The news is that the man who lived the life of an emperor in luxurious castles and resorts modelled after the grandiose of Mughal courts now earns Tk 20 a day. Involved here is none other than a self-proclaimed 'godman', Ram Rahim Singh. The guru boasting millions of followers at home and abroad is now spending time in jail following his conviction of rape. Under the sentence, the man has been assigned to the unskilled job of growing vegetables spending eight hours' labour a day. Fortunes have fluctuated for the man so suddenly that the guru who thought he was above law and could commit any crime with impunity now finds himself face to face with reality.
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh is quite an enigma. He wielded enormous influence on the lower class people. His Dera Sacha Sauda has been more like a fortress from where the all powerful guru ran a number of social-welfare programmes. Clearly, those were his camouflage. In reality, he was a fiend who under the garb of spiritual quest actually advanced his sensual pleasure. No wonder, on the strength of his followers, he also wielded substantial political influences. Thus he maintained close relations with political leaders. In this case, both served each other's interests.
The elements of Ram Rahims' evolution are always present in illiterate and backward communities. A demon like him however has the veneer of a suave and spiritual personality to mesmerise the masses. Sure enough, such men have several confidants who help them create a saintly image. Once the image has been built through hearsay and intrigues, the devotees become so attached that anything can be performed with them. Thus an American religious and cult leader James Warren Jones could exercise his influence on 918 of his followers to commit mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.
Ram Rahim also had cast such a spell on his mostly lower caste Sikh disciples in Haryana and Punjab who gave away their grown up daughters and children for the service of the Dera Sacha Sauda. If girls known as Saddhi complained of sexual abuse even their parents would not believe it. It was this unnatural and awfully intimidating environment that really prompted a sexually abused Saddhi to send a letter to Atal Behari Vajpayee, then prime minister of India, in 2002. A journalist who probed into incidents of Dera Sacha Sauda was shot dead in the same year. Another woman devotee was inspired by an advertisement to hand over her two years old boy to the service of the ashram. For 12 years she has no information of the boy.
Then came the revelation that 600 people have been buried in the Dera Sacha headquarters. Trees were planted on the graves under the advice of a German doctor, it was reported. Who these ill-fated people were? Many of those are likely to be those who disillusioned with the holiness of the man tried to escape or defy the order of the prison-like ashram where Ram Rahim's was the last word.
The self-proclaimed holy man has run the circle of his vices. He was sentenced to 20 years rigorous imprisonment for raping two of his women disciples but most likely other horrific crimes, when come to light, will condemn him to suffer such sentences for eons.
