Education is the antidote to deras and babas

I had just joined the police service and was posted as the Kapurthala SSP in 1971. I happened to visit my village over a weekend, expecting a lazy morning and day. However, I was woken up well before sunrise by an old family helper, who informed me that one Jeetu Jatt from a neighbouring village wanted to see me. I recalled that Jeetu was a minor-league soothsayer who helped people locate their lost/stolen cattle. Jeetu seemed visibly embarrassed as he told me that a pair of his oxen had been stolen from his haveli. I asked him to report it to the police; he very hesitatingly told me that it would be bad for his business as a soothsayer if he sought the help of the police. Anyway, his cattle were found and his reputation remained intact. Now, it is generally believed that such activities remain confined to the poor and uneducated — let me dispel you of any such delusion. After many years and many experiences in the police service, let me cut to the chase. This is a story of our country and its various soothsayers, shamans, babas and how, from being harmless petty manipulators, they rise to control the very levers of power.

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I was posted in Delhi as the head of a premier force at the turn of the century. After a couple of days, a retired senior officer came to me and virtually ordered me to accompany him to a very well-known baba. I told him that I knew the gentleman and that I would not go to him. One had observed his progress from the tehsil level to the district and onto the state capital, where he was known to be a small-timer, peddling falsehoods to novices (most locals knew of him and in Punjabi style had given him a comical moniker). His move to Delhi was a masterstroke and he literally struck gold by being this novel, bold godman. My former boss was taken aback by my refusal and further impressed on me that my presence had been especially requested by the man himself. I stuck to my guns, but let me briefly describe first-hand accounts from these satsangs of the baba (our agencies kept us abreast). Virtually a galaxy of VIPs, including secretaries to the Government of India and their wives, Union ministers and other top-ranking persons were in attendance. What were they doing? Some of these otherwise snooty memsahibs were massaging the master’s feet, and others were doing ‘champi’ on his head, etc. One had to blink one’s eyes and pinch oneself to believe that this was happening in real time.

These godmen exercised influence in national-level policymaking, both economic and political. There were godmen who operated many rungs higher than the Delhi master and their bejewelled fingers wrought many a miracle — to name a few, Dhirendra Brahmachari, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Chandraswami come to mind. Moving back again to the present, the landscape is dotted with deras and babas of various hues and sizes. There are ordinary village-level babas, besides those at the city, state, regional and national levels. Most of them are part miracle men, part politicians, part businessmen, part real estate holders and, above all, great influence peddlers. The poor go to them for minor daily needs, the rich to get richer, the politicians to get votes and thus power. Trust me, the bigger the dera, the greater the vote bank and bigger the number of politicians in attendance at election time. Please do not think I’m exaggerating. State intelligence departments have carried out a census of these deras and their approximate following and financial holdings. This information is used to woo them or blackmail them. Security details are attached to them. And depending on the scale, the weightage of the baba goes up or down. Today, they have started going a step further by fighting elections themselves — the politician himself is threatened. Remember the disco baba and the havoc he caused in Haryana? He appeared to alternate between the jail and his ashrams as per his whims and fancies. Then there are the various babas confined on charges of rape and murder, for whom the jail is also an ashram.

Lest the reader get the mistaken belief that this is happening only now in India, let me disabuse you of that. There are many such cases in the history of the world where superstition, fear and poverty have been manipulated by godmen to pursue their goals. They went by many names — shamans to the Mongols, witch doctors to the indigenous tribes, Druids in England, soothsayers in ancient Greece — but the evil they sowed has been the same through history. In Russia, Rasputin cast an evil shadow on the rule of the Tsars. When one Rasputin or godman reaches the top, other minions mushroom across the land.

In the early part of the 20th century, the Sikhs had to launch a full-fledged movement to free their shrines from the mahants, who had been propped up by the British and had converted the historic gurdwaras into personal fiefdoms shorn of their religious and historic presence. And so the great game continues — charlatans, godmen, politicians pitted against the common man. The men of science and an even temperament are in a hopeless minority. Such is the scourge of these babas that the poor especially are held by them in a vice-like grip of ignorance and hope. The only remedy for most of our problems, including this one, is education of the highest quality made available to all. Education removes all these cobwebs and develops a scientific temperament. Above all, it teaches us to question everything and everyone in order to come to rational answers, and that is why these babas demand unquestioning faith and politicians prefer to keep the masses ignorant — neither wants or encourages the spirit of enquiry. In conclusion, I can only turn back to Rabindranath Tagore and his timeless wisdom: “Where the mind is without fear… where knowledge is free… into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.”

The author is a member of The Tribune Trust