Asaram Bapu masquerades as a Hindu religious leader and a spiritual guru. He deserves to be neither. His followers, who unfortunately number many lakhs, will be furious at the insinuation. They will tell you that their beloved bapu has gone through a rigorous learning process: He has renounced a life of materialistic pleasures, walked a decades-long journey of self-realisation, meditated for years in the caves of the Himalayas, learnt at the feet of wise sages, and only then attained enlightenment. But by his recent shocking actions and insensitive utterances, he has mocked at the wisdom which he received at the hands of the learned. He has also in the process betrayed the trust that his admirers had placed in him.
A post on ashram.org, which is the official website of ‘Sant Shri Asharamji Ashram', eulogistically informs us: “He used to sleep in the school at night away from his wife and practice celibacy (Brahmacharya) sincerely. Four days before exam he was highly influenced by a shloka which meant that, ‘The one who has disowned expectations and materialistic desires and has adopted the desire-less state, the penances and worship of such a person has reached completion.' His desire to attain God got intensified. He made up his mind to break from family so as to realise God.”
That must have been in another age, because the shloka's influence appears to have waned. The self-styled godman is in the dock on charges of sexually assaulting a minor girl at his Jodhpur ashram in Rajasthan. If the allegations are true, the much-revered 72-year-old bapu, who kept away from his wife in his younger days to protect his celibacy, has failed to keep his paws off even minor devotees. Perhaps Asaram Bapu believes that, having successfully completed the ‘penances and worship' by many means, including abstinence of sex with his wife, he can now take it easy.
The level of his enlightenment can be checked by the statements he has been making since the latest (there are more, and we'll deal with that soon enough) allegations have surfaced. First he flatly denied the accusation, and then poured ridicule on the victim and said that she was not a ‘small girl but very smart'. Her smartness, it appears, comes from the fact that she had the courage to speak out. According to some media reports, there have allegedly been other victims of his lust who were not ‘smart' enough to publicly accuse him. At least one of them has applauded the Jodhpur victim for her courage and added that the godman had behaved with her in a similarly inappropriate manner.
Asaram Bapu's ‘penances and worships' should have taught him to respect women. After all, female deities form an important element of Hinduism which the godman claims to practise and preach. But the heights of the Himalayan caves where he is said to have spent decades in meditation have done nothing to elevate his gender sensitivity. Nobody has forgotten his shocking remark over the brutal gang rape of a 23-old woman in a moving bus in Delhi last December 16. He had said: “Only five to six people are not the culprits. The victim is as guilty as her rapists. She should have called the culprits ‘brothers' and begged them to stop. This could have saved her dignity and life. Can one hand clapIJ I don't think so.” Only an individual with a depraved mind can think of such remarks. Asaram Bapu needs to consult a psychiatrist for his condition which only seems to be deteriorating by the day.
The problem does not end with his alleged sexual escapades. For a man who has sacrificed material pleasures to devote himself to the cause of god, Asaram Bapu has done spectacularly well in amassing property over the years as he walked the path to attaining a ‘desire-less' state. In Navsari, Gujarat, his ashram was allotted some 10 acres of land. For the ‘desire-less' godman, this should have been boon enough, but that was not to be. His ashram encroached upon a further six acres and the godman refused to budge. Eventually, the State regime bulldozed the encroachment and seized possession of the plot. A similar story was repeated in Madhya Pradesh, where his ashram has allegedly encroached upon 100 acres of land which the State Government had given him temporarily to organise a satsang.
Asaram Bapu's faithful will tell you that the godman preaches the existence of One Supreme Conscious and cites Bhakti Yoga, Gnana Yoga and Karma Yoga as the major ‘influences' of his life. One can add ‘adharma yoga' to this list, if the charges that he has been facing on the personal and the material fronts are anything to go by.
India loves godmen and godwomen. Perhaps it has to do with our deep-rooted cultural tradition that is replete with the wisdom of our sages and the surrender of our saints to the Bhakti cult. Sant Tukaram, Sant Dnyaneshwar, Mirabai, the Sai Baba of Shirdi, Sufi saint Moinuddin Chishti and more of the kind should be the role model, the aspirational goal, for any self-respecting religious or spiritual guru of modern times. Asaram Bapu will have heard of them. If he had emulated them by even a fraction of their devotion and dedication, he would have been truly enlightened.
Our mindset that has propelled the likes of Asaram Bapu to a cult status is also responsible for the proliferation of various fake gurus like Swami (it should be declared a criminal offence for any godman to call himself or let others refer to him by this venerable form of address) Nithyananda. This man's sexual capers have by now been extensively documented, but well before the law and his misconduct caught up with him, he enjoyed the blind faith and respect of lakhs of devotees.
Stories of fake godmen and the sleaze of religious leaders are not limited to the Hindu religion. The sensational Sister Abhaya case continues to haunt the country, and a closure is yet to truly come. A Roman Catholic nun, Sister Abhaya, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in 1992 in Kerala. The State police initially concluded it was a case of suicide but later, under growing pressure from the public and a group of nuns, the Central Bureau of Investigation took over the probe. It later sought closure of the case for lack of evidence, but after the courts rejected the contention, more inquiries were done. Eventually one nun and two priests were arrested. It is said that Sister Abhaya was done away with because she had stumbled upon a nun and a priest who were in a compromising position.
A few months ago, Jammu & Kashmir Police arrested a self-appointed dervish, 42-year-old Gulzar Bhat, aka Syed Gulzar, for allegedly raping and sexually abusing several young girls at his religious centre in the State. The students had enrolled in the infamous institution to study and were driven by a deep faith in the teacher's ‘spiritual’ abilities.
We don’t need such brokers of religion to connect with god.