When The Holy Masks Are Torn Apart
By KK Abdul Raoof
19 March, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Dubious god men occasionally emerge out of their sacrosanct closets to carry forward our so-called spiritual legacy. After Santhosh Madhavan, a 'holy man' from southern Kerala who was jailed last year for 16 years for raping and illegally confining two girls from his orphanage, two new ‘demigods’ have joined the great Indian bandwagon of tainted babas. One is a big brass named Swami Nityanada. A spiritual guru who boasts of two million followers in 33 countries, Nityanada is the founder of Dhyanapeetam, and chairman of the Hindu University of America in Florida. A video broadcast on the Tamil television channel Sun News on 2 March 2010, showed the 32-year-old Swami billing and cooing with two young women in a bedroom. He went at large after Karnataka and Tamil Nadu booked him for criminal cases. Taking cue from his disappearance, disappointed followers and angry villagersransacked his ashram.
The other god man is Shiv Myra Dwivedi, a swami, who allegedly used his South Delhi temple as a front office to cater as many as 200 prostitutes, including airhostesses and college students to his five-star clients. He was arrested along with a pimp and six girls, including one British Airways stewardess in February. According to the Delhi police, he had earned $10 million, while others peg his earnings at more than ten times the amount. Police also unearthed a network of tunnels and secret rooms in Dwivedi’s temple as well as six diaries and other documents carrying details of his sex rackets.
Even though Shiv Myra Dwivedi calls himself a close disciple of Satya Sayi Baba, police hasn’t taken any step to investigate his relation with the Sayi ashram. There is every reason to doubt that ‘spiritual bigwigs’ like Sri Sri Ravishankar and Satya Sayi Baba have good grip on law-enforcing agencies, so much so that they preempt any raid or other actions against their institutions. If the governments dare examine behind-the-scene affairs of all the demigods who operate freely without any hassles, the real faces of our numerous ‘holy’ souls will be unmasked.
An undeniable truth is that India is a marshy land where these demigods can heinously misuse the spiritual needs of society. Leading a luxury life and running tainted businesses behind the curtain, they may perhaps outdo underworld dons in every respect. Unwilling to face the ire of their vote banks, politicians always strive to preserve the unholy alliances with them. Law-enforcing agencies too turn a blind eye to the thriving spirituality business, obviously for their own reasons and benefits.
It is quite paradoxical that in this age of science and reason, even after the country has witnessed several scandalous spiritual gurus, demigods cutting across all religions can successfully run parallel establishments that mock modern medicinal practices. Believing that god men have supernatural powers to cure every diseases that exist on earth many prefer these ‘parallel medicos’ to get well even from severe diseases like cancer and AIDS! Once they realize the imposture, they loath to disclose the bitter experience to the world for fear of further disgrace.
Though the recent scandals have prompted calls for stronger legislation and tighter government regulation to expose charlatans and sex offenders, the State have turned a deaf ear to them. An often-overlooked fact is that, whenever a god man is arrested, instead of taking up the real issue, that is, deception and exploitation using false claims, police tends to close the case slapping one or two criminal cases on them. If the State wants to protect its subjects from these frauds, what prevents it from making stringent laws against these deceptive spiritual orders? Why don’t our honourable judges realize it is high time they questioned the rulers of their apparent indifference?
KK Abdul Raoof
Dep Of History
AMU, Aligarh
[email protected]
