India: Rationality check | Anil Dharkar

The Asian Age, September 09, 2013

Rationality check

Anil Dharker

However unspiritual or ungodly the behaviour of spiritual gurus’ acolytes, a democracy gives them full right to follow where their hearts lead them, as long as they do not break the law of the land

Does the Asaram episode remind you of something that happened not so long ago? Go back to the time when the Anna Hazare movement was at its peak, and the United Progressive Alliance government in Delhi was blundering from one inept move to another.

Suddenly sensing an opportunity, in jumped into the fray Baba Ramdev, one of our more prominent godmen with a following in lakhs.

That the godman had entered into a field which was only tenuously connected with spirituality or yoga (Ramdev’s speciality) was not a surprise; after all, for a godman to become a super guru as opposed to the average saffron-clad baba, he must have an eye for the opportune moment, to be part of an event that grabs national attention. And if ever there was one in recent times, this was it, with non-stop television coverage, daily newspaper headlines and the rest of it.

We remember how Ramdev escaped arrest after covering himself with a dupatta to fool the cops and making a run for it. But I am referring to what happened before Ramdev had joined the Jantar Mantar crowds. When he landed at the Delhi airport, many senior Cabinet ministers, including Pranab Mukherjee, made a beeline to plead with Ramdev to go back home. Apart from being unseemly, it was a display of unbelievable cowardice.

What was the government afraid of? That Ramdev joining forces with Mr Hazare would overthrow the ruling party? These thoughts came to me when I saw the police and the state government dithering over Asaram, giving him days to even submit himself for questioning when he was accused, with seemingly convincing evidence, of a serious crime like rape. What was the state government scared of? That Asaram’s arrest would start a revolution? That it would alienate a massive number of voters? If the government finally allowed the police to act at all, it was due to pressure from the media and activists, and the realisation that it had pushed itself into a corner from which escape was possible only through some kind of positive action.

If the blind faith of worshippers of godmen is hard to understand, the craven behaviour of governments is even more so. This gutless behaviour has allowed spurious godmen to flourish and build empires which run into crores. Genuine spiritual gurus, like Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev or Swami Parthasarathy, also have immense followings and have set up multiple ashrams and centres, but there is no accusation of impropriety against them, whereas godmen like Asaram and Ramdev have been accused of several questionable land deals, shady money-making schemes and so on. We do not know if these accusations have any merit in them; the question is why the state does not act when it should. Inquiries into Ramdev’s activities began only after the Anna Hazare episode, thus smacking of vindictiveness. What stopped governments from taking action against Asaram and Ramdev all these years? If they were guilty, appropriate and timely action should have been taken, and if they were not, the air needed to be cleared in good time too.

As far as the godmen’s followers are concerned, we need social anthropologists to study the phenomenon of “violent†spiritual followers (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one). Asaram’s followers were not exactly peaceful when they tried to block the police from questioning him; in case of Ramdev, I remember that a couple of my columns brought forth the wrath of his followers to such an extent that I was subjected to abuse of the worst kind through social media. Whatever spiritual values followers of these godmen imbibe, tolerance is certainly not one of them.

In a recent article, journalist Dilip D’Souza writes about going to Tamil Nadu in 2004 after the massive tsunami, which, according to him, killed over 12,000 in that state alone and displaced over half a million. He quotes an unnamed columnist writing, “The devastation by the tsunami in Tamil Nadu, could it be a caveat from Up There about the atrocities being visited on the Kanchi Acharya?†Not to be outdone, the Acharya’s followers sent out an email to all and sundry saying, “God has given a strong signal with this disaster… The injustice to dharmic followers have crossed the tolerance limit.†(The instigation for this was the arrest of the Kanchi Acharya, Jayendra Saraswathi, in a murder case.)

What does one say to all this? That blind followers of godmen believe that their gurus should be allowed to rape, rob or murder? And if investigations are started against them, God will smite the non-followers? In the case of the anti-superstition crusader Narendra Dabholkar, we saw that there are people who will even kill to practise what others preach.

But, and this is a vital point, however unspiritual or ungodly the behaviour of spiritual gurus’ acolytes, a democracy gives them full right to follow where their hearts lead them, as long as they do not break the law of the land. Within the confines of the law, people are free to hand over their lives and minds to whoever they choose. The only possible counter to this surrendering of your mind to fake gurus is through education, especially education which emphasises rationality, scientific temper and inculcates a spirit of inquiry.

The greatest gift education can give us is not a degree but an inquiring and questioning mind, which enables us to look through spurious spirituality, to disbelieve rumours, to intelligently link cause and effect. This will not happen unless it is planned: many teachers in schools and colleges have deep prejudices which they are not afraid to flaunt. I remember a Hindi teacher who mocked science at every opportunity and another who quoted the Hindi saying about a rotten fish sullying an entire pond, an aphorism he brought out to show that since Nathuram Godse was a Maharashtrian, all Maharashtrians were guilty of Mahatma Gandhi’s murder.

Rationality has to be taught. It needs to be part of the curriculum in all schools and colleges. Perhaps then some of our fellow countrymen will escape from the prisons they willingly put their minds into. Perhaps then gurus will need to be truly spiritual before they get to be called “gurus†.

The writer is a senior journalist