t e he lka.

co m

http://www.tehelka.co m/the-saint-and-his-taint/?singlepage=1

The saint and his taint

Mo re by the autho r >

Once his name is mentioned, almost everybody seems to have an Asaram Bapu story. A popular Bollywood director known f or his comedies with a message recalls how Asarams men were af ter him to get him to popularise the idea of celebrating Matri Pitri pujan diwas, Bapus brainwave to counter Valentines Day, even of f ering to f ly him to locations in the ashrams chartered planes. A prominent f oreign tour operator recalls how a group of clients insisted on making a payment of several lakhs through Dubai and conf ided, af ter a sundowner too many, that the hawala transaction was done through Asarams ashram channel, only to laugh away the conversation in the morning. One of 400-odd shopkeepers of Revdi Bazaar, an Ahmedabad market originally meant f or Sindhi ref ugees f rom Pakistan, whispers that Asarams crores keep circulating in loans to businessmen, at interest rates ranging f rom 1.5-4 percent a month, depending on the amount and the paying capacity of the borrower. T hen, of course, there are the devout and the renegade. Neelam Dubey, Asarams PRO in Delhi, gushes that Bapu f reed her f rom the habit of drinking 35 cups of tea daily. Virendra Mehta of Rohtak memorised all 80,000 words of the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary along with their page numbers to f ind a mention in the Limca Records af ter receiving mantra-initiation f rom Asaram. If these seem like minor miracles, a paralysed OP Mall, chairman of Howrah ( jute) Mills, apparently walked out of an Indore nursing home to attend Asarams discourse. Shantibhai and Praf ul Vaghela, who admitted a son each at Asarams Sabarmati ashram only to recover their hollowed corpses by the river, accuse the godman, his son Narayan Sai and the ashram management of conducting black magic. Amrut Prajapati, Asarams personal physician of 10 years, accuses him of sexually exploiting women. Raju Chandok, Asarams secretary who f ell apart with him, accuses Bapu of plotting the assassination attempt he survived. Mahendra Chawla, who looked af ter Narayans accounts, accuses him of f orgery in land deals. But even as charges piled up, nothing seemed to hamper Asarams phenomenal rise as one of Indias f oremost gurus with millions of devotees and the biggest landholdings. For us who have f ollowed his activities f rom time to time, it is very dif f icult to escape a sense of something sinister about his operations, says a veteran journalist in Ahmedabad. T his time, he seems to be somewhat vulnerable. But then, you never know. Indeed, f ew seem to know enough about Asaram, the guru, or his past. T hose who do are either his own men caref ul not to reveal anything beyond his public persona, or people who know better than to of f end the man they know so well. T HE LEGAL cell at the Motera ashram was working overtime. Minutes ago, Asaram had lef t f or the airport to shif t base to Indore. T he day bef ore three days af ter a 15-year-old girl accused the self -realised saint of raping her he had held a brief satsang to dub the charge a conspiracy. But his key aides in white robes were f eeling the heat of an unrelenting media. On the other side of the phone, Asarams chief media manager Dr Sunil Wankhade had sounded reluctant, wondering if he could trust the press not to hurt the ashrams interests. Face to f ace, he asked me if I would do sting on the ashram. Soon, his obvious scepticism gave way to desperation and he called f or help f rom the legal cell. He will do a big magazine story, cover story, Dr Wankhade inf ormed Vikas Khemka who had just joined us with an incessantly ringing mobile phone. We do not give time to the sold-out media. Bapuji doesnt care what they write or show. You will not distort our words, will you?

My nod made Khemka draw closer to ask me if I went to Delhi University. No? I did. BCom honours, in 1993. Dr Wankhade intervened to underline that Khemkas f amily was into big business and that he had given up a monthly income of lakhs to serve Bapuji. We are not uneducated, ordinary people here Khemkas mobile rang yet again and this time he promptly took the call. Kya bola channel? Bhag gaya bola? S****! he asked Wankhade to make someone f all in line with a def amation threat and Jo bhi karo (whatever it takes). T hen he picked up the conversation f rom where he had lef t it. And yet people talk about black magic and all that. In the next couple of hours, the two of them made an elaborate def ence of Asaram. Tell me, can anyone encroach upon a riverf ront? We planted trees, checked erosion and put up pandals f or a f ew days during Guru purnima (Asarams birthday) when lakhs of devotees need space. In Surat, we built a park by the river, explained Khemka. He dismissed Chandok, Prajapati and Chawla as opportunistic, corrupt people out to malign Bapus name. How can Bapu harm anyone, even these people, when he always says sabka bhala? Yesterday, he asked devotees to take care of even this Jodhpur girl, said Khemka. But the highlight of his def ence was the Supreme Court ruling that turned down the demand f or a CBI inquiry into the death of two ashram students and modif ied the charge against seven ashram of f icials, including Khemka himself , f rom culpable homicide to causing death by negligence. More than 90,000 children go missing in India; 30,000 f or good. Af ter the bodies of two students Dipesh and Abhishek were f ound in July 2008 by the Sabarmati river close to Asarams ashram, with internal organs missing, it took the state government more than two weeks to initiate a CID probe. Blaming media f or the harassment, Khemka explained that they might be guilty of f ailing to look af ter the boys, but were in no way responsible f or what happened af ter the two ran away or were abducted. Dipeshs f ather Praf ul Vaghela claims that only a CBI probe would have revealed how the boys went missing systematically as part of dark rituals perf ormed at the ashram. It took Asaram three years to appear bef ore the (DK) Trivedi Commission and even when he appeared, he behaved as if he were delivering sermons. T he case is still open and the commission report (submitted on 1 August) has not been made public yet, he says. But wouldnt other parents have also complained if their sons went missing in the past? Vaghela nods. Call it hypnotism or helplessness or whatever you will. Most of Asarams f ollowers have absolute f aith in him. When two boys were f ound dead in his Chhindwara ashram, soon af ter our tragedy, the parents of the f irst victim ref used to press charges. T he two f ive-year-old Chhindwara boys in question, Ram Krishna Yadav and Vedant Manmodhe, were f ound dead in a bathroom in Gurukunj. Despite the mass outrage, Ram Krishnas parents Mohanlal and Manorama blamed the loss on their destiny. Its our f ate that we lost our son. Within a week, the police claimed to have solved the case by arresting a mentally unstable Class IX student f or the twin murders, dismissing his parents plea that their son was made a scapegoat. Apart f rom these high-prof ile cases, detractors point out more than a dozen instances of murder that apparently led to Asaram Bapu. For example, Sandhya, a teacher at the same Chhindwara Gurukul, died under suspicious circumstances. Vashi, who worked f or ashram publication Rishi Prasad, was apparently killed f or protesting against his sisters sexual exploitation. T he death of a 10-year-old Gurukul student f rom Muzaf f arnagar was blamed on suicide. No FIR was lodged when Z andu alias Narender, the head of Asarams Virangham ashram near Ahmedabad, was f ound dead. But the details in these allegations remain sketchy. Asaram believes in catching them young the younger the better f or a thorough brainwashing, says

ayurveda physician Prajapati, who was picked up by Kota Police f rom Ahmedabad on 22 August in connection with what he claims is a f alse case of cheating. He can be ruthless when it goes wrong. I asked Chandok to give up two-wheelers bef ore he was shot at. Chawla uses only public transport. We f ear f or our lives. AT T HE ashram, Khemka had returned to the legal cell. I watched a f lurry of activities media updates pouring in, sevaks shouting commands or brainstorming in a huddle until Wankhade was back af ter of f ering a lengthy byte to a T V channel with a good viewership in the Gulf . He looked smug. T heir T RP goes up when we give exclusives. Now all other channels will call up asking what their f ault was. T hen, he asked me to take down what he had memorised f rom Jivan Jhanki, a handbook on Asarams biography. Asaram was born Asumal on 17 April 1941 in Sindh (now in Pakistan) to T haumal Sirumalani and his consort Mehgiba. Like the three wise men who showed up at Bethlehem, a stranger apparently visited Asumals f amily the day he was born to gif t a jhoola (swing) because the day bef ore, all of a sudden, he had a strong f eeling that a great saintly child shall be born in T haumaljis f amily. T he f amily moved to Gujarat af ter Partition. Asaram studied until Class III but was considered a brilliant student with a remarkable memory. Af ter his f athers death, he unknowingly attained all Siddhis and f led to a Bharuch ashram. Brought back, he married Lakshmi Devi. T hey have a son Narayan Sai, Asarams heir apparent, and a daughter Bharati, whose husband lef t her and the country af ter discovering the f amilys secrets. Soon af ter his marriage, Asaram lef t home, with his wif es permission, to attain god. He met a number of gurus, including a prophetic one who blessed him to be a millionaire. Asarams quest was rewarded when he impressed Lilashahji Maharaj in Vrindavan. Eventually, Lilashahji would advise him to stay a householder. Af ter attaining self -realisation, he spent seven years in seclusion and started his Ahmedabad ashram in 1971. What his of f icial biography does not mention is that Asaram f ound shelter f or two years in Moteras Sadashiv Ashram bef ore setting up a hutment of his own in the adjoining land. Even today, the sprawling Asaram ashram shares its boundary with the humble Sadashiv Ashram that Asarams men tried to grab af ter Sadashivs death. T hey did not succeed due to strong resistance f rom local villagers who were later implicated in f alse cases. What the of f icial biography does not mention, points out a veteran businessman who claims to know Gujarats Sindhi samaj, is that Asaram used to run a tea stall by the main bus stand at Visnagar near Mehsana and used it as a f ront to peddle illicit liquor. A couple of old-timers conf irmed that a young Asaram was considered a miscreant of sorts in Maninagar, Ahmedabad. But even af terwards, the guru does not seem to have mended his ways. In August 2002, the Income Tax Department raided 20 premises of a prominent jewellery chain in New Delhi and f ound a huge cache of unexplained stock. Sources claim that Asaram invested several crores in the jewellery chain, which indulged in out of book sales and bogus exports. T hey apparently imported gold under a duty-f ree scheme f or designing jewellery meant solely f or export but sold it without billing in the local market. T he prof its were invested in real estate. Probably, it was the aspiration of a landless ref ugee that made him value land so. T hen it became big business, says a Mumbai real estate agent of Asaram. In this quest, too, Asaram targeted the most vulnerable: the old and inf irm who were duped in the name of devotion to sign deeds gif ting their land to the ashram. Even temporary possession was enough to claim the land f or good. In 2002, f or example, some Asaram f ollowers approached Bhagwani Devi, a devotee in Delhis Rajokri, to donate some of her property to the trust. She agreed but Asarams men f orged the power of attorney and transf erred all her land to the trust. T he matter eventually reached the court but the guru was not summoned.

In 2001, Asarams Yog Vedanta Samiti took permission to use the premises of the Mangalya temple in Ratlam, Madhya Pradesh, f or just 11 days to hold a satsang. T hey are still in possession of the 100 acres worth over Rs 700 crore. T his January, the Serious Fraud Investigation Of f ice initiated action against the Samiti. Panipat resident Mahendra Chawla was indoctrinated by Asaram in 1995, became his son Narayans personal secretary by 2001 and lef t the ashram in 2005. T hree years later, when the murder charges came up against the ashram, Chawla alleged that Narayan had f orged his signatures in 2005 to register a new trust, Bal Yogi Narayan Sai Sansthan. When he conf ronted Narayan, Chawla claimed, he was locked up, beaten mercilessly and made to sign f ive blank papers. Even af ter leaving the ashram, Chawla was apparently threatened by Narayan. According to Chawlas statements, Asarams ashram was also involved in hawala and manuf acturing spurious ayurvedic medicines. Besides, whatever f ood, clothes and other items were donated to his ashrams were subsequently sold by the sevaks and the money was never accounted f or. Several lakhs were collected in donation f or each satsang in 2011, f or example, more than 200 satsangs were held and the money transported in Asarams personal helicopter. However, the Virar Police, Maharashtra, f ound nothing actionable in the allegations. Detractors maintain that the gurus clout across political lines made him tide over strong public sentiment against his ashrams in Gujarat and MP, particularly in 2008-10. Agrees a political observer who has nothing personal against Asaram. T hough he is aligned with the Sangh f or obvious reasons, his real growth happened in Gujarat and MP during the Congress rule. Modi is probably the only CM who does not care much about him. T hat said, the ashram activities got a boost af ter 2001 when Asaram indoctrinated 20,000 students in Ahmedabad alone. To be f air, Asarams biggest political assets during his rapid rise included f ormer PM AB Vajpayee and LK Advani, a f ellow Sindhi-born. Given his inf luence on the Sindhi-Marwari communities, the chief ministers of all the Hindi heartland states have handled him with care. T he guru enjoys enough backing in the f orces and the bureaucracy across the states. Yet, with Modi issuing a whip on 28 August to restrain party leaders f rom def ending Asaram, the political consensus against him is f inally building up. With little political stake in the states that are Asarams stronghold, parties such as JD(U), BSP and the Lef t are aggressively questioning if Asaram is above the law. In f act, he is not. While most charges of usurping private properties against Asaram and his ashrams are tangled in legal knots, the guru has quite a humble record at def ending his encroachments on State land. T he metro rail project is coming up on Sabarmati bank where the state revenue department authorities in January 2010 cleared the encroachment of 67,099 sq m land by his Motera ashram. In November that year, the administration demolished ashram constructions on six acres of encroached land in Bhairavi village of Navsari district. T his year, the Sabarkantha district administration served notice to Asarams son to vacate nearly 70 hectares of agricultural land in the villages of Pedhmala, Gambhoi and Rajpur that he had acquired by f alsely claiming that he was a f armer. In 1977, the state government acquired agricultural lands along the Tapi river f or building embankments and a drinking water project. Af ter a satsang in 1984, Asarams ashram occupied a stretch of this land and regularised the encroachment in just three weeks through its inf luence over the then revenue minister Atmaram Patel. T he f armers raised objection in 2004 and the Gujarat High Court returned the land to the state in 2006. Outside Gujarat, Asarams illegal claim over 13.5 katthas of land was rejected by a Bihar court in 2009 af ter a protracted battle with the Bihar State Board of Religious Trusts, which eventually got possession of the plot. In Odisha this May, the Cuttack Municipal Corporation razed an Asaram ashram built illegally in the city.

In none of these cases, Asaram tried to resist the state once he lost the legal battle. Land cases wont make much of a dent in his empire, says a retired police of f icer in Indore. He anyway controls too much land and losing a f ew acres doesnt worry him. Also, the cases of those childrens deaths never implicated him directly. His only potential vulnerability has always been his weakness f or women. When people line up f or darshan, Asaram apparently throws a f ruit or whatever is handy at a girl who catches his f ancy. Women f rom the ashram then convince the girl and her f amily to send her to Asarams mahila ashram so that the guru can perf orm an anushthan with her. If he gets his way, you can imagine what anushthan he perf orms, alleges a source who directs me to Asarams f ormer physician. Prajapati says he had revived the guru f rom his deathbed in the mid-1990s and was given access to his bedroom every f ull moon to check his health. During one visit, he says he got the shock of his lif e. I never questioned why a godman took insulin f or thyroid. But then I got to know that his days in solitude were meant f or these dirty activities. He must have violated at least a thousand women, he alleges. click to zoom T hat is an astounding claim and it is dif f icult to imagine that the guru and his cult have the power to silence so many women. But a trader recalls Asaram attending parties with arrangements f or scented baths at the kothis of the rich and powerf ul of Alwar, Rajasthan, since the mid-1990s, and vouches f or his give no margin strategy. Once one becomes an ashram inmate, there is virtually no escape, seconds a teacher who claims to have been associated with Asarams Chhindwara ashram. T here are still 200-odd women in various ashrams run by Asarams wif e. T hose f rom outside are made to toe the line by his goons. If the lakshman rekha is breached, Asaram becomes inaccessible. Didnt he ref use darshan to the f amily of the Jodhpur victim when they came to meet him in Delhi af ter the incident? T his time, though, the ploy did not silence the victim or her f amily. T he tension is palpable in his camp and has already led to a f ew public f aux pas. T he owner of the Jodhpur land contradicted the ashrams hasty claim that Asaram was not even there on Independence Day. T he ashrams Delhi PRO Dubeys comparison of Asaram with Guru Nanak has drawn angry rebuttals f rom the Sikh community led by Shiromani Akali Dals Harsimrat Kaur. Her f ather-in-law and Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal did not have any qualms about getting photographed with Asaram earlier. I cant say I did not see such self -goals coming. Af ter giving me an escorted tour of the ashram, Wankhade enquired about the circulation f igure of this magazine. As we waited f or the busy legal cell to produce prints of some case documents, he handed me a copy of a Gujarati magazine that recently did a cover story on Asaram. If you do a positive story f or us like this Bapuji will tell devotees, on live T V, to buy your magazine. T he circulation will double. Talk to your management, he says, pausing to gauge my reaction. Nobody can stop Bapuji f rom saying what he wants to on live T V. I concurred. But the law may yet catch up with him in real lif e. With inputs from Ushinor Majumdar jaymazoomdaar@gmail.com