What was the reason why so many people were drawn towards Gurmeet Ram Rahim and the sect founded in 1948 of which he was the third handpicked guru? The answer lies in the fact that the downtrodden, the lower castes of Punjab and Haryana were a neglected, exploited and oppressed lot to whom Sacha Sauda came as a breath of fresh air.
Be it temporal or spiritual power, there is weight in the dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The doom that the chief of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has invited upon himself by betraying the faith of his women disciples by sexually assaulting them was the consequence of the personality cult that his millions of followers built around him.
Now that he is in disgrace, skeletons are tumbling out of cupboards and the victims of his excesses are speaking up. There are shocking allegations of castration of male disciples too even as charges of murder are being bandied about against him.
Gurmeet styled himself as a demi-god who was an epitome of godliness and over a period of time started believing in his illusory invincibility, as more and more people joined the ranks of his worshippers.
On Monday, as a 20-year jail term was announced for him by a special CBI court judge, 10 years each in two cases, he broke into inconsolable tears, rueing his arrogance and misdeeds as never before. But it was too late.
What was the reason why so many people were drawn towards Gurmeet Ram Rahim and the sect founded in 1948 of which he was the third handpicked guru? The answer lies in the fact that the downtrodden, the lower castes of Punjab and Haryana were a neglected, exploited and oppressed lot to whom Sacha Sauda came as a breath of fresh air.
When Gurmeet expanded the movement, filling up the sect’s coffers in the process through patronage of politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen, and extended to the people facilities like free food, free medicines and medical treatment, the dera cadres got swayed. But the celebrated Baba had a wayward mind far divorced from what a spiritual guru should be, as it emerged later.
As one of the girls whose explosive letter to Atal Behari Vajpayee in 2002 triggered the inquiry that culminated in the judgement of Friday, August 25 a good 15 years later, wrote to the former prime minister, Ram Rahim had threatened her in the following terms before he raped her:
“I can kill you with this revolver and bury you here. The members of your family are my devoted followers and they have blind faith in me. You know it very well that members of your family cannot go against me.
“I have considerable influence with governments also. Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana and central Ministers come to pay obeisance to me. Politicians take help from us. They cannot take any action against me. We will get the members of your family dismissed from government jobs and I will get them killed by my ‘sewadars’ (servants). We will leave no evidence of their murder. You know that earlier also we got the ‘dera’ Manager Fakir Chand killed by goondas. His murder remains untraced till this day. The ‘dera’ has a daily income of one crore rupees with which we can buy leaders, police and the judges.
“After this, the Maharaj raped me. The Maharaj has been doing this with me for the last three years. My turn comes after every 25-30 days. Now I have learnt that before me too, the Maharaj had been raping the girls he had summoned. Most of these women are now 35 to 40 years old and they are past the age of marriage. They have no other option but to remain in the ‘dera’.”
This reflects the extreme arrogance of power that Baba Ram Rahim was intoxicated by. He thought he was above law even as the hawk eye of the Lord was peering at him from above. This is what absolute power can do to a person.
In characteristic impudence, in May 2007, Ram Rahim hurt the sensibilities and religious sentiments of the Sikhs by wearing, in an advertisement, an attire, resembling the tenth and final living Sikh guru Gobind Singh, by using a turban with a kalgi (egret feather). Seeing what a blunder he had done, the Baba apologized profusely but the schism between him and the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) widened, never to be bridged.
The seat of Sikh spiritual power, the Akal Takht, has always borne a grudge against Sacha Sauda for having taken a large chunk of Sikh devotees out of its fold. But the cold reality is that the impoverished Sikh masses were seething with anger at the discrimination they were subjected to by the privileged section of Sikhs who owed allegiance to the SGPC.
There is little prospect of Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh being enlarged on bail in the foreseeable future. There is the example of another godman, Asaram Bapu who has been in jail since 1993 also in a rape case and ‘Sant’ Rampal who is behind bars since November 2014 for inciting violence at his ashram in Hisar, Haryana.
The Sacha Sauda sect is too big to completely wither away. Though there is a precedent of the head not being from the family of the preceding chief, Gurmeet Ram Rahim’s son has been anointed as heir to the Sacha Sauda throne by diktat from him which his followers are duly honouring.
While Gurmeet must be punished as per law, the State will have to work out how the criminal and hardline elements with vested interests are neutralized in the dera so that it does not return to Ram Rahim’s wayward ways.
The author is a political commentator and columnist. He has authored four books.
