Thing called spiritual bankruptcy

Sushil Manav

There is no switch-off button to faith. Like there is no icon to unfollow or deactivate it. It’s not a cloak you can take off or sludge you can wash off. You can swim out of it, but it is a long channel to cross and it takes time. It took Shivani Gupta’s mother, a follower of Asaram a year to come to terms with the loss — of faith. A bank employee, Shivani herself was a follower till she started getting to know inside stories of the ashram. “Of the three floors of our house in Karnal, two were dedicated to satsangs. A close aide of Asaram nearly convinced my mother to donate the house in his name,” recalls Shivani, as she tells the ordeal of dealing with ‘spiritual’ betrayal.

Her family coped with it, or probably there isn’t any alternative, just as there wasn’t for followers of other godmen who are convicted of grave charges. Once wounded, faith is difficult to heal. What’s more challenging is accepting that it has inflicted injuries.

The clinic of septuagenarian Ved Prakash, an acupressure practitioner, no longer displays the life-size picture of Dera Sacha Sauda Chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. Nor does one find the dera’s slogan, “Dhan dhan satguru tera hi aasra,” which was written on one of the walls.

The one whom he revered for decades has torn his family asunder. He has not seen his son Vinod for 15 years, barring the latter’s 15-minute visit to the crematorium when Prakash lost his wife. Once Vinod got to know how his wife suffered inside the dera, he decided to a fight a legal battle. However, Prakash deposed in the court against his own daughter-in-law to prove Ram Rahim innocent. He regrets, “Na khuda hee mila, na visaale sanam. (I could attain neither God nor union with my beloved).”

He firmly believed that his daughter-in-law was playing in the hands of forces inimical to dera. “My faith in him was more than what I reposed in my family.” Next was the battle with society and dera followers, to whom he had to prove his allegiance. “And I lost the battle on all grounds. I feared that pursuing the case would bring bad name to us. I was under immense pressure from the dera henchmen, who wanted me to force my daughter-in-law to withdraw her case.” His son, unwilling to succumb, left the house with his wife, never to return again.

Without the ‘guru,’ and the family, Prakash suffers loneliness. “I visit a local gurdwara to seek the elusive peace of mind. Corrosion of faith isn’t easy to refill.”

Life took a blind turn for many dera followers last August after Ram Rahim was convicted and sentenced imprisonment. Suman Lata and her husband Sudhir were also on the path that led to nowhere.

“For two months after conviction, Suman had one meal a day and a lot of coercion went into that too. She wouldn’t let us switch on the TV set, for the fear of facing the truth,” says Sudhir, who runs a grocery shop in Sirsa. In denial mode for a long time, she started accepting reality only recently.

While things got back to normal for most after a week of conviction, for followers it got more complex. And it’s true for followers of any godmen who is now convicted by the court. As Sudhir explains, “You invest years, relationships, belief in the person you revere as god. Once you know the truth, you don’t know the way ahead. It’s like going bankrupt on spiritual investment.”

He regrets that women of his family are still staunch followers of Ram Rahim, while his brother and he made peace with biting facts.

He adds that 30 to 40 per cent of the devotees are still associated with the dera and hoping for a divine intervention. Rest have already drifted towards other sources to satisfy their spiritual needs.

Conviction of a few misleading godmen has also helped create awareness among people. “They realise that political affiliations serve a purpose. Near elections, they are a vote bank first, and followers later,” says Santosh Rani, a former follower of Asaram, based out of Gurugram. She still holds meetings with many followers, but mention of Asaram is rarely made. “We have moved on. We hold satsangs, pray to god, but now we don’t feel the need of a mediator.”

While Santosh is lucky to have moved on, Rajinder Gupta is still taking on several demons. One is avoiding brush with the law. “Many followers of the dera are being threatened that they will be falsely implicated in cases of arson. We are maintaining a low profile to avoid any further trouble,” says Rajinder, a resident of Sirsa. He isn’t hopeful that life will ever be the same, but he hopes that commoners like him don’t fall into the trap of some crafty godmen.

Or they will have to bear the loss — of faith.

(All names have been changed)