Recently Satya Sai Baba celebrated his 80th birthday with all pomp and show. The birthday bash was dutifully telecast by all TV channels and reported in the print by all news papers. In the prestigious daily, Hindustan Times, Veer Sanghavi, the noted journalist raised some questions in his article ‘The Truth of Satya Saibaba’. He writes, you get a number of evidences of Satya Sai Baba’s perverse homosexual activities on the internet with the help of Google search engine. All these victims of Baba’s lust were in earlier times his devotees. A few of them might be bogus but all can not be so. How can hundreds of them publicly complain of sexual exploitation? This Baba performs miracles like pulling out gold chains, costly watches from thin air and a ‘Shivalinga’ from his mouth. This he or his devotees claim to be the sign of his divinity. But such miracles are common for any magician. Why doesn’t the Baba allow others to examine him before performing these miracles to prove his divinity? Why does he not pull out from thin air any thing that is bigger than his fist? Why did this god man hide himself in the bath room when his own disciples attacked him?
Another example is Asaram Bapu of Surat in the Gujarat state. This whole sale trader in Adhyatma secured for his institution a huge piece of land worth Rs. 40 crores for a throw away price of Rs. 29 lakhs. The Gujarat High Court castigated the authorities severely and ordered that the land be freed from encroachment by the Bapu’s institution and handed over to the District Collector within three months. Asaram Bapu has established Ashrams in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgad and Bihar which are presently in dispute.
Narendra Maharaj, one more godman openly talks about creation of a Hindu Rashtra (not secular but Hindu nation) and brazenly challenges the constitution. He instigates his disciples to indulge in violence against his opponents telling them to cut off their hands and feet. When he was asked to keep his religious sceptre away from him, while in the aeroplane, his disciples created a riot on the airport damaging its property.
Yet another god man Aniruddha Bapu claims that he knows the past and future births of all his disciples and also that he appears before them as different deities. The famous Ramdeo Baba gives a list of incurable diseases like cancer, AIDS, epilepsy, etc. on his website and claims that all these diseases can be cured by Ayurvedic medicine and regularly practicing Pranayama. The central ministry of health have served a notice on him in this connection. This Baba who is building ‘Patanjali Yoga Peeth’, a university for Patanjali Yoga, at a stupendous cost of Rs 100 crores does not pay his workers in the Ayurvedic medicine factory even the minimum wages. He maintains that there is nothing wrong in it.
Despite these and many more revelations of wrongdoings and corruption by the god men, their roaring business remains in tact. It is, therefore, all the more necessary and urgent to begin a harsh criticism of this phenomenon, for, this ‘Buvabaji’ is leading the public away from the legitimate social problems and their solutions and changing their awareness and understanding regarding the real causes of their difficulties. Under the influence of the Babas and Buvas taking action to solve the problems is altogether out of the question.
People today are more self- centred and absorbed in themselves. They do not like to talk about social commitment or equality and want immediate solutions to their own problems, stresses and strains. The modern Adhyatma offers ready made answers to their problems. The answers are deceptive but appealing and capture the imagination of educated young generation. In fact the path shown by these god men leads our young generation to run after the mirage called “Moksha’ that brings all investigating endeavours to a stand still. It contains the seeds of demolition of the social fabric. If the crowd that is presently enamoured of Adhyatmic Buvabaji is diverted towards progressive social organizations then we can hope for some social change.
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