From ascetic to flashy, a tale of political priests
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has now taken over the case of the death of Mahant Narendra Giri, president of the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad. While we should wait for CBI’s report to get a clear picture of events leading to his death, there is no doubt that the so-called suicide note found in his room leads to some surprising revelations. For instance, as a mahant (or a priest), he was celibate, so, who was trying to blackmail him using an obscene video clip?
His disciple Anand Giri who has been arrested claimed the mahant could not even read and write, which casts doubts on the lengthy suicide note. Here I would like to quote a former Indian Police Service officer and a writer for Hindustan, Vibhuti Narayan Rai, who says that the claim that the mahant was not educated is false. In 1989, when Rai was posted as senior superintendent of police at the Kumbh Mela, the mahant often came to him with applications, and amendments to these applications were done on the spot by the mahant himself.
Why is it that often, after the mysterious deaths of such people, issues regarding fame, power, and lifestyles, either their own or that of their own associates, arise? Here too, questions are being raised about the flashy lifestyle of the main suspect, Anand Giri. This is at variance with the ascetic lives that such people are supposed to lead.
Here I recall two sants from Prayagraj and Kashi. I was a correspondent for a daily newspaper in Allahabad in the early 1980s. In those days, once a year, Prabhudutt Brahmachari used to call journalists to his ashram at Jhusi, which he often called Pratishthan Puri. We would be given puris, kachoris, potato curry, and kheer to eat. He had actively led the movements for cow protection and the Hindu Code Bill. In 1952, he contested the election from Phulpur on these issues against then Prime Minister (PM) Jawaharlal Nehru. His remarkable speech and personality created ripples even internationally in that election. Nehru won by a wide margin, but Prabhudutt’s purpose had been fulfilled.
I met him much later, and he told me that he regretted that the current generation was unaware of this struggle.
He spoke of how the Western lifestyle of the Nehru family angered him, but he was also angry with all the top leaders of the then Jana Sangh, which later became the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He believed that the Hindu Code Bill and gau raksha (cow protection) movements did not get enough support from them. In one such meeting, when I asked for his opinion about a particular seer who’d made some statement, he told me there were two types of ascetics: Those who would donate their langote (loincloth) for the welfare of the public, and those who rob a langote if it benefited them.
The other was Swami Karpatriji Maharaj. My parents once took my brother, sister, and me to him. He spoke with a wonderful blend of simplicity, depth, scholarship, and experience. He had also tried his hand at politics, with particular attention to the Hindu Code Bill and cow protection. He formed a political party called Akhil Bharatiya Ram-Rajya Parishad in 1948. While Prabhudutt and Karpatri had many similarities, there were also differences between them. Despite an alignment in their views, they took different paths.
I refer to these two since, as a teenager and, later, a young professional, I experienced both the grandeur and simplicity of their personalities. Their attempts to dabble in politics in Independent India on the basis of religion paved the way for people such as Dhirendra Brahmachari and Chandraswami. Today, by playing a passive or active part in politics, a number of holy men have revealed their ambitions, but have chosen to bypass the sacrifices and tenacity of their predecessors.
Let’s go back a few years. Television news had just started and I came across a video of Atal Bihari Vajpayee holding a meeting in the presence of Asaram Bapu. Vajpayee stressed on the importance of Hinduism as well as the tremendous contributions of Bapu to it. At that time, Vajpayee could not have predicted the ignominious fall of Bapu, but he did know that with this initiative, he was wooing a large section of voters. If politicians today can use religion and religious figures to further their cause, why should such figures not develop ambitions of their own and use politicians to their advantage?
If this combination of politics and religion was to improve the social structure, that would not be such a bad thing. But the problem is that it has been made a means to achieve personal ambitions.
If those who donate their own langote are outnumbered by those who rob the langote, what will happen to deeply-entrenched religious traditions spanning centuries in our society?