The pied piper and the horde of hungry mice

So Friday, August 25, 2017 has earned its bit of dirty history. History by the way is concerned about its load only, good or bad doesn’t matter, these are our own convenient specifications. More than three dozen lives lost, hundreds injured, cars and vehicles burnt, media attacked and law and order scattered to pieces. The moment Dera Chief Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim officially turned just a rapist human, a common criminal, named Gurmeet, his followers, shocked and not able to digest this humanly avatar of the demi-god, went on rampage in Panchkula around the CBI court which pronounced the judgment.

They were crying, pelting stones, burning whatever came their way, getting tear gas into their eyes, got struck by sticks, and finally absorbed bullets as well into their bind faith. Pitaji, beloved father as they call him, should have been allowed to stay beyond the normal laws for common people, they expect.

Another matter that it took 15 years and 200 hearings for justice to shine. Well, that’s understandable given the ways of stalling justice in the country, especially in the case of the strong and the mighty. However, better late than never. So we can safely call him a rapist now. And address him by his maiden name, Gurmeet, instead of adding the golden-weighted superlatives before and after.

First it was Asha Ram Bapu, followed by Sant Rampal, some Ramvriksha Yadav in Mathura, and so many others. Godmen, in the manner they can hijack the common rules and regulations of the land, are beyond the state. Just to beat your head about this particular Baba and the ones named above would be equal to shedding tears over just one of the symptoms of a bigger malady. The question isn’t about why this particular Baba was born and came to acquire such a cult status so as to challenge the state itself. It will be more pertinent to ask, why such Godmen are born in India. Every street, every locality, every village, town and city has its group of influential Godmen who dispel the evil, fetch the best of boons, make you the luckiest person on the earth. Your hard work, your perseverance, your education and skills, your penance for a cause coming at the bottom of the list required to get success or reach your goal.

In a country where there are billions squeezed for space, for a living, there are bound to be trillions of broken dreams, unmet goals and a Milky Way type of crowded aspirations. It’s plainly about people to resource ratio. More people, few resources, so a fight, few smiles, more tears, simple maths. But in the muck of survival all this boils down to being lucky or unlucky, the two being capable of twisted and remedied by expert hands. So out of the billions, with trillions of shattered dreams, they go in groups to abandon themselves on some holy feet, in respective regions. Out of the trillion shattered dreams, and lifelong, and ongoing struggle to survive, millions are in anyway at the point of hatching some long-aspired fruit. Even the most skewed law of probability will give chance to millions out of trillions. The moment the chicken is hatched, which would have happened in any case irrespective of Baba x, y, z or no Baba at all, the Baba grabs the credit. The maths accumulates the load of appreciation, subtracts the unmet aspirations almost negligibly as the unremediable fruits of the sins of past life. The Baba has no onus to prove. He can take just the credit for the millions savings out of the trillions of broken dreams. In any case, one minus from Baba means one addition to the followers of some other Baba. It keeps on shifting till the hatching takes place. The credit goes to the last Baba where the poor poultry cock or hen is caged with at the moment.      

Beyond the trials and tribulation of a terribly overpopulated society, where deprivation is bound to prevail given the skewed people to resource ratio, there are other factors which boost a cultman’s chances to acquire superhuman clout, wealth and influence.

The caste system in India means a major part of the society has been treated as subhuman species for thousands of years. This inherited poverty, deprivation and low socio-economic standing leaves a huge mass of people who, their fathers, father’s father, and so on, have been ill-treated like they are mere goats and pigs. As the casteless and creedless mass of a Baba’s followers they feel equal like anyone else around. They feel a full human instead of the fractions across the ages. Like a long drag on Bidis makes them forgetful of the miseries of life, the visits to congregations and gatherings at ashrams make them feel unyoked from the heavy burden of caste they drag. A low caste means you are low, always, it drones in your head, all the time. You are low, you are low, keep your head down, further low, smile even when he spits on your face, tweaks your ears, takes puns at you, gives a kick at your poor arse to uplift his spirits, still you have to smile. You have to wear an unaffected mask, while the shitty life moves on. Here, at the Guru’s feet, they put their masks to get some fresh air. Here they become they, the real, un-lowed, their genetically crooked spines stretching to a high, the slouching shoulders, the vestiges of low, squaring for some moments to feel like a bird getting its wings untied to fly, like an unyoked beast of burden getting allowed to run free in a pasture land. No wonder the followership crosses all limits in devotion and loyalty.   

Drunk husbands beating their wives and squandering away even their meager resources is the common most fact in the struggling section of the society. Drugs and alcohol symbolize the worst form of the evil to the poor women. No wonder, as the Babas at least ask their followers to refrain from drinking, the women feel they cannot have a bigger well-wisher. So you have miles-long queues of poor, condescending women, waiting to kiss the feet of the holy man who is at least trying to make their menfolk quit drinking and correct their behavior.

Poverty has its alternate truths in a reversed world. When you decide to get healed just by the Baba’s touch, of course there will be some immediate improvement, which in any case becomes a miracle. It simply is Placebo effect. Psychologically you believe and the body responds positively. So the Baba’s shower healing blessings, the suffering mass decide to get healed, and healed they get in the short terms at least. It then becomes a necessity to keep the blessings going, no matter you keep taking medicines along the way, get treatment, spend money in hospitals, but once you decide that it is the effect of your Baba’s blessings, everything you do becomes a carrier, a mere instrument, of the holy man’s blessings.

The invisible, unknowable, unattainable God is too far. Convenience needs a Godhead nearby, whom you can see, touch his feet, kiss his robe. So the cult-men replace God. They are near and more effective than God himself. And people want their God to be nearer.   

At the management level, it’s primarily about money. Anything purportedly meant to do everything with religious financing is beyond the tax and revenue regime of the country. You just make a Hindu religious trust, you then govern your own financial destiny. The rules and regulations of India don’t have anything to do with this territory where all types of black, white, yellow and red money flow in unchecked torrents. And where there is unaccountable money, rest of the vices easily follow. With money you can easily become God. You can keep people’s dreams alive by giving them as much as a free lunch now and then. With your opulence and grand show, you can create stars in damn shitty famished eyes. It’s very easy to become the God of hungry frustrated souls. There are millions to whom even a favour only to the extent of free weekend meals in a community feast turns more significant than God himself. Money pulls the clout, it builds the loyalty. There is simply no other weightier factor. So with all the donations to religious trusts and gifts of money, land, dollar, ruppes, beyond the pale of tax and revenue norms, within no time Babas become super-rich. With money rest of the journey becomes very easy.  

Once they have billions of money with millions of cemented hungry loyalties around them, politicians come scavenging like dogs on dead bodies. Politicians are comfortable with mafia, murderers, smugglers, drug dealers, human traffickers, as long as they get votes for them. The Rapist Baba has a long history of alliance with all the major political parties. A rape charge undertrial gets donations to the tunes of hundreds of millions by the Haryana government, the state’s ministers bow down to touch the Baba’s feet, the Chief Minister attends the Baba’s functions, what else the common people need to further convince themselves about the divinity of their father figure. In every constituency the Baba has thousands of diehard supporters to whom matters of faith come to an end in the Baba’s thick beard. They are the ones who decide the winner and the loser during the state assembly elections. They give money to Baba, the Baba gives them some food and occasional shelter for devout gatherings with the same money, the rest he uses in building a fleet of super-luxury fleet and making movies in which he slays the evil as the messenger of God. The government makes his movies tax free so that the devotees feel flattered.   

A distant relative of mine fought the last assembly election in Haryana on the INLD ticket. The Baba but, expecting a turnaround in his favour—he was facing a CBI inquiry—decided to go with the BJP. It was open support by the way. This INLD candidate lost by just 2 votes. He, belonging to the influential Jat community who hold huge clout in the social hierarchy, still cannot forget that night when he reached the poor house of an old man in his village. The old man was an OBC, lower in the caste hierarchy, but was rich in the number of votes. They were 8 in all in the little house. All would have been well, given the contestant’s dominant caste status and the fact that both parties stayed in the same village, and the OBC man being wise enough to know the adage, if you have to stay in the village don’t take panga with the crocodile. It would have gone well if not for the fact that the poor family had eaten countless free lunches and dinners at the Baba’a dera, congregation halls, where frustrated females from the countryside get a chance to get out of the loops of patriarchy to have a casual fling, a paramour with some bites of free food. The branches, which had purchased their loyalty apart from making Baba a symbol of God to them, serving as one-stop point of entertainment, freedom, fling, food, frolic, faith and dignity.

With folded hands the old family patriarch, with tears in eyes, his voice shaking, said, “Chaudhri Sahab, you can kill us if you want. But we just cannot vote for you. It’s the order of our God.”

The poor Jat was defeated by two votes.

This is what makes the Babas like him so potent. Politically. And once you are so significant in the scheme of political things, the politicians of the land will even stoop so low as to touch the feet of a rape undertrial.

Only money can buy such loyalty. Make laws to stop religious funding which makes them mini-empires within the state. If you cannot do that, in greed of clump of votes, then please stop cribbing about the Baba. There will be so many others following him.