Ascetic Games Read online

  First published by Context, an imprint of Westland Publications Private Limited, in 2019

  1st Floor, A Block, East Wing, Plot no. 40, SP Infocity, Dr. MGR Salai, Perungudi, Kandanchavadi, Chennai 600096

  Westland and the Westland logo, Context and the Context logo are the trademarks of Westland Publications Private Limited, or its affiliates.

  Copyright © Dhirendra K. Jha, 2019

  ISBN: 9789388689410

  The views and opinions expressed in this work are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him, and the publisher is in no way liable for the same.

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  In Ma’s Memory

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION

  1. MURDER IN A HOLY CITY

  2. THE THUGS OF AYODHYA

  3. KUMBH MELA AS POLITICAL THEATRE

  4. THE BROKEN LEG TEST

  5. A JAMUN TREE, A NAGA AND THE RAINBOW FAMILY

  6. WHAT IS IN A NAME?

  7. PRECEPTORS TO THE WORLD

  EPILOGUE

  NOTES

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PREFACE

  Let him die,’ said the sadhu, kicking the belly of an old man lying injured on the ground. Half-a-dozen other sadhus surrounding the pair roared their approval by banging their lathis on the ground and their fists on whatever surface they could find. Two police constables standing hardly ten metres from the main gate of Ayodhya’s Hanumangarhi—the command post of Nirvani akhara, a major militant ascetic order of the Vaishnava sect—talked among themselves as if they had noticed nothing. A small crowd of over a dozen men and a few children stood watching from a safe distance. Only after the white-clad inmates of Hanumangarhi walked away did the cops dare to look at the old man, who was struggling to get up and was bleeding profusely from his mouth.

  ‘Save me,’ the old man mumbled through his broken teeth as the sadhus departed. ‘I never meant …’ The words died in his throat. ‘Give me some water,’ he finally managed. Moments later, his chest heaved and he lost consciousness.

  It was a December evening in 2010. A fellow journalist and I had been on our way back after a day’s work when we came upon this scene. We were too stunned to move, and the other onlookers looked scared. The cops still pretended not to have seen anything. The only sound was the soft sobbing of a boy, around eight or nine years of age, trying to comfort the old man, perhaps his grandfather.

  We learnt later that the old man was a vendor of rose petals and marigold garlands in a shop owned by Hanumangarhi. He had not been able to pay the rent for the last two months, and the sadhus of Hanumangarhi had set out to not only punish him but also send out a message to the others. The old man was taken to a local government hospital, and he survived.

  My colleague and I were in Ayodhya to try and unearth the lost details of the night of 22 December 1949, when an idol of Lord Ram was planted surreptitiously in Babri masjid by a little-known sadhu of Hanumangarhi, Abhiram Das, and his followers. The incident left a permanent scar on the Indian polity, and yet the story of how the sixteenth-century mosque was occupied and claimed as a temple was missing from the tellings of modern India’s history.

  But after witnessing the brutality meted out to that old man, I spent hours in and around Hanumangarhi over the next couple of days, trying to understand this blatant display of violence by men who were supposed to be devout ascetics. Neither the brutal use of power on an unarmed old man that evening nor the surreptitious planting of the idol by Abhiram Das back in 1949 corresponds to the asceticism that the sadhus of Hanumangarhi claim to practise. It took a great deal of research, investigations and interviews to understand this rupture. What I found in Hanumangarhi was not a world informed by the spiritual strength of its ascetics but one formed by the brute force of syndicates of armed sadhus who fight among themselves—sometimes even engaging in open battles—for wealth and power. They take care not to disturb Hanumangarhi’s veil of asceticism even as they merge seamlessly with the business end of things, the state and the openly communalist Hindu Right.

  There was a time when the sadhus of Ayodhya were bohemian, by and large, and at least the clever ones took care to keep the veil of spirituality on. But the Hanumangarhi residents I encountered that evening had brazenly displayed their power. The longer I worked to understand this new culture, the clearer it became that it was part of a larger malaise, which started to become dominant around the 1980s when the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), or World Hindu Council, launched a massive drive to use sadhus for the religio-political mobilisation of Hindus. When I expanded the area of my research to places like Haridwar, Varanasi and Allahabad, I realised that this change in the sadhus’ attitude was prevalent outside of Ayodhya as well.

  What is this new culture, then? How is it born? And why is it nurtured by forces eager to promote Hindu supremacist politics? These questions became the focus of my inquiry as I delved deep into the world of Hindu monastic orders.

  This book is not about the spirituality of sadhus and the influence they wield over lay devotees. Nor is it about their rituals, belief systems and monastic orders. Rather, it is an inside view of the sadhus, not as keepers of sacred knowledge but as men who play games for power, money and influence. It is about the organisation and politics of their hidden world and how this has been changed and exploited by the Hindu Right. It is about why these men, and the few women, do what they do and how the double lives they lead affect them. Perhaps the answers to these questions could reveal why we are so often confronted with the worst of sadhus—like the one who became a business tycoon by selling yoga and medical advice along with a strong dose of Hindu pride or the other who was convicted for the rape of a minor girl or yet another who experienced nirvana through political power.

  INTRODUCTION

  Hinduism does not have a central authority or an overarching church-like organisation. Monastic orders that belong to a great number of sampradayas, or traditions, are at the core of this religion. The sadhus in these sampradayas, most often celibate monks, act as spiritual leaders for the lay followers. They are expected to offer religious discourses and promote practices that defend the centrality of the guru-bhakti tradition. Devotees believe that adhering to their teachings brings peace, prosperity and meaning in life and, eventually, salvation. Monastic orders of the Vaishnava or Shaiva traditions—Vishnu or his incarnates, like Ram or Krishna, are the principal deity of the former, and Shiva of the latter—control most of the ascetic space of Hinduism. Their strength is showcased in the largest Hindu religious gathering, the Kumbh Mela, held every twelve years in each of the four cities—Allahabad, Haridwar, Nasik and Ujjain—which commands worldwide media attention, particularly the bathing procession of naked Shaiva sadhus.

  The two monastic orders have their own sets of mutts and ashrams, some of which have ambiguous institutional and power hierarchies, while others work autonomously. But all of them are ultimately linked to their respective akharas, originally conceived as the militant wing of Hindu monasticism. Akharas—the name refers to the wrestling pit attached to them, which largely fell into disuse after the rise in the use of firearms in the 1980s—are large military-style camps of sadhus. In the past, these akharas were centres of warrior ascetics and enjoyed proximity to princely rulers and their courts. But now, as the nodal organisations of various monastic orders of Hinduism, they are the main organisers of the Kumbh Mela, where, in the presence of millions of pilgrims and devotees, sadhus showcase and celeb
rate their former glorious past. The nagas are a big part of this celebration.

  All India Akhara Parishad

  Nagas—the name literally means naked—are a class of both Shaiva and Vaishnava sadhus—who are directly attached to akharas, although it is the Shaiva nagas who are better known in the world outside. The term was initially used for those Shaiva sadhus who went through a special stage of initiation and abandoned their clothing. This class of sadhus acted as warrior ascetics in the past. Later, with the formation of Vaishnava akharas, sadhus directly attached to them also started calling themselves nagas. Among the Shaiva sadhus of today, nagas continue to have a distinct status as they go through a special initiation, and some of them still live without clothes, at least at the time of the Kumbh Melas. However, among Vaishnava sadhus, none of whom discard their clothes, there is no difference between nagas and non-nagas except that the former are directly attached to their respective akharas, while the latter are attached to akharas only through mutts and ashrams.

  In all, there are seven Shaiva akharas—Mahanirvani, Juna, Niranjani, Atal, Anand, Awahan and Agni. The last one, however, is different from the rest of the Shaiva akharas in that its ascetics refer to themselves not as nagas but as brahmacharis, having come from, as they claim, the Brahmin caste. In the other six akharas, nagas, who belong to different castes, occupy the prime position. Shaiva ascetics are also called Dasanamis—‘Dasanam’ meaning ‘ten names’ or ‘lineages’ said to have been started by the disciples of the medieval philosopher Adi Shankara. These lineages—Aranya, Ashram, Bharati, Giri, Parvat, Puri, Saraswati, Sagar, Tirth and Van—are reflected in the names adopted by the naga and non-naga ascetics of all the seven Dasanami akharas.

  Among the Vaishnavas, on the other hand, becoming a naga is at best a marginal phenomenon, except in the case of Ramanandis, a Vaishnava order founded by the fourteenth-century philosopher Ramanandacharya. This Vaishnava subsect accounts for the largest number of Hindu sadhus in the country, and form the three major Vaishnava akharas—Nirvani, Nirmohi and Digambar. The principal seats of power of these three akharas are in Ayodhya, which takes a central place in their theology as they believe it to be the birthplace of Lord Ram.

  Vaishnava and Shaiva sadhus are quite distinct from each other. While Vaishnava sadhus are referred to as vairagis, meaning detached or dispassionate, Shaiva sadhus are called sanyasis or renunciates. Their garments and sect marks are distinct too. Vairagis wear white garments, while the sanyasis wear saffron. While the vairagis usually draw three vertical lines on their forehead, primarily with sandalwood (the pattern varies from one subsect to another), the sanyasis use sacred ash, or vibhuti, to draw horizontal lines.

  In addition to the Shaiva and Vaishnava akharas, there are three more that owe allegiance to both Sikhism and Shaivism. Sadhus of these monastic orders—Bada Udasin, Chhota Udasin and Nirmal akharas—are closer in their practices and traditions to Dasanamis than vairagis.

  Together, these thirteen akharas form the All India Akhara Parishad (AIAP), a steering committee that organises the Kumbh Mela.

  Shaiva nagas, the stars of the Kumbh Mela, have a reputation for being volatile and unpredictable. Having given up, at least theoretically, every single piece of clothing while taking the pledge of nagahood, they smear themselves with vibhuti. In the past, the nagas preferred to be left alone, and their reputation ensured that devotees kept away too. But these days they can be seen enjoying their star status, collecting offerings from frightened, yet curious, devotees in the open camps they set up during Kumbh.

  But these are stories of the past. Today, akharas are desperate to hide the truth of having completely lost touch with their spiritual past. The economic and financial stakes of most monastic establishments and prominent sadhus have grown enormously. Senior sadhus say that, even in the old days, some of their brethren promoted their business interests aggressively. But they also agree that this did not affect the primacy of the sadhus’ spiritual activities, at least in how they presented themselves to the external world. That is, until a section of sadhus started promoting the political project of Hindutva—the core idea that fuels Hindu supremacist politics.

  The influence of Hindutva, which was consolidated in the 1960s, gained unusual pace during the 1980s and threw the old monastic orders of Hinduism out of gear. The sadhus don’t seem to have grasped the long-term implications of their entanglement with politics on such a large scale. This monumental shift, along with the exponential rise in the income and influence of prominent religious establishments and spiritual leaders, triggered a dramatic change in the trends and texture of everyday expressions of Hinduism.

  It is difficult to determine what exactly pushed the sadhus and their establishments towards the project of Hindutva—a lust for wealth and power or a desire to drive the politics of the country or perhaps both. What is certain, however, is that while a majority of the sadhus felt an irresistible attraction to the Hindutva project, a small calculating minority flocked to it to take advantage of the new circumstances. The latter saw—sometimes even more clearly than their political partners—real opportunity in the dazzling mixture of spirituality, politics and business. They understood instinctively that the rising demand for conferring the quality of sacredness on nation-building, combined with the growing stakes of political and business magnates in this project, made Hindutva a gold mine. The new spiritual market promised to considerably outstrip their traditional sources of income. As they set out to exploit this new opportunity, asceticism—their core strength—became the first casualty. But as good entrepreneurs, well aware of the market demand, they devised ways and manoeuvres to keep their ascetic image intact—a precondition for surviving in the political market of spirituality.

  II

  This special market for spirituality started emerging around the mid-1960s, when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a pan-India organisation of Hindus and the fountainhead of Hindutva politics, sought to draw upon the dense network of mutts, ashrams and other organisations of monastic orders to develop political Hinduism—that is, to mobilise Hindus in order to capture political power in the country. With this objective in mind, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the second chief, or sarsanghchalak, of the RSS, held a meeting with a select group of religious leaders on 29 August 1964 in Bombay.1 The Vishva Hindu Parishad was born out of that meeting and has since been a two-tier structure—while a group of RSS pracharaks acts as the core of the body, a vast network of prominent sadhus of various Hindu religious sects formulate Hindu perspectives not just on social but also on political issues, to be propagated to other Hindus. In the beginning, this network of sadhus was a loose structure, but later it was given a formal shape under the name of ‘margdarshak mandal’.

  It was in accordance with this objective that Golwalkar appointed one of his closest associates, RSS prachakarak S.S. Apte, as the first general secretary of the VHP and an influential sadhu close to the RSS, Swami Chinmayananda, as its first president. Their appointment symbolised the association between RSS pracharaks and Hindu sadhus, an association that has remained the cornerstone of the VHP ever since. Raising the Hinduism-in-danger bogey, Apte gave a clear hint of the VHP’s political agenda right after the Bombay meeting in 1964, when he said:

  The world has been divided into Christian, Islamic and Communist, and all these three consider the Hindu society as a very fine rich food on which to feast and fatten themselves. It is therefore necessary in this age of competition and conflict to think of, and organise, the Hindu world to save itself from the evil eyes of all the three.2

  Golwalkar’s decision to not use the RSS’s political outfit, Bharatiya Jana Sangh, also called the Jan Sangh, for the large-scale mobilisation of sadhus and monastic orders, and instead launch a separate outfit that could claim to operate outside the sphere of politics, was a shrewd tactical move aimed at cleverly bypassing the constraints of the then Congress government’s secularist approach. The VHP gave the RSS an opportunity to lobby among a l
arger audience. Over time, this became critical in invoking Hinduism to attract the masses and polarise voters in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the RSS’s political outfit that replaced Jan Sangh in 1980.

  Up until the formation of the VHP, the Hindu Mahasabha and Akhil Bharatiya Ram Rajya Parishad had been the leading political forums for religious leaders interested in Hindu communalist politics. The Mahasabha had enrolled in its ranks Mahant Digvijay Nath, the religious head of Gorakshapeeth temple—also known as Gorakhnath mutt, in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh—and one of the most cunning sadhus of the twentieth century, who had spearheaded the conspiracy to plant the idol of Lord Ram in Babri masjid in 1949. His disciple, Mahant Avaidyanath, who was the guru of BJP leader and current Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, was a member of the Hindu Mahasabha till 1989, when he shifted to the BJP and contested two subsequent Lok Sabha elections on its ticket. Abhiram Das, who actually planted the idol, was also a local leader of the Hindu Mahasabha. Ram Rajya Parishad, a political party led by one of the members of the ascetic community, Swami Karpatri, was another platform that attracted politically motivated sadhus for some time after Independence. Besides him, the shankaracharya of Puri, Niranjan Tirth, was among other important leaders drawn directly from the Hindu ascetic community.

  In its initial days, the VHP, like the Hindu Mahasabha and Ram Rajya Parishad in their early days, could only attract the few sadhus who were in search of a political platform and greater legitimacy. But it persisted and gradually started gaining roots, first among Shaiva sadhus and monastic orders centred at Haridwar and nearby areas and later—once the RSS outfit associated itself with the Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri masjid issue—among the Vaishnava sadhus of Ayodhya. Kumbh Melas played a key role in the VHP’s endeavour. Yet, the VHP’s success in roping in sadhus to work for the political project of Hindutva was marginal until the BJP was formed in 1980.