayali translation of the book.

Allegations of sexual misconduct against Nithyananda, who had a large ashram outside Bangalore, landed him in jail.

The accusations against Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, who built an empire of faith worth billions of dollars, range from faking his miracles, to sexual abuse and paedophilia.

Jayendra Saraswathi, the Sankaracharya of Kanchi and one of the most revered religious heads of Hindus, was arrested on suspicion of murdering a temple employee in 2004. 

There are others. The Ananda Margis, a sect which had a huge following in the eastern part of the country in the 1980s, was investigated in the Purulia arms drop case, in which four tonnes of weapons were airdropped near the Ananda Marg centre on the Bengal-Bihar border in 1995. The investigation has been inconclusive but the sect was always controversial -- members who left were murdered it was alleged. 

But the most hilarious was the case of Balak Brachmachari of Sanatan Dal, whose devotees refused to cremate his body for 55 days because they believed that he was immortal and would come alive. Finally, the police had to move in and use force. There, too, bombs were found. 

What explains India’s enduring fascination with godmen, even those who’ve shown themselves to be anything but godlike? 

S Irfan Habib, a historian, feels that the devotees who flock to godmen suffer from some kind of insecurity. “Unfortunately, it’s not just the illiterate professionals who are in their trap. The godmen continue to thrive as they draw strength and clout from politicians who know that they can mobilise large crowds. It’s such a vulgarisation of Kabir’s bhakti cult." 

In an essay, “The Guru as Healer”, psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar, explains the special bond between the guru and disciple, which has been at the core of religious movements throughout Hinduism’s long history as a kind of “idealising transference”, a “strong need for merging into...the guru”. The sexual aberrations, he continues, are not just stray cases, but are facilitated by the very nature of the guru-devotee relation. “If substances which have been in intimate contact with the guru’s body are powerful agents of inner change when ingested by the devotee, then the logic of transformation dictates that the most powerful transforming substance would be the the guru’s ‘purest’ and innermost essence - his semen.”