After watching exactly one episode of Wild Wild Country, I held panicked discussions with my mother to identify every relative who subscribes to Osho World and decided to stay the hell away from them. We then remembered that my sweet octogenarian aunt hangs a portrait of Asaram in her house. And that another uncle follows local gau-rakshak type baba. Right after, I recalled how my best friend in high school offered to pay for me to attend Art of Living workshops. I’m currently staring at my flatmate very suspiciously.
The marvel of late capitalism offers a baba tailored to fit every demographic and their needs, just like Subway sandwiches. You can find the right baba for your age, sex, religious views, political leanings, whiteness, need for sautan se chhutkara and so on. Add-ons include ‘in jail’, ‘currently on bail’, ‘chargsheet filed’, ‘acquitted for lack of evidence’, ‘dead but influential’. Sprinkle sex scandals, drugs and and money laundering cases, and heinous crimes according to taste.
There are more babas available per 1000 people in this country, than there are hospital beds. Did you know that there is an accreditation agency for babas? Quality control mechanisms are in place to ensure that your money gets you a qualified and verified baba. The Akhil Bhartiya Akhara Parishad apparently does the job. It is a collective of babas which, to nobody’s surprise, is headquartered in Haryana. They published a list of ‘fake babas’, a penalty for dragging the good name of Babahood through the mud. The list includes Gurmeet Ram Raheem, Asaram, Aseemanand et al. These ‘fake babas’ have been up to such horrific shit that even a bunch of crazy men from Haryana felt that it was too much.
But most babas don’t have what it takes to pull a long con, because they’re not friends with the right people. However you wish to refer to them – Baba/Godmen/Frauds – continue to be a thing due to the support of 1) plebs like us and 2) the Nobles. Behind every successful baba, there are politicians and moviestars.
Take Asaram Bapu, for instance. In 2008, a violent public agitation occurred when 4 boys at his Gurukul in Motera, Gujarat, went missing and the decomposed remains of two of them were found in the Sabarmati river. There were reports of similar deaths of young boys at Asaram’s other ashrams in the state. The state government then appointed the DK Trivedi Commission which submitted its report in July 2013. It has not been made public to this day – one of the many recorded instances of Death by Commission in our country. A month ago in the Gujarat state assembly, Pratap Dudhat, a Congress MLA raised a question regarding when the report would be made public. The legislators then decided to take action on his query, and promptly beat the crap out of each other on the assembly floor. Yes, that literally happened. It took the relentless struggle of a girl and her family, to put Asaram behind bars. After a hoard of dead witnesses, he has finally been convicted of raping a minor, but like my octogenarian aunt, BJP’s buaji, Uma Bharti, still attributes the matter to a political conspiracy hatched by the Congress.
In August last year, Dera Saccha Sauda’s Gurmeet Ram Raheem was found guilty of rape and his followers burned down whatever was left of Haryana after the January Jat violence. Before assembly elections in Punjab and in Haryana, candidates had sought blessings from him, and Ram Raheem had delivered in declaring his and the Dera’s support for the BJP in both states. Months before his conviction, two ministers of the Haryana CM’s cabinet publically gave Ram Raheem 50 lakhs and 51 lakhs, respectively because those hideous outfits don’t grow on trees, I guess. After his conviction, several Haryana legislators scrambled to delete their tweets where they had posted pictures with him. Thankfully, the internet never forgets.
Bhagwaan Rajneesh/Osho/Complete Nutjob also enjoyed considerable political patronage in India before he, like the others, fell out of favour and decided to pursue a career as a successful bio-terrorist in Oregon, USA. If something stupid is happening somewhere, you bet that Bollywood is involved. Mahesh Bhatt, Vinod Khanna, Parvin Babi have been some of Osho’s more notable followers.There are reports of a possible biopic on Osho being planned by Karan Johar. If there’s a batshit crazy man who has done batshit crazy things and should not be idolized in any manner, of course Bollywood will make a film on him and do exactly that.
I have a free mantra for unemployed youth currently squinting hard at a plate of pakodas – learn something from the successful babas of our time. You no longer have to wait for the state to enforce your rights, you can make it bow down to you in no time. Start with encroaching upon some preferably public land. Disdain for freshwater resources of the NCR region, some yoga and the art of giving to the right political masters, are the other ingredients of this great business plan. Serve it with some bigotry chutney and for maximum returns.
Mitali Agrawal is an education researcher in a Delhi based think tank and tweets at @just_screams.