Questions Begged By The Unanimous Foregone Conclusions
On “Godman” Ramphal And The Storming Of His Ashram
By Simran Kaur
15 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Caught in my self-identity as “educated,” I am usually quite quick to offer the usual condemnation of “deras” and the “illiteracy,” if not “criminality,” they breed. So the storming of one such dera less than a month ago by the Haryana police may not have made me loose much sleep. However, when the deaths of four women and an 18-month-old baby as a result of the storming by the police were accepted as mere collateral, I wondered. And as a one-sided story quietly made its way through diminishing news cycles, while Progressive blogs and mainstream media quite aligned on foregone conclusions, I began to wonder some more.
In a land and time of pervasive ‘dera’ and cult politics in India as well a severe clamp-downs on free speech and freedom of belief, shouldn’t there be more curiosity around why the antics of this particular ‘godman’ (used constantly as a jab in all media reports) and the stigmatization against his ashram and followers, have received particular attention/aggression?
While violently disagreeing with the politics of his dera, we of course may still violently disagree with the approach of the ruling towards his dera. Seems like a dreamy ideal in the present-day? Yet in the present-day, in the very capital city of present India, in bustling Chandni Chowk, stands the testament to the ninth Sikh Guru, Tegh Bahadur, who martyred his life for the freedom of practice of faith not for his own followers, but in fact those whose practices he in fact disagreed with (the Kashmiri Pandits came to him worried about forced conversions by Moghuls, and Guru Tegh Bahadur decided to take a stand for freedom of religion and paid with his life.) Where are the disciples of such Gurus and ethos today, to ask the obvious questions about freedoms?
Instead, the case of the leader Ramphal seems to have been neatly closed in the court of public opinion: a victory and an illustration of the centrality the police/state in checking ‘dangerous’ beliefs. Ramphal and others have after all been charged with “sedition” and waging war against India!
In “The Rampal lesson: Taking on a religious cult is not the same as tackling ordinary criminals,” the author misses the irony as he points out of the Ramphal ashram storming:
“The visuals were reminiscent of other famous religious standoffs…Operation Blue Star in 1984 which was aimed at flushing Sikh militants out of Amritsar’s Golden Temple.”
Or perhaps he doesn’t miss the irony. In popular Indian imagination, the siege of Darbar Sahib in Amritsar, and dozens of other gurudwaras across Punjab—hundreds of kilometers from Amritsar even, is still largely sold as a “flushing of Sikh militants.” This callously quick branding of the events, without a pause to the dead, much less a pause to think about: the choice of the Sikh high holiday for the Army’s attack, the loss of still unknown thousands of civilians, burnt in mass cremations, and other atrocities against pilgrims, not to even mention the self-styled executions of the militants.
Interestingly, the author compares June 1984 “Bluestar” and the attack on Ramphal’s dera also to:
“..Siege in Texas in 1993, when 76 people were killed after a fire broke out at the campus of a fringe religious group suspected of weapons violations.”
Further interestingly, he doesn’t note that the Texas event was followed by years of controversy and hearings, including on questions of excessive force, dereliction of duty, as again noted by US media on the twentieth anniversary of that event last year, in stark contradiction to the Indian media’s noting of the thirtieth anniversary of June 1984.
Now, once again, we are witnessing media surety about an event. There is little controversy in our media over the recent event surrounding Ramphal; for controversy, we would need two sides of the story. But here, Ramphal’s guilt is assumed.
Ramphal’s noted jabs at the judicial system (including some writings and a pamphlet of quotes from the Indian Supreme Court decisions about judicial corruption—how’s that for showing contempt for the law!), particularly his evading summons for a contempt of court hearing, are reported as duly attracting the “wrath of the high court.”
Further, the earlier confrontations between Ramphal’s 250,000 followers and other Haryanvis are casually traced back to this Kabir-panthi’s alleged derogatory remarks against Swami Dayanand Saraswati and his book “Satyarth Prakash”.
There is however not a peep noting that Dayanand's own book itself made disparaging comments against Guru Nanak (and probably others like Bhagat Kabir that Ramphal’s group idolizes?). Or is the Arya Samaji hold over our psyche and progressive, educated minds so complete that we can’t even note problematics with the powerful, even when punishing the powerless for the same problems?
Another obvious question: while there is similar dera trouble in the neighborhood at “Sacha Sauda,” the BJP and RSS are firmly on the side of this dera despite fact that even more FIRs have been made against this combination of Ram and Rahim.
While otherwise progressive fora & discussants have perhaps been blinded by the seeming victory over superstitions and cults, the Ramphal story raises more questions than the media has cared to answer. While I had never heard of Ramphal before this crisis, but having followed dera, caste, and Hindutva politics in Haryana and North India, I do sit and wonder: what are we missing in this story? This is not a call for affinity with this dera or that. That is irrelevant. This is a call, again, of making sure the voiceless are not both imprisoned and maligned simultaneously, all in the name of the nation.
Simran Kaur is an activist, accountant, reader, mother, and Punjabi, who spends her time between Moga and Canada.
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