The Pied Piper and the Horde of Hungry Mice

 

Friday, August 25, 2017 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 interpretations to suit our purpose. So this particular day stands with its own load to carry down the ages: more than three dozen lives lost, hundreds injured, cars and vehicles burnt, media attacked and law and order shattered 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 that 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 expected. Well, faith has no limits by the way.

It’s however another matter that it took 15 years and 200 hearings for justice to find its way out of the quagmire. Well, that’s understandable given the ways of stalling justice in the country, especially in the case of the strong and the mighty. Nonetheless, better late than never, it at least keeps common man’s faith in judiciary alive. So equipped with the empowering instructions of the court, 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 who come to light almost on a daily basis for their not so holy deeds. Godmen, in the manner they can hijack the common rules and regulations of the land, are beyond the state. They have their own zone of sovereignty.

Simply 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 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, destroy your enemies, get you what your hardest efforts could not and make you the luckiest person on earth. Your hard work, your perseverance, your education, skills and your penance for a cause coming at the bottom of the list required to get success or attain 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 huge galaxy of crowded aspirations. It’s plainly about people to resource ratio. More the people, the lesser the people to resource ratio, it’s simple mathematics. Life is robbed of living and a sinister struggle ensues. More fights, fewer smiles, seas of tears and deserts of unmet dreams.

In the muck of survival, all this comes down to be taken as being lucky or unlucky, while in reality one’s failure to achieve something is simply an impersonal, neutral denial on the scale of probability in a scene where hundred hands are trying to get one chapatti. Now, who get it and who don’t is beyond the laws of skill and logic. The 99 left out people, or 98, 97, 96, 95 or still less, on the basis of how many hands tear away a bit of the chapatti, have every reason to believe, on the basis of their effort, that there is some well-placed scheme as per the laws of pre-determination that has dislodged their chances in the grab game. They feel the lock of their kismet is jammed and the key has been cast somewhere into the unseen depths of the cosmos. Here come our pseudo-mystics. They claim to have the powers to find your key and open the age-old jammed, rusted lock to let loose a flood of fortunes. So out of the billions, with trillions of shattered dreams, millions go in groups to throw themselves at some holy feet in their respective regions.

Out of the trillion shattered dreams, millions are in anyway, due to the lifelong and the still ongoing struggle to survive, 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 by default. The mathematics accumulates the load of appreciation, subtracts the unmet aspirations almost negligibly as the irremediable fruits of the sins of past life. The Baba has no onus to prove. He can take just the credit for the million savings out of the trillions of broken dreams.

In any case, one minus from Baba x means one plus to the followers of Baba y. It keeps on shifting till the hatching takes place either in this Baba’s court or that. The credit goes to the last Baba where the poor poultry cock or hen is caged with at the moment when at long last the trail of his/her drudgery has at least left some mark on the stage of life. However, it appears like a straight blessing instead of the fruit of efforts. People have abandoned hope by that time, despite all the continued hard work and pursuit of goal, and view the fruit of their own effort as the star of luck fetched by some Baba’s blessings.       

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 that boost a cult-man’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 like a full human being instead of mere fractions across the ages.

Like long drags on Bidis make them forgetful of the miseries of life, the visits to congregations and gatherings at ashrams make them feel unyoked from the heavy burden of the caste they carry. 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, flirts with your wife, leers at your sister, gives a kick at your poor ass 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 off their masks to get some fresh air. Now they become the real they. They cherish the taste of real self, un-lowed, unbound and untethered. Their crooked spines stretch to a new high. The slouching shoulders, the vestiges of lowness, square-up for some moments to feel like a bird getting its wings untied to fly. There is an ease like an unyoked beast of burden being allowed to run free in a pasture land. No wonder the followership crosses all limits in devotion and loyalty.   

Drunken husbands beating their wives and squandering away even their meager resources is the common most fact in the struggling section of society. Drugs and alcohol symbolize the worst form of 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 men-folk 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 Babas shower healing blessings, the suffering masses have full faith in getting healed, and healed they get in some way or the other in the short term 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 and unattainable God is too far. Convenience needs a Godhead nearby, whom you can see, touch his feet and 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 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 only 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 favor only to the extent of free weekend meals in a community feast is 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 land, gold, silver, dollar and rupees, beyond the pale of tax and revenue norms, within no time the 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 and 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 tune of crores of rupees 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 donate money to the Baba, the Baba gives them some food and occasional shelter for devotional gatherings with the same money, the rest he uses in building a fleet of super-luxury cars 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. However, the Baba, expecting a turnaround in his favor—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 an arrogant 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 pond, 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’s 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 numerous ashram branches, which purchased the followers’ loyalty apart from making Baba a symbol of God to them, served 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 that makes them mini-empires within the state. If you cannot do that, in greed of sheepish votes, then please stop cribbing about the Baba. There will be so many others following him.