NEW DELHI: They cough up religious icons from their mouths, walk barefoot on red-hot coals and cause written messages to appear on blank paper with all the pizzazz of cheap nightclub magicians. India’s top politicians-including the prime minister seek their counsel and pay homage by bowing to touch their feet.
They’re called “godmen,” and despite their high-and-mighty patrons, they are taking a thrashing these days as some of the holiest of the holies have been implicated in rapes, kidnappings and even murder, not to mention the usual bogus hocus pocus.
“These people who claim to be godmen or gurus or holy men are either mentally ailing or schizophrenic or simple, straight cheats,” said Sanal Edamarukau, head of the Indian Rationalist Association, which has launched a campaign to expose the godmen as frauds. “People follow these godmen because they get a sense of security. That is why politicians and businessmen flock to such godmen. The other reason is that people are simply gullible.”
India is awash with millions of holy men, many of whom have dedicated their lives to asceticism and abstinence, meditation and prayer. They often, travel alone, dressed in swirling saffron robes or loin cloths, with colored ash streaked on their faces, living off alms. But in the galaxy of holy men among the sants, sadhus, yo gis, swanis, gurus and tantriks-it is the so called godmen who are the most revered. It embarrasses and infuriates India’s educated middle class to see the most powerful people in the country, who ostensibly are trying to usher in the modern era, genuflect with awe before phoney miracle men; the skeptics say it perpetuates ste reotypes of India as home to the bizarre 5 and mystical. But that has not stopped judges, doctors, businessmen, stockbrokers and foreigners from flocking to the godmen’s fold.
Indian politicians-from prime ministers Indira and Rajiv Gandhi to the current prime minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao – have had their favorite godmen and gurus. While the patently fake magic earns the godmen heaps of scorn in the press, many have a spiritual alter ego. The wealthiest run hospitals and social-services centers, and they offer guidance and counseling to their followers.
“These godmen are filling a void in modern India,” said Ashis Nandy, head of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies.” All of the devotees are modem, urban and westernized, and the godmen are fulfilling a combination of what in the West would be a psychotherapist, confessor and counselor.”
Many tell fortunes, read serial numbers from currency sealed in envelopes, communicate with the dead-in short, nothing that Karnack the Magnificent did not perform countless times on Johnny Carson’s old Tonight Show.
It is unclear whether the politicians have really been suckered in and believe all this, or whether they’re part of the hoax. That is what really irks the Indian Rationalist Association, which complains that pandering politicians give an air of credibility to the godmen, who in turn use their exalted status to prey on the unsophisticated masses.
The association has offered about $3,200 to anyone who can perform a bona fide miracle under proof conditions.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 28, 1995
