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Dethroned: Jayandra Saraswati, the Kanchi
seer |
Basava
Premanand watched television images of Jayendra Saraswati, the seer of
Kancheepuram, escorted by police to jail, with some interest. Finally,
the 75-year-old activist thought, the government and police had woken
up. ?Let?s hope this is a beginning. There are other big names the
police still need to catch,? says Coimbatore-based Premanand, who has
spent decades debunking ?gurus? and their ?miracles?.
Premanand,
who?s been honoured by the government with its highest award for the
promotion of scientific values among the public, is among activists
spearheading a campaign against religious and spiritual heads engaged
in illegal and unsavoury activities. There is a quiet sense of
celebration among the activists, even though the Kancheepuram seer?s
complicity in a murder case is still to be established.
But
the very fact that the Tamil Nadu police have arre-sted one of India?s
most revered religious leaders underlines what the activists have been
stressing for long ? that nobody is above the law.
Clearly,
there is intrigue ? murder, illicit sex or other crimes ? in some
religious groups, just as in any section of society. But the
rationalists ? some have dubbed them the ?gurubusters? ? believe that
the intermingling of religion and money has embroiled many spiritual
institutions in sexual scandals, tug-of-wars for temple wealth or land,
and allegations of murder. But spiritual organisations ? old foes of
rationalists ? dismiss the allegations of wrondgoing as baseless. There
is money, they admit, but it comes from voluntary donations and is used
for charity.
The
money raked in by India?s religious institutions runs into hundreds of
crores. According to one survey, the Tirumala Tirupati Sanstham
recorded an annual turnover of Rs 530 crore, of which Rs 180 crore was
cash drop-ped into the temple hundi. The temple has a reserve
of five tonnes of gold and Rs 560 crore in fixed deposits. The
Ramakrishna Mission had an annual income of Rs 150 crore, while the
Shirdi Sai Baba Sansthan in Maharashtra earned Rs 60 crore.
Though
there are several organisations where financial transactions are
routinely audited, some have had serious allegations of irregularities
levelled against them. And academics say crime and corruption tend to
occur when there is great opportunity with little risk of exposure ?
and religion is an issue that few question. ?Religion may then provide
the perfect cover for exploitation,? says Dr Margaret Beare, director
of the Nathanson Centre for the Study of Organised Crime and Corruption
at York University in Toronto, Canada.
Political
patronage, the activists stress, is one of the reasons why allegations
of illegal activities remain uninvestigated. ?Religious institutions in
India have grown to intimidating proportions. Their size and the
political patronage they get makes it hard to question their
activities,? says Dr Mathew Chandrinkunnel, director of the Centre for
Study of World Religions in Bangalore. ?Backed with money and power,
?godmen? think they?re superhumans and build empires.?
In
New Delhi, president of the Indian Rationalists Association, Sanal
Edamaruku, has amassed what he says are tidbits about unsavoury
activities of sadhus and swamis over the past many decades.
?They wield influence through politicians,? says Edamaruku, fishing out
several photographs that show a man with flowing black hair and long
beard standing next to four former Prime Ministers and two Presidents.
?This is Swami Sadachari in his heyday before he was arrested for
running a brothel and blackmailing businessmen,? he says.
Edamaruku
says many ashrams have been dogged by intrigue and infighting. He cites
the case of Mahant Desahari Giri, the head of one of 14 akharas
who was abducted in 1995 and never seen again. A decade ago, the head
of an ashram in Hardwar was shot dead. A few years ago, a Swami
Premananda was arrested in Tamil Nadu on charges of murder.
In
1971, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, the railway accounts clerk who founded the
Ananda Marg, a socio-religious group, was arrested on a murder charge ?
but was acquitted in 1978 by the Patna High Court. ?We have been framed
many times, but our innocence was always proven in the end,? says
Kalyaneshvarananda Avadhuta, a senior Marg leader and its spokesperson.
?It?s unfortunate that the work we do for the poor is not highlighted.?
The Marg has 2,500 units across the country run by 3,500 avadhutas,
monks in saffron with long hair and flowing beards. It runs a large
number of schools, clinics and homes for destitute children.
Rivalry
within the Marg erupted during the 1990s, its members divided into two
groups ? the Bihar and Bengal camps, each trying to wrest control of
the organisation and culminating in a bloody clash between the rivals
in Purulia last year.
One
other religious group that is as much revered as questioned is the
Sathya Sai Baba ashram in Puttaparthi. Rationalists say authorities
have refused to make any move against the Sai Baba despite murders in
the Puttaparthi ashram about a decade ago and repeated allega- tions
against him of sexual abuse. In September 2000, the UNESCO pulled out
of an educational conference at Puttaparthi saying it was concerned
about ?allegations of sexual abuse involving youths and children
levelled at the leader of the movement?.
Says
Narendra Nayak, president of the Federation of the Indian Rationalists
Associations: ?Police action against the self-styled godman from
Puttaparthi is overdue.?
But
the allegations haven?t affected the institutions that Sathya Sai Baba
has created. A Sai Baba industry thrives around Brindavan Ashram in
Whitefield on the outskirts of Bangalore. Shops sell Sai Baba posters
and postcards, saffron clothes, incense sticks, and CDs of Sai Baba?s
sermons. Brindavan Ashram, a five-acre complex with a barricaded
dome-shaped building girdled by a tree-lined walkway amidst landscaped
gardens, is Sai Baba?s summer capital. The complex houses a degree
college, an auditorium and an old-age home. Nearby, the Sri Sathya Sai
hospital, a building that could pass off as a clone of the Mysore
Palace, offers world-class cardiology and neurology services. ?Both
education and treatment is completely free,? says Anil Bhatia,
custodian of the Brindavan Ashram.
Bhatia
says that the allegations against Sai Baba of sexual abuse are just
ugly rumours. ?Money matters are absolutely transparent at the Ashram,?
he says. ?All earnings are spent on social work.? He says that the
murders in Puttaparthi were the ?result of rivalry in the ranks,? and
asserts that Sai Baba had nothing to do with them.
Controversy
has also singed the Siddhivinayak Ganesh Temple in Mumbai which
attracts the high and mighty ? from cricket star Sachin Tendulkar and
soap queen Ektaa Kapoor to chief ministers. A petition in the Mumbai
High Court last year charged the temple?s trust with arbitrary
disbursement of funds to a voluntary organisation run by a minister.
The
petition filed by Kewal Semlani, an activist involved in the
right-to-information campaign, says the trust had approved Rs 86 lakh
to Dada Undalkar Smarak Samiti, an institution run by then law minister
Vilaskaka Patil Undalkar. The money was disbursed in just two days. But
a Pune-based voluntary organisation had to wait three years to receive
a grant of Rs 15 lakh. ?The trust had no proper mechanism to release
financial assistance,? says Semlani. In June this year, the Mumbai High
Court agreed with Semlani?s arguments and ordered a three-member
advisory committee to examine the trust?s disbursements in the last
five years and check whether the funds were used for the purpose they
were actually sanctioned.
The
Siddhivinayak Trust is also currently locked in a land acquisition case
in the Mumbai High Court where a garage- owner has accused the trust of
forcibly taking over an adjacent plot. In his petition, the owner of
Sadanand Garage alleges that the temple trust armtwisted the Vilasrao
Deshmukh government into issuing a directive to acquire the plot. The
temple had announced that it would donate Rs 10 million to the chief
minister?s fund to help the Gujarat earthquake rehabilitation, but
threatened to hold back half the amount unless the government issued
the directive.
Activists
say the manner in which the Maharashtra legislature passed a bill to
bring the state?s richest temple, the Shirdi Sai Baba Sansthan, under
government control reveals the tug-of-war between politicians to
control temple money. While the Siddhivinayak Ganesh temple is already
under government control, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)
politicians wanted to bring the Shirdi shrine under the government. But
a section of NCP politicians from law minister Govindrao Adik?s
constituency was trying to stall the move.
The
Bill sailed through the Legislative Council with remarkable speed, but
governor Mohammed Fazal directed the government to incorporate
guidelines framed by the Mumbai High Court in the Semlani vs
Siddhivinayak Trust case in the rules for the Shirdi Trust to ensure
appropriate use of its funds. Nevertheless, government officials are
surprised by rules which say that the executive officer who oversees
the trust should be a bureaucrat above the rank of a deputy collector
and should be a devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba. ?I?m shocked that such an
Act was passed by the legislature. This amounts to giving a religious
slant to the bureaucracy,? says a top serving bureaucrat. But
politicians have also vied with each other to bag posts as trustees.
The
Shirdi Trust, for instance, has current Congress MLA from Shirdi,
Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil as a trustee, NCP?s ex-MLA Shankarrao Kolhe as
vice- chairperson, and Congress MLA Jayan Sasane as the chairperson
along with a number of businessmen. The treasurer of the Siddhivinayak
Trust, Dr Vijaya Patil, has a close association with the former law
minister Govindrao Adik.
Activists
say one way of cleaning things up would be by infusing transparency
into financial matters by routine public audits of the earnings by the
religious institutions. At the moment, they say, tax exemptions given
to such institutions and the absence of public audits on the earnings
help keep their activities in the dark. ?Many individuals and
institutions continue to feed on people?s fears and gullibilities for
glory and for money,? says Nayak. But with the arrest in Kancheepuram
last week, Premanand in Coimbatore says he?s experienced a flicker of
hope. ?The truth will always come out,? he says.
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