Cults such as Ram Rahim’s must not be allowed to become such a public nuisance

[prasad1]

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The scenes were very much like those in his much hyped films. The spectacle put on by Dera Sacha Sauda leader Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh and his followers brought large parts of Punjab and Haryana to a standstill. In the run up to the conviction of Ram Rahim Singh by a CBI court in a rape case, there was such a violent frenzy from his followers that a massive mobilisation by the state had to be undertaken, with trains, schools and telephony being disrupted. Despite appeals for calm, his supporters continued their rampage after the verdict was announced. But the larger question is how these cults are allowed to become a law unto themselves and how it is that they seem to feel a sense of entitlement that they are above the law.[/FONT]
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In an earlier case, when the police tried to enter the ashram of a spiritual leader in Punjab who had been long dead but stored in a deep freezer by his followers in the belief that he was in deep meditation, they found themselves facing heavily armed supporters who held them off. This sort of pile up of weapons is not uncommon in these ashrams, and they seem to stay under the radar of the authorities until it is too late. Often, the misdemeanors of these so-called godmen are kept under wraps thanks to the enormous political clout many of them have. In the case of Ram Rahim Singh, he issued calls to his lakhs of followers to support a particular political party in the last round of assembly elections in Punjab. However, whether they enjoy popular support or not, they cannot be unaccountable to the law. The manner in which followers think that they can flout the law is seen from the fact that Dera Saccha Sauda supporters gathered in huge numbers even after expressly forbidden by the imposition of Section 144. In fact the Punjab and Haryana high court had pulled up the Haryana government for not applying the right clauses of Section 144. “Why was assembly not prohibited?” it has asked. Many of these cults have set up establishments on encroached land and that too hardly ever attracts any opprobrium. There have been mysterious deaths in many of them and allegations of sexual misconduct as in the case of Asaram Bapu who is now behind bars.[/FONT]
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If Ram Rahim Singh was as keen as he seemed to be that his followers should not create such a public nuisance on his account, he should have reined them in. The fact that the supporters were out in full force was indication that this had at least the tacit approval of Ram Rahim Singh. The authorities need to take a look at how such cults become almost uncontrollable and stop them from any unlawful activity like stockpiling arms from inception. Deploying the resources of the state to ensure peace over one man’s conviction seems not just a huge waste but inefficiency in managing law and order in the first place.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/edito...ic-nuisance/story-rp4RObAQwZjknJwNoWCV2L.html


It is great thing that India has freedom, and people can follow any religion.
But cults like this must be Watched and disbanded before it gets out of hand.[/FONT]

 

[prasad1]

Political clout
Since the Dera has a huge following, Ram Rahim enjoys tremendous political clout. Politicians of all shades call on the Dera head to seek his “blessings” during the elections and the Dera also obliges them whole-heartedly. In fact, its move to have a political affairs wing indicates the Dera’s growing political aspirations of the sect. In the 2014 assembly elections in Haryana, the Dera came out in the support of the BJP, a factor which tilted the scales in favour of the saffron party and helped it form the government on its own for the first time.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/punja...ed-of-rapes/story-m5UDnQ2qhYXSq17EG0KNkL.html



I know some BJP loyalist will be upset. Sorry friends.

 

[prasad1]

BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj appeared to defend Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh after his conviction in a rape case by a CBI court on Friday when he said one person is alleging sexual exploitation, but why those crores of devotees are not being heard. In a statement to news agency ANI, the BJP MP asked: “One person alleging sexual exploitation but crores stand with him today, why those crores of people are not being heard?”

“If even bigger incidents take place, court will also be responsible not just Dera people,” he said, adding that “Yojnabaddh tareeke se Bhartiya sanskriti ko badnaam karne ka shadyantra hai (It’s a well-planned conspiracy to tarnish the image of India’s culture)”.

http://indianexpress.com/article/india/gurmeet-ram-rahim-singh-dera-sacha-sauda-panchkula-haryana-punjab-sakshi-maharaj-bjp-4813602/

 

[athimber]

I know some BJP loyalist will be upset. Sorry friends

Actually there is no need Prasad ji,.He came to BJP only in 2014 prior to that he was a strong supporter of UPA and Congress He gained all his prominence during the period 2002 to 2014 when Congress ruled Haryana. Even the crime for which he is now convicted was seems to have been committed during 2002 when BJP was no where to be seen in Haryana So there is no party based support here. Every party has used his votes for clinging to power no one is better than the other

 

[Jai Shankar]

I know some BJP loyalist will be upset. Sorry friends.

Sorry, I think it is better to discuss about judicious solutions rather than politicizing the issue...

 

[prasad1]

Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's 'Z-plus' security cover was withdrawn after his conviction in a rape case, Haryana Chief Secretary D S Dhesi said on Saturday.


He also denied any special treatment being given to the Dera chief in a Rohtak jail after being held guilty in a 15- year-old rape case by a CBI court in Panchkula yesterday.


"The moment he was arrested yesterday, his 'Z plus' security cover stood automatically withdrawn," Dhesi told a press conference here.


"He is being treated as an ordinary prisoner. It was reported that he was given an air conditioner, there is nothing like that. As far as food is concerned, he is served the same food which other prisoners have," he added.


Besides, the security personnel drawn from the Haryana Police, he was accompanied by his private commandos when he arrived in Panchkula in a carcade from Sirsa to appear before the court. After his conviction, he has been lodged in a jail at Sunaria in Rohtak.


Earlier, Haryana Director General of Police (Jails) K P Singh had also denied any special treatment being extended to the high-profile convict.


"No special treatment is being given to him. He is being treated like any other ordinary prisoner. An ordinary prisoner sleeps on floor and he too is doing the same," the DGP (Jails) told reporters at a separate venue.


He said four jail officials have been deployed near his barrack to monitor his activities.

When asked about the challenges the jail authorities may face due to presence of a high-profile prisoner, he said to keep him secure inside jail would no doubt be a challenge.


"That is why we have made an arrangement inside the jail to ensure that no other prisoner harms him. Outside the jail, we have requested the local administration to secure area and have adequate security arrangement," he said.


Asked about the number of visitors the Dera chief would be meeting him in the jail, Singh said every prisoner can give names of five persons whom he wants to meet, and he will also be allowed to meet them only like any other ordinary prisoners.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chandigarh/dera-chiefs-z-plus-security-cover-withdrawn-haryana-chief-secretary/articleshow/60233269.cms



The Government has still not entered the Dera's compound. They did not secure the crime scene.

 

[prasad1]

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Saturday castigated the state government holding it squarely responsible for the violence that erupted in Panchkula on Friday eventually leading to the death of 30 people. The High Court slammed state Advocate General Baldev Raj Mahajan and held Chief Minister ML Khattar responsible for protecting the Dera Sacha Sauda.

“You [state government] have been misleading [us]. There has been a sea difference between administrative and political decisions. Administrative decisions were paralysed because of political decisions. You have placed a DCP under suspension, but was he the only person responsible for all this? Are you trying to tell us that?,” the HC asked AG Mahajan.


“CM is the Home Minister. Why have you allowed people to assemble for seven days. CM is protecting them,” the HC observed.



[FONT=&quot]The court also asked the Punjab and Haryana government to submit a list of the properties owned by the Dera across the states. The state was also directed to issue orders to the Dera not to alienate any of its properties till further directions of the court.

[/FONT]http://indianexpress.com/article/in...eet-ram-rahim-singh-dera-sacha-sauda-4814385/

 

[krish44]

Promoting of Godmen is a national phenomenon.

Over a period of time, they start enjoying the support of the gullible public.

Politicians not to be left behind start patronisjng them as they become useful during elections . The followers of various sects and Godmen become vote banks.

Invariably the downfall of these Godmen take place due to their molesting some women devotees or engaging n criminal activities such as drug trafficking. Some even

resort to murders to get rid of dissenters in the ranks.Now this godman is likely to face some charges of murder of some inmates also.The rioting that took place is traced to

conspiracy by the Godmans" followers with active support of the God man.He is likely to be in jail for a long time now.

 

[Brahmanyan]

Prabhu Chawla well known Colomnist has written a piece in his column in "The New Sunday Express" today on the recent happenings in Haryana due to the arrest of a cult Guru.
He says "Modern India is a fertile ground for mystically charismatic demagogues with self-aggrandisement agendas to amass a huge fan following from the lower strata of society. These self-styled hawkers of salvation have become a social scourge that threatens to undermine the true legacy of the great masters of Indian culture."

The full article is available in the following URL.

http://www.newindianexpress.com/pra...ah-hooplah-and-violent-followers-1648599.html

Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.

 

[krish44]

Luckily, we have a decent judiciary which fixes these Godmen fearlessly

This is blessing for our common people who become vulnerable to these Godmen due to power they wield.

This fake guru has touched some within delhi borders which makes our lives unsafe.

Rohtak is not far from delhi.

Now we need to be careful for sometime avoiding late night out .

When public spaces become unsafe, only lumpen elements gain.

 

[Jai Shankar]

Godman Rampal was in news and is in jail for offences of murder and sedition. He had skipped court summons for 42 times. He is reported to be an ITI trained engineer before turning godman

Asaram Babu is in jail for offences of sexual assault of 16 year old. He was reported to be a cycle mechanic before turning into a Godman

Nithyananda is in Bail in rape case.

Chandraswami was convicted for Fera cases and fraud.

And there were Godmen like Premananda, Ram Vriksh Yadav, Ashutosh Maharaj, Balak Brahmachari…

Some of them prove they are smartest and enduring product of this society has ever produced.

It is not known how many of them really serve the humanity

But there are politicians, bureaucrats, political leaders, business tycoon among us who feel proud to declare they are followers of ... Baba and have their pictures in their pocket as a medal decorated on their chest.

It is strange that some of these Babas do establishes number of branches allover the world,

Not only Indians are gullible. naive and stupid... but they are ardent and die-hard followers abroad for these fake babas. They are blind followers bringing more wealth to such Ashrams.

People all over the world get enamored and attracted towards such Godmen/Godwomen and fall for their tricks, black magic, etc

It is human attitude that matters.

 

[prasad1]

The failure of the Manohar Lal Khattar government to contain the violence that rocked Haryana on August 25, in the aftermath of a court pronouncing Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh guilty of rape, once again tells us of what happens when the modern state withers away. There are three layers that are noteworthy.

The most visible layer is represented by the stone-pelting rioters, unwitting pawns moved around by social forces larger than them. Arriving at Panchkula in the thousands, with family and friends, their logistics taken care of by middle-rung leaders of the Baba’s dera, they were part of a design of whose objective they were unaware. A few loose-talking devotees, of course, indulged in some bombastic talk about tearing India asunder were their revered spiritual leader to be sent to jail on charges of rape.

In the second layer, complicit with the rioters, are the so-called leaders of society — like Haryana Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma, who explained on the record, that “Section 144 cannot be imposed on faith”. Please do not misunderstand. The minister was not privileging the stone-pelter’s emotional connect with the Baba. For, about that he cares little. Rather, Sharma was implicitly signalling to that man in the corner, holding a bottle of petrol, that no harm will come for burning a few cars or worse. Could the minister have been colluding with the bottle-holder? That is for you to decide.

A much deeper layer is made up of the spiritual content offered by the dera. It is a matter of fact that dera followers find attractive the whacky spiritualism peddled by Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim. Millions went to watch the film, MSG (Messenger of God), featuring his antics as a super human. They unquestioningly accept his claims of extraordinary capabilities. But, this spirituality is just a front for something very real and very positive that the dera offers to its followers. Dignity, social support, medical help, and food security. These are precisely the things that the modern Indian state — at least in its Haryana/Punjab version — refuses to offer to the people.

Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s dera is just one of the ten more visible deras in north-west India. There are over 3,000 deras here, each providing the same services to the people — health guidance, de-addiction support, with a lot of dignity and all of it laced with a quirky spiritualism. Studies done by Paramjit S. Judge, Ronki Ram, me and our students have documented this aspect of dera culture in Punjab. People feel emotionally attached to the guru for providing them solace. But then a search for meaning and solace takes people to strange places and persons. Some sit by the river at Varanasi for solace and some join the shakha of a cultural organisation. There is no reason for anyone to sneer at any of the personalised solace-seeking strategies.

The simple fact is, the strands connecting the believers with the Baba are multifarious, visible, and tenacious. They are stronger than the strands that connect the people to the uncaring, distant, and seemingly unjust, Indian state. The deras here seem to go beyond providing people with mental succour and start providing those services that should have been given by the state.

The Indian state is one of a kind. Oppressive as it is on occasion, it is unique in its persistent refusal to assert its authority in a routine manner, in a lawful and humane way against rule-breakers and those planning to challenge its authority. The most visible manifestation of this is in the reluctance of governments in India, cutting across political parties, to exercise the authority of the state except when it is politically convenient for those currently in power. State authority is seldom exercised as a matter of routine.

http://indianexpress.com/article/op...lal-khattar-govt-bjp-ram-rahim-singh-4816603/

 

[prasad1]

There is something ridiculous about the situation surrounding the conviction of cult chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim (GRR) Singh of Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS) on Friday, which threw the incompetent government of Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar off kilter.

The 20-year jail sentence handed down to GRR is more than justified, but it leaves many questions unanswered and several issues unresolved. The question that crops up is this — what do we do next? How do we clear the social debris? What are the lessons we carry from this breakdown of governance? The simple rule that politicians and governments forget is that hobnobbing with religious gurus who appear to be popular but who lack norms of any kind could be dangerous because it becomes difficult to control when they turn out to be bad.

Ultimately, the unruly individuals and social groups — whether they are underworld gangsters in Mumbai or rabid religious preachers in provincial India — will be brought under control by the strong arm of the State, but it causes avoidable disruption, destruction and trauma in the short run.

A few years from now no one will even remember GRR or DSS as no one remembers many of the vagabond gurus who roam the countryside, achieve popularity and vanish into thin air once their criminal antecedents get exposed.

No one seems to recall the case of Rampal Baba of Hisar, who was arrested after much hullabaloo and resistance from his followers and his private army from Satlok Ashram at Barwala in Hisar in November 2014. Rampal faces justice too, and it could be pronounced any day in a Hisar court.But while the cult chiefs last, it appears as if they are wildly successful and there is no way of checking them. Whatever Mr Khattar’s own predilections, he has no choice at the moment but to distance himself from GRR. Like people do, including the camp followers of DSS, politicians too will discover other religious charlatans who offer false charms and spells.

The desire for instantaneous spiritual gratification, with all its dangers, remains irresistible for many people.

It is not realistic to expect that shady cults and their leaders will disappear any time soon, or that people and politicians will stop flocking to them. But what needs to be done is to keep the information about these cults and fake spiritual masters out in the open.

Most of the time, the media either keeps a safe distance, unwilling to compromise their credibility, or they fall into the trap of being drawn in by their popularity of the moment, and turn the cult head into a celebrity. It would not do to blame the media either. So, if we are to avoid blaming the scapegoats — the credulous followers, the opportunist politicians and the uncertain media — which is really taking the easy way out, we have to face up to the difficult question as to what this phenomenon of cults is all about? Is it peculiar to Haryana? Or northern India? Or is it something that will be found in other parts of the country as well.

While dubious gurus will be found in all the nooks and corners of the country, it seems that in Haryana the gurus maintain private armies and their followers also turn violent when the government take action against the gurus in the dock.

In India, most people turn to religion for whatever reason, and many of them fall into the hands of fake gurus. Many of the vulnerable believers avoid the pitfalls of choosing a wrong religious guru when they move on to another guru if they find one to be unsatisfactory. It is this religious dynamic of people experimenting with gurus and looking for the one who suits them that opens up the space for the emergence of many more claiming to be gurus.

It is truly a free market situation. There are many sellers, but there are many more buyers. So, all the gurus manage to find their following, big and small. For a long time, discussions about religion, its good and bad aspects, have not been held in the public domain, and it has not been discussed sufficiently critically. It is not the case that people, specially those who are believers, are not open to critical discussion on the issue of religion and religious teachers. The fact that they move from one guru to another, from one cult to another, shows that they keep an open mind on the issue.

The temptation to keep all the cults under state surveillance appears to be necessary at first sight, but this option needs to be avoided at all costs. Civic freedoms cannot be compromised, even when it appears to be the right thing to do. But there is a need for all religious organisations to be registered societies under the law, so that deras in Haryana and Punjab are not able to evade government scrutiny.

What will keep the gurus in check is public opinion. If there is an open discussion about what the gurus are saying and doing, their arbitrary behaviour will be somewhat under check — once they are constantly in the public glare. The death of journalist Ram Chander Chhatrapati, who had exposed GRR’s wrongdoings, could have been avoided if the rest of the media had kept a close watch on goings-on in the deras. It is the media that makes politicians accountable, and it is the media that will have to do the same thing in the case of religious gurus. Keep the gurus — the good, bad and the ugly — under scrutiny. These salesmen of religion should not be allowed to form a cultic underworld, operating according to their whims and committing crimes — whether psychological or physical — against innocent people.


http://www.deccanchronicle.com/opin...ep-cults-in-check-closer-scrutiny-needed.html

 

[GANESH65]

Actually there is no need Prasad ji,.He came to BJP only in 2014 prior to that he was a strong supporter of UPA and Congress He gained all his prominence during the period 2002 to 2014 when Congress ruled Haryana. Even the crime for which he is now convicted was seems to have been committed during 2002 when BJP was no where to be seen in Haryana So there is no party based support here. Every party has used his votes for clinging to power no one is better than the other

You are right. One goes, the other rises. His son takes charge with Congress patronage.


CHANDIGARH: Facing a crisis of leadership and image after the 20-year sentencing of sect head Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in a rape case, Sirsa-headquartered Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS) on Tuesday declared his 33-year-old son, Jasmeet Insan, as “karajkari parbandhak” (executive manager) who enjoys financial and decision-making powers.

This stops short of handover of the ‘gaddi’ (seat), and comes amid speculation that the position of the head would be given to someone outside the family according to the sect’s convention. The two women in consideration are the dera head’s adopted daughter Honeypreet Insan and the sect’s chairperson Vipassana.
Gurmeet Ram Rahim will however continue to remain the “spiritual and supreme head” of the dera, sources said.
The decision to give the executive position to Jasmeet was taken at a 45-member core committee meeting of the dera on Monday, the day the dera chief was sentenced. Gurmeet’s mother Naseeb Kaur was present at the meeting and strongly persuaded Jasmeet’s case, said a top dera follower on the condition of anonymity.
Born on August 17, 1984, as per his school certificate, Jasmeet is married to Bathinda region Congress leader and former minister Harminder Jassi’s daughter, Husanpreet.
Jassi, a top Congress source revealed, has been camping at the dera headquarters in Sirsa for the last three days and also played an instrumental role in pushing Jasmeet’s name.
“Most members of the committee,which comprises dera managers from Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, and trustees, were in favour of elevating Jasmeet, who till now was looking after the sports wing of the dera. Sadhvi (‘saint’) Vipassana, who is chairperson for managing routine functioning of the dera, was also present at the meeting,” sources close to a trustee hailing from the Malwa region told HT.
Sources also said that Honeypreet, said to be the closest aide to the dera head, denied any post in the management. She has remained incommunicado.

http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx