To the despair of rationalists, godmen are multiplying, with people ranging from generals to yuppies looking to them to provide balm for their troubled souls. July 31, 1993 | UPDATED 16:37 IST
Jimmy
Nagputra Yogiraj and Gururani Nagkanya Yogini claim to be the
incarnations of Shiva and Parvati. The incredible Parsi duo from Bombay
resemble something straight out of the TV serial Ramayan.
Lord Balasaibaba of Kurnool, a 33-year-old Sathya Sai Baba lookalike, has declared himself to be the first incarnation of Shakti in the male form. Then there is a godwoman called Ma Chiti, belonging to a Delhi business family, who has asked everyone in her group of followers to go around departmental stores, touching the wares, to awaken the kundalinis of all buyers.
These are just some of the new gurus of the '90s who are making cosmic waves across the country as their tribe proliferates.
There are more, some equally wacky and weird as far as rationalists are concerned, but to their legion of followers, they are the symbols of the new religious revivalism in India. Not the type that BJP propagandists are heralding.
More a case of the stress and strain of modern life throwing up new religious cults and enough believers to fuel the new phenomenon. From four-star generals to yuppies, Union ministers to socialites, the new believers match the burgeoning of godpersons in range and numbers.
Godmen have always been an essential part of the Indian landscape. But it was a spiritual landscape dominated by a charismatic few: Rajneesh, Mahesh Yogi, Sai Baba. The rest were obscured in isolated pockets of spiritual splendour, their disciples culled mainly from the illiterate or overly-superstitious.
All that has dramatically changed. No longer do prominent personalities hide their gurus under a bushel. It's now worn like a badge of honour. And, as a consequence, new gurus are sprouting all over the place, out of the static field of yogic trances and mountain-bound meditation.
Dr Rajiv Kumar, a 42-year-old economic adviser in the Finance Ministry, initially felt ashamed to keep a picture of his guru, Mata Nirmala Devi, in his drawing-room. Today, he proudly displays it and openly works for the propagation of her message. Just one eloquent example of the new respectability and following being gained by godmen today.
It's a trend that reflects an amazing paradox. Even as modernity, a culture of gizmos and gadgets, sweeps the country, the proliferation of godmen continues unchecked.
Compared to only a few major ones in the 70s, there are scores today - many of them women - Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Mata Amritanandamayi, IPS officer C.B. Satpathy, S.N. Goenka, and Baba Jai Gurudev to name a few. Most of them have growing numbers of faithful followers running into lakhs.
More crucial, their impact on all spheres of life in the country is on the increase. O.V. Vijayan changed the plot of The Saga of Dharmapuri, a scatalogical classic, and bowdlerised the initial Malayalam version, under the influence of Guru Karunakara of Trivandrum. Even the family that owns the Times group of newspapers has a guru, Bhagwan Lakshmi Dada, in Bombay.
Though rationalists have been working overtime to expose the charlatans and mountebanks, tarring every godman with the same brush is too facile. Some of them do appear to display genuine psychic powers that defy reason. Take Satpathy, 47.
Most of the hundreds of people he runs through every Saturday in his home in Delhi claim their problems, from domestic strife to business worries, are solved by him.
A new devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba, he is also doing faith-healing now, but claims he no longer needs the curative powers of the small pyramid he had fabricated to test the pyramid's famed special qualities.
Satpathy's clairvoyance - he started off as an astrologer - is becoming legendary in Delhi. A Sunday reporter writing a story on him replied in an emphatic no when he casually asked her when she was going to Vaishno Devi.
When a week later, her brother secured a seat in the IIM, Lucknow, she ended up going to the shrine because her brother had promised himself he would visit it if he won the seat and insisted that she accompany him.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, every shade is represented among godmen. Goenka is a purist who says: "There is only one dhamma; the so-called religions are mere sects and we are all fighting over them."
In Lucknow, H.L. Poonja, called Papaji, is gathering hundreds of former Oshoites, most of them foreigners who, by kissing and hugging in public, raised eyebrows in a city steeped in the Muslim ethos. In Kulu there is Swami Shyam, quietly tending to a small flock, including two sisters of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney.
A Harvard-educated nuclear scientist Priya Nath Mehta has recently succeeded his father as guru in Delhi. There is Dhonje Baba in Pune who brings alcoholics back to sobriety and Swami Ganapati Sachchidananda in Mysore whose repertoire includes music therapy.
N.D. Shrimali in Jodhpur advertises his wares, ranging from a mesmerising yantra (Rs 100) to a celestial shield (Rs 11,000), in his Hindi monthly Mantra, Tantra, Yantra. And Calcutta-based Ipshita Roy Chakraborty, a glamorous woman in her 40s and a self-proclaimed witch, claims she has a rare crystal ball, can read people's minds, cure the seriously ill and bring the perfectly healthy to grief. The examples are endless.
Some godmen verge on the bizarre. Jai Gurudev claims that the spirit of a former prime minister, suspended in the nether world because of his unnatural death, has been appealing to him for deliverance. The graffiti, Satyug Ayega, on walls from Guwahati to Guruvayoor has been scrawled by this Mathura guru's lakhs of lower-class followers who wear trademark jute sacks.
Wild claims to divinity also abound. Nirmala Devi and Amritanandamayi go to the extent of dressing and being worshipped as deities. "Such unsubstantiated claims have diluted the deeply significant concept of the guru," argues Dr Karan Singh, former Indian ambassador to the US.
Satpathy agrees: "When God descends on earth as man, only then can he be called a godman. Man can only aspire to become a man-god." And it isn't easy to become a man-god.
About Satpathy, Kiran Bedi, IG (prisons) and his batch-mate, says: " He has slogged for his spiritual evolution as much as he had for excellence as a police officer."
Various factors have contributed to the godmen's growth. For one, conventional religion has lost its vitality and hold over a certain class of people. Interestingly, in the south, where people continue to be devout, the gurus' market is small.
Also, neo-religious movements such as the Ramakrishna Mission have drifted into social service and education now. The godman's appeal lies in making the esoteric easily available. Contrast Nirmala Devi's Sahaj Yoga that allows every acolyte to initiate others, to only three swamis being authorised to give diksha in the entire Ramakrishna Mission.
Armed with natural charisma, the star godmen have built up vast movements with almost corporate organisational skills. Stories of their 16-hour schedules and bottomless energy are legendary.
The vast quantities of cash invariably come from their operations in western countries. Mahesh Yogi has amassed assets estimated by Life magazine in 1990 to be at $3 billion.
Predictably, the critics are many. And not just the rationalists. Pepita Seth, who has spent years photographing temple rituals in Kerala, says: "I won't touch godmen with a bargepole. What they do seems like a profession, not a calling." Senior journalist M.V. Kamath went to check out Sai Baba but wasn't convinced.
Ironically, godmen are a fratricidal community. For Nirmala Devi everybody but herself is a 'false prophet'. Aiming her sarcasm at Mahesh Yogi teaching levitation, she says: "Many people with broken bottoms have come to us."
Her devotees take such denunciation to absurd lengths. An Italian follower, Enzo M. Martoglio, General Manager-Marketing, Modi Olivetti, relates this incident: "I went with my wife to a department store in Delhi to buy a shirt. Suddenly, we both felt uncomfortable. Soon enough we discovered a picture of a false guru in the store."
The gurus' ways may be mysterious, but the reasons why hordes are seeking them out are not. The most common trigger is adversity. Amrit Tejpal, a police officer in Delhi, was a sceptical man till early this year.
Then, his 18-year-old son met with a serious road accident, and fell into a coma. Tejpal went to Mohinder Singh, a pir near Kaithal in Haryana, who functions in the name of a 16th century Malerkotla pir.
In return for the safety of his son's life, Tejpal readily vowed to shun alcohol and meat forever. His son has since made a remarkable recovery.
Another trigger is stress and the disorientation of urban life. Meditation and enforced morality bring peace of mind and the subculture offers a sense of community.
Bombay-based Mukesh Gupta, 40-year-old managing director of an advertising agency, and his wife, Nutan, a fashion designer, hop into their car every weekend to visit Gurumayi's Ganeshpuri ashram. Her reason: "A nagging sense of the impermanence of things." His achievement: "Now I know what is right for me."
It is, in fact, becoming fashionable to have a guru in much the same way as it is to have a psychiatrist in the West. In fact, both perform the same function: providing solace, giving guidance.
A leading light of haute couture, Bina Ramani, is into Gurumayi because "having a guru is a very comforting feeling. Anybody can let you down but never your guru". The K.G. Khosla family, who make compressors, have a live-in guru in their Prithviraj Road mansion in Delhi.
For the Bollywood set, the star godman is U.G. Krishnamurti of the silvery mane and an itch for iconoclasm. Dimple Kapadia says she finds peace reading his books. UG had earlier tried to treat a mentally ill Parveen Babi.
Mahesh Bhatt too sought him out after becoming disillusioned with Rajneesh and has now published a book on UG, the anti-guru who describes enlightenment merely in terms of a neuro-biological phenomenon.
One star who is into a serious sadhana is Kavita Choudhry, of the TV serial Udaan and Lalitaji Surf advertisements fame. After doing Goenka's Vipassana meditation course, she says she felt such silence and equanimity that she found it hard adjusting back to her showbiz life.
Every godperson can boast of the rich and the famous in his or her telephone book. Gitanjali Aiyar and Intershoppe's Vijay Mehta believe in Satpathy; Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy, who run Chemould Gallery in Bombay, are long-time devotees of Gurumayi; Rajesh Shah, of Mukund Steel, is the India leader of Sahaj Yoga; and D.B. Gupta, MD of Lupin Laboratories, makes time to practise Vipassana.
As for politicians, Congress(I) MP Mani Shankar Aiyar says they are in a profession "where there are no gently sloping gradations and the oscillations are so rocky that they are liable to need gurus".
Union Minister Arjun Singh follows Mauni Baba of Ujjain. Punjab Governor Surendra Nath visits Sant Virsa Singh in Delhi before taking up any big assignment. There is a picture of Ajit Kumar Panja, minister of state for coal, prostrating before Balak Brahmachari.
Subhas Chakravorty and Shanti Ghatak, West Bengal ministers of sports and labour respectively, are also believed to have been the followers of the Brahmachari, whose body was finally cremated last fortnight.
Assam Governor Loknath Mishra is a tantrik himself - he reportedly treated a member of the BBC team who were recently filming a series on tantrik sects.
The Institute of Social Inventions in London has even devised a kind of guru lactometer. The guru is rated on 10 criteria, including: how easy it is to get out of his set-up and whether he gets sexually involved with disciples. Interestingly, while Jesus scored 70 points on this scale, Mahesh Yogi totted up 23 and Osho a paltry 17.
Any paradox is a threshold to truth. Perhaps the paradox of modernity and godmen can be reconciled, if modernity is not automatically equated with materialism, or if the imperfect teachings of the gurus are constantly challenged. In the meantime, the godmen continue to multiply, and there seem to be many more believers than questioners.
Amritanandamayi:A Divine Touch
She
presses the nerve centres above the nose. And embraces and kisses you,
and you cry uncontrollably. For thousands of people, this was all it
took for them to fall on Mata Amritanandamayi's feet. "The
Mother performs no miracles but transforms devotees, giving them peace
of mind," explains Brahmachari Lakshman, a sanyasi at her ashram at
Vallikkavu, near Quilon in Kerala.
Her ecstatic cries of "Oh Krishna!" are enough to sway her devotees. She mingles freely and keeps a punishing schedule which she handles with a bewitching smile. Somewhat on the plump side, the Mata gives darshan twice a week dressed as Devi.
Those who have sought her blessings include Army Chief General B.C. Joshi, Central minister Krishna Kumar and Kerala ministers Oommen Chandy and R. Ramachandran Nair. She travels abroad frequently.
Greisshammer, a German staying at the ashram for the past two years, says: "After meeting the Mother I dropped my practice of medicine and came here." The Amritanandamayi Trust has amassed an undisclosed fortune and runs schools, orphanages and a dozen ashrams in India and abroad.
Quite a sensational destiny for the poor village girl Sudhamani, born in Vallikkavu in 1953. Her childhood was marked by recurrent hysteria. Hostile villagers swear that a cult is being created around a "mad woman once seen running in the nude on the seashore".
Though there have been investigations into the ashram's working following two mysterious deaths, they have not been followed up "because of the Mata's powerful friends", says one local resident.
Most of the villagers sneer at the trust pamphlet's claim that "coming to the ashram could be the most profound experience of one's life". "It is, for those who are prepared to cry on her bosom," they say sarcastically. Yet the cult keeps growing.
S.N. Goenka:A Buddhist Bent
He
comes like a breath of fresh air. S.N. Goenka claims he is teaching
what Buddha taught originally - Vipassana meditation. He is so simple,
he can be taken for any Marwari trader, which he was till his tryst with
a different destiny.A 67-year-old teddy bear of a man, Goenka
was living in Burma when his chronic migraine took him to a Buddhist
master, Sayagyi U. Ba Khin, in 1955. A cure with Vipassana made him an
ardent disciple.
Coming to India in 1969, he has established 20-odd centres in the world - including the Igatpuri headquarters near Nasik where a pagoda with rings of cells for meditation offers a striking sight. Over one lakh people have already taken the 10-day course.
The Vipassana course is daunting. It involves watching body sensations, first on the surface and then inside, for 12 hours a day. And strict observance of Buddhism's five shilas.
Goenka says Buddha had asserted that the cause of suffering is not external events but our response, craving or aversion, to them. In between is the sensations stage, and observing them neutrally erodes the old, conditioned response and erases karma knots.
Vipassana is being adopted by the intellectual or the seriously spiritual. Remarkably, hundreds of Christian priests, Jain sadhvis and Hindu sanyasis have taken the course.
Goenka is now leading a big project to compile the literature of the Buddha's teaching, the Tipitaka, and its commentaries. He seems intent on reviving Buddhism in the country of its birth.
Mata Nirmala Devi: Raising the kundalini
She
is either a megalomaniac or, as her devotees insist, the best thing to
have happened to mankind since Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed. Nirmala Devi,
70, says she is Adi Shakti's avatar and has started a religion, Vishwa
Nirmala Dharam.
While her claim that she was the first to do kundalini (spiritual power lying coiled at the base of the spine) awakening in groups is not true - Muktananda was doing the same before her - what is new is her assertion that the rising kundalini is felt as a cool breeze on the palms. Her Sahaj Yoga also tells ways to clear the astral chakras.
Her well-advertised sessions attract thousands. At least a lakh of people have become converts by now in India alone. She also has a big following in Europe, Australia and Russia where 20,000 people thronged her meeting in Tagliatis near Leningrad in 1991
Initiation can be given by any acolyte, albeit using her picture. "My photograph emits divine vibrations unlike pictures of previous incarnations, which are man-made," she says. The process, however, can be unsettling.
The Sahaj Yogis claim they can actually see the chakras. Group sessions too look bizarre. The followers roll their forearms, apparently to tie up the kundalini.
Yet Sahaj Yogis, mostly middle class, claim a range of benefits. Says Sangeeta David, a 23-year-old Delhi hair-dresser: "I had no confidence before. Now, all my right desires get fulfilled." Dr S.C. Nigam, a Sahaj Yoga leader in Delhi, says he has recovered from a paralytic stroke.
One high-profile believer in Nirmala Devi is her own husband C.P. Srivastava, an IAS officer who served as secretary-general of the UN's International Maritime Organisation and in 1991 became the first Indian to be knighted since Independence.
But her brother, Union Minister for Power N.K.P. Salve, feigns ignorance about her mission started in 1970. Maybe he feels uncomfortable when faced with divinity.
Chidvilasananda:Celebrity Saviour
For
her followers, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda succeeded in the murky
succession struggle for the worldwide Siddha Yoga movement, edging out
her brother in 1985, because of her spiritual strength. After
the ashram coup, the charming, articulate 37-year-old sanyasin with a
weakness for colourful caps, has consolidated the movement. There are
600 centres in India and abroad and a couple of lakh devotees, most of
them well-heeled.
Born Malti Shetty in a family of Bombay restauranteurs, Gurumayi first came into the limelight as the interpreter for Swami Muktananda, who couldn't speak English. Old-timers recall her devotion to her guru.
Today she herself evokes love and awe, says one devotee. Her work includes giving shaktipat (transfer of spiritual energy) and teaching what is basically Kashmiri Shaivism. "Shaivismis Vedanta with a heart," says Madhavananda, a former pro in Indian Airlines and one of the 25 swamis of Siddha Yoga.
Stories of transformation abound. Tom Korula, a 51-year-old Syrian Christian, has wound up his multimillion dollar technology company, and is now running the movement's main ashram in Ganeshpuri, near Bombay. It's a five-star ashram, with landscaped gardens, marbled pathways, a multi-cuisine vegetarian dining hall and bungalows for VIPs.
In the US, Gurumayi is popular with the Hollywood set. To old devotees like former California governor Jerry Brown and singer John Denver, she has added stars such as Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, who have named their daughter after her, and Isabella Rosellini. Building on a legacy is, afterall, her moniker.
Jimmy & Gururani:Tinsel Gods
Dressed in shiny polyester, the duo are seated before spinning cardboard chakras,
under velvet umbrellas that turn constantly. Everything has the
unmistakable stamp of a trashy mythological movie set. But Jimmy
Nagputra Yogiraj and Gururani Nagkanya Yogini are not acting god and
goddess. They claim they really are. Thousands of
followers of the Parsi couple - their relationship is vague - in Bombay
agree that they are forms of godhead, the way Shiva, Parvati, Jesus,
Buddha were. Naturally, then, their pictures in shoddily produced
publicity material carry halos.
Music director Ramlaxman, who insists his score for the superhit Maine Piyar Kiya was inspired by the divine duo, is just one of their eager followers. They are a motley crowd: from textile mill owners to peons, film personalities to taxi operators.
While coming for darshan, the followers wear maroon velvet caps and shiny badges which portray the two sitting under the hood of a cobra. Stickers of the same picture are most noticeable on cabs in Bombay. "The badge is like a shield, to ward off evil," says Ramlaxman.
Yogiraj and Gururani do not have much to say by way of teaching. They just tell people to honour their own religion. And, more importantly, come for darshan. "Manav," Nagkanya exhorted a large crowd of followers in Hindi at one of the fortnightly meetings which are held in a hired hall, "don't forget the time you came here hungry and rejected. Don't forget we made you lakhpatis with our blessings."
Not too many of the devout have made millions. But they report other miracles, mostly cures in serious illnesses. Perhaps the couple's appeal also lies in their simple, frugal life-style. Jimmy lives in Ulhasnagar and Gururani in Parel, both working class neighbourhoods, and they are constantly seen praying.
In their 50s, they have been around for a while, but close followers volunteer very little information about their origins. And, more importantly, aren't perturbed by the anachronism the couple represent.
- with Arun Katiyar, T.N. Gopakumar and Ruben Banerjee of india today
Lord Balasaibaba of Kurnool, a 33-year-old Sathya Sai Baba lookalike, has declared himself to be the first incarnation of Shakti in the male form. Then there is a godwoman called Ma Chiti, belonging to a Delhi business family, who has asked everyone in her group of followers to go around departmental stores, touching the wares, to awaken the kundalinis of all buyers.
These are just some of the new gurus of the '90s who are making cosmic waves across the country as their tribe proliferates.
There are more, some equally wacky and weird as far as rationalists are concerned, but to their legion of followers, they are the symbols of the new religious revivalism in India. Not the type that BJP propagandists are heralding.
More a case of the stress and strain of modern life throwing up new religious cults and enough believers to fuel the new phenomenon. From four-star generals to yuppies, Union ministers to socialites, the new believers match the burgeoning of godpersons in range and numbers.
Godmen have always been an essential part of the Indian landscape. But it was a spiritual landscape dominated by a charismatic few: Rajneesh, Mahesh Yogi, Sai Baba. The rest were obscured in isolated pockets of spiritual splendour, their disciples culled mainly from the illiterate or overly-superstitious.
All that has dramatically changed. No longer do prominent personalities hide their gurus under a bushel. It's now worn like a badge of honour. And, as a consequence, new gurus are sprouting all over the place, out of the static field of yogic trances and mountain-bound meditation.
Dr Rajiv Kumar, a 42-year-old economic adviser in the Finance Ministry, initially felt ashamed to keep a picture of his guru, Mata Nirmala Devi, in his drawing-room. Today, he proudly displays it and openly works for the propagation of her message. Just one eloquent example of the new respectability and following being gained by godmen today.
It's a trend that reflects an amazing paradox. Even as modernity, a culture of gizmos and gadgets, sweeps the country, the proliferation of godmen continues unchecked.
Compared to only a few major ones in the 70s, there are scores today - many of them women - Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Mata Amritanandamayi, IPS officer C.B. Satpathy, S.N. Goenka, and Baba Jai Gurudev to name a few. Most of them have growing numbers of faithful followers running into lakhs.
More crucial, their impact on all spheres of life in the country is on the increase. O.V. Vijayan changed the plot of The Saga of Dharmapuri, a scatalogical classic, and bowdlerised the initial Malayalam version, under the influence of Guru Karunakara of Trivandrum. Even the family that owns the Times group of newspapers has a guru, Bhagwan Lakshmi Dada, in Bombay.
Though rationalists have been working overtime to expose the charlatans and mountebanks, tarring every godman with the same brush is too facile. Some of them do appear to display genuine psychic powers that defy reason. Take Satpathy, 47.
Most of the hundreds of people he runs through every Saturday in his home in Delhi claim their problems, from domestic strife to business worries, are solved by him.
A new devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba, he is also doing faith-healing now, but claims he no longer needs the curative powers of the small pyramid he had fabricated to test the pyramid's famed special qualities.
Satpathy's clairvoyance - he started off as an astrologer - is becoming legendary in Delhi. A Sunday reporter writing a story on him replied in an emphatic no when he casually asked her when she was going to Vaishno Devi.
When a week later, her brother secured a seat in the IIM, Lucknow, she ended up going to the shrine because her brother had promised himself he would visit it if he won the seat and insisted that she accompany him.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, every shade is represented among godmen. Goenka is a purist who says: "There is only one dhamma; the so-called religions are mere sects and we are all fighting over them."
In Lucknow, H.L. Poonja, called Papaji, is gathering hundreds of former Oshoites, most of them foreigners who, by kissing and hugging in public, raised eyebrows in a city steeped in the Muslim ethos. In Kulu there is Swami Shyam, quietly tending to a small flock, including two sisters of former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney.
A Harvard-educated nuclear scientist Priya Nath Mehta has recently succeeded his father as guru in Delhi. There is Dhonje Baba in Pune who brings alcoholics back to sobriety and Swami Ganapati Sachchidananda in Mysore whose repertoire includes music therapy.
N.D. Shrimali in Jodhpur advertises his wares, ranging from a mesmerising yantra (Rs 100) to a celestial shield (Rs 11,000), in his Hindi monthly Mantra, Tantra, Yantra. And Calcutta-based Ipshita Roy Chakraborty, a glamorous woman in her 40s and a self-proclaimed witch, claims she has a rare crystal ball, can read people's minds, cure the seriously ill and bring the perfectly healthy to grief. The examples are endless.
Some godmen verge on the bizarre. Jai Gurudev claims that the spirit of a former prime minister, suspended in the nether world because of his unnatural death, has been appealing to him for deliverance. The graffiti, Satyug Ayega, on walls from Guwahati to Guruvayoor has been scrawled by this Mathura guru's lakhs of lower-class followers who wear trademark jute sacks.
Wild claims to divinity also abound. Nirmala Devi and Amritanandamayi go to the extent of dressing and being worshipped as deities. "Such unsubstantiated claims have diluted the deeply significant concept of the guru," argues Dr Karan Singh, former Indian ambassador to the US.
Satpathy agrees: "When God descends on earth as man, only then can he be called a godman. Man can only aspire to become a man-god." And it isn't easy to become a man-god.
About Satpathy, Kiran Bedi, IG (prisons) and his batch-mate, says: " He has slogged for his spiritual evolution as much as he had for excellence as a police officer."
Various factors have contributed to the godmen's growth. For one, conventional religion has lost its vitality and hold over a certain class of people. Interestingly, in the south, where people continue to be devout, the gurus' market is small.
Also, neo-religious movements such as the Ramakrishna Mission have drifted into social service and education now. The godman's appeal lies in making the esoteric easily available. Contrast Nirmala Devi's Sahaj Yoga that allows every acolyte to initiate others, to only three swamis being authorised to give diksha in the entire Ramakrishna Mission.
Armed with natural charisma, the star godmen have built up vast movements with almost corporate organisational skills. Stories of their 16-hour schedules and bottomless energy are legendary.
The vast quantities of cash invariably come from their operations in western countries. Mahesh Yogi has amassed assets estimated by Life magazine in 1990 to be at $3 billion.
Predictably, the critics are many. And not just the rationalists. Pepita Seth, who has spent years photographing temple rituals in Kerala, says: "I won't touch godmen with a bargepole. What they do seems like a profession, not a calling." Senior journalist M.V. Kamath went to check out Sai Baba but wasn't convinced.
Ironically, godmen are a fratricidal community. For Nirmala Devi everybody but herself is a 'false prophet'. Aiming her sarcasm at Mahesh Yogi teaching levitation, she says: "Many people with broken bottoms have come to us."
Her devotees take such denunciation to absurd lengths. An Italian follower, Enzo M. Martoglio, General Manager-Marketing, Modi Olivetti, relates this incident: "I went with my wife to a department store in Delhi to buy a shirt. Suddenly, we both felt uncomfortable. Soon enough we discovered a picture of a false guru in the store."
The gurus' ways may be mysterious, but the reasons why hordes are seeking them out are not. The most common trigger is adversity. Amrit Tejpal, a police officer in Delhi, was a sceptical man till early this year.
Then, his 18-year-old son met with a serious road accident, and fell into a coma. Tejpal went to Mohinder Singh, a pir near Kaithal in Haryana, who functions in the name of a 16th century Malerkotla pir.
In return for the safety of his son's life, Tejpal readily vowed to shun alcohol and meat forever. His son has since made a remarkable recovery.
Another trigger is stress and the disorientation of urban life. Meditation and enforced morality bring peace of mind and the subculture offers a sense of community.
Bombay-based Mukesh Gupta, 40-year-old managing director of an advertising agency, and his wife, Nutan, a fashion designer, hop into their car every weekend to visit Gurumayi's Ganeshpuri ashram. Her reason: "A nagging sense of the impermanence of things." His achievement: "Now I know what is right for me."
It is, in fact, becoming fashionable to have a guru in much the same way as it is to have a psychiatrist in the West. In fact, both perform the same function: providing solace, giving guidance.
A leading light of haute couture, Bina Ramani, is into Gurumayi because "having a guru is a very comforting feeling. Anybody can let you down but never your guru". The K.G. Khosla family, who make compressors, have a live-in guru in their Prithviraj Road mansion in Delhi.
For the Bollywood set, the star godman is U.G. Krishnamurti of the silvery mane and an itch for iconoclasm. Dimple Kapadia says she finds peace reading his books. UG had earlier tried to treat a mentally ill Parveen Babi.
Mahesh Bhatt too sought him out after becoming disillusioned with Rajneesh and has now published a book on UG, the anti-guru who describes enlightenment merely in terms of a neuro-biological phenomenon.
One star who is into a serious sadhana is Kavita Choudhry, of the TV serial Udaan and Lalitaji Surf advertisements fame. After doing Goenka's Vipassana meditation course, she says she felt such silence and equanimity that she found it hard adjusting back to her showbiz life.
Every godperson can boast of the rich and the famous in his or her telephone book. Gitanjali Aiyar and Intershoppe's Vijay Mehta believe in Satpathy; Kekoo and Khorshed Gandhy, who run Chemould Gallery in Bombay, are long-time devotees of Gurumayi; Rajesh Shah, of Mukund Steel, is the India leader of Sahaj Yoga; and D.B. Gupta, MD of Lupin Laboratories, makes time to practise Vipassana.
As for politicians, Congress(I) MP Mani Shankar Aiyar says they are in a profession "where there are no gently sloping gradations and the oscillations are so rocky that they are liable to need gurus".
Union Minister Arjun Singh follows Mauni Baba of Ujjain. Punjab Governor Surendra Nath visits Sant Virsa Singh in Delhi before taking up any big assignment. There is a picture of Ajit Kumar Panja, minister of state for coal, prostrating before Balak Brahmachari.
Subhas Chakravorty and Shanti Ghatak, West Bengal ministers of sports and labour respectively, are also believed to have been the followers of the Brahmachari, whose body was finally cremated last fortnight.
Assam Governor Loknath Mishra is a tantrik himself - he reportedly treated a member of the BBC team who were recently filming a series on tantrik sects.
The Institute of Social Inventions in London has even devised a kind of guru lactometer. The guru is rated on 10 criteria, including: how easy it is to get out of his set-up and whether he gets sexually involved with disciples. Interestingly, while Jesus scored 70 points on this scale, Mahesh Yogi totted up 23 and Osho a paltry 17.
Any paradox is a threshold to truth. Perhaps the paradox of modernity and godmen can be reconciled, if modernity is not automatically equated with materialism, or if the imperfect teachings of the gurus are constantly challenged. In the meantime, the godmen continue to multiply, and there seem to be many more believers than questioners.
Amritanandamayi:A Divine Touch
Her ecstatic cries of "Oh Krishna!" are enough to sway her devotees. She mingles freely and keeps a punishing schedule which she handles with a bewitching smile. Somewhat on the plump side, the Mata gives darshan twice a week dressed as Devi.
Those who have sought her blessings include Army Chief General B.C. Joshi, Central minister Krishna Kumar and Kerala ministers Oommen Chandy and R. Ramachandran Nair. She travels abroad frequently.
Greisshammer, a German staying at the ashram for the past two years, says: "After meeting the Mother I dropped my practice of medicine and came here." The Amritanandamayi Trust has amassed an undisclosed fortune and runs schools, orphanages and a dozen ashrams in India and abroad.
Quite a sensational destiny for the poor village girl Sudhamani, born in Vallikkavu in 1953. Her childhood was marked by recurrent hysteria. Hostile villagers swear that a cult is being created around a "mad woman once seen running in the nude on the seashore".
Though there have been investigations into the ashram's working following two mysterious deaths, they have not been followed up "because of the Mata's powerful friends", says one local resident.
Most of the villagers sneer at the trust pamphlet's claim that "coming to the ashram could be the most profound experience of one's life". "It is, for those who are prepared to cry on her bosom," they say sarcastically. Yet the cult keeps growing.
S.N. Goenka:A Buddhist Bent
Coming to India in 1969, he has established 20-odd centres in the world - including the Igatpuri headquarters near Nasik where a pagoda with rings of cells for meditation offers a striking sight. Over one lakh people have already taken the 10-day course.
The Vipassana course is daunting. It involves watching body sensations, first on the surface and then inside, for 12 hours a day. And strict observance of Buddhism's five shilas.
Goenka says Buddha had asserted that the cause of suffering is not external events but our response, craving or aversion, to them. In between is the sensations stage, and observing them neutrally erodes the old, conditioned response and erases karma knots.
Vipassana is being adopted by the intellectual or the seriously spiritual. Remarkably, hundreds of Christian priests, Jain sadhvis and Hindu sanyasis have taken the course.
Goenka is now leading a big project to compile the literature of the Buddha's teaching, the Tipitaka, and its commentaries. He seems intent on reviving Buddhism in the country of its birth.
Mata Nirmala Devi: Raising the kundalini
While her claim that she was the first to do kundalini (spiritual power lying coiled at the base of the spine) awakening in groups is not true - Muktananda was doing the same before her - what is new is her assertion that the rising kundalini is felt as a cool breeze on the palms. Her Sahaj Yoga also tells ways to clear the astral chakras.
Her well-advertised sessions attract thousands. At least a lakh of people have become converts by now in India alone. She also has a big following in Europe, Australia and Russia where 20,000 people thronged her meeting in Tagliatis near Leningrad in 1991
Initiation can be given by any acolyte, albeit using her picture. "My photograph emits divine vibrations unlike pictures of previous incarnations, which are man-made," she says. The process, however, can be unsettling.
The Sahaj Yogis claim they can actually see the chakras. Group sessions too look bizarre. The followers roll their forearms, apparently to tie up the kundalini.
Yet Sahaj Yogis, mostly middle class, claim a range of benefits. Says Sangeeta David, a 23-year-old Delhi hair-dresser: "I had no confidence before. Now, all my right desires get fulfilled." Dr S.C. Nigam, a Sahaj Yoga leader in Delhi, says he has recovered from a paralytic stroke.
One high-profile believer in Nirmala Devi is her own husband C.P. Srivastava, an IAS officer who served as secretary-general of the UN's International Maritime Organisation and in 1991 became the first Indian to be knighted since Independence.
But her brother, Union Minister for Power N.K.P. Salve, feigns ignorance about her mission started in 1970. Maybe he feels uncomfortable when faced with divinity.
Chidvilasananda:Celebrity Saviour
Mata Nirmala Devi
Born Malti Shetty in a family of Bombay restauranteurs, Gurumayi first came into the limelight as the interpreter for Swami Muktananda, who couldn't speak English. Old-timers recall her devotion to her guru.
Today she herself evokes love and awe, says one devotee. Her work includes giving shaktipat (transfer of spiritual energy) and teaching what is basically Kashmiri Shaivism. "Shaivismis Vedanta with a heart," says Madhavananda, a former pro in Indian Airlines and one of the 25 swamis of Siddha Yoga.
Stories of transformation abound. Tom Korula, a 51-year-old Syrian Christian, has wound up his multimillion dollar technology company, and is now running the movement's main ashram in Ganeshpuri, near Bombay. It's a five-star ashram, with landscaped gardens, marbled pathways, a multi-cuisine vegetarian dining hall and bungalows for VIPs.
In the US, Gurumayi is popular with the Hollywood set. To old devotees like former California governor Jerry Brown and singer John Denver, she has added stars such as Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, who have named their daughter after her, and Isabella Rosellini. Building on a legacy is, afterall, her moniker.
Jimmy & Gururani:Tinsel Gods
Music director Ramlaxman, who insists his score for the superhit Maine Piyar Kiya was inspired by the divine duo, is just one of their eager followers. They are a motley crowd: from textile mill owners to peons, film personalities to taxi operators.
While coming for darshan, the followers wear maroon velvet caps and shiny badges which portray the two sitting under the hood of a cobra. Stickers of the same picture are most noticeable on cabs in Bombay. "The badge is like a shield, to ward off evil," says Ramlaxman.
Yogiraj and Gururani do not have much to say by way of teaching. They just tell people to honour their own religion. And, more importantly, come for darshan. "Manav," Nagkanya exhorted a large crowd of followers in Hindi at one of the fortnightly meetings which are held in a hired hall, "don't forget the time you came here hungry and rejected. Don't forget we made you lakhpatis with our blessings."
Not too many of the devout have made millions. But they report other miracles, mostly cures in serious illnesses. Perhaps the couple's appeal also lies in their simple, frugal life-style. Jimmy lives in Ulhasnagar and Gururani in Parel, both working class neighbourhoods, and they are constantly seen praying.
In their 50s, they have been around for a while, but close followers volunteer very little information about their origins. And, more importantly, aren't perturbed by the anachronism the couple represent.
- with Arun Katiyar, T.N. Gopakumar and Ruben Banerjee of india today
No comments:
Post a Comment