EVERY week, with unfailing regularity, the followers of Asaram Bapu find a way to put him on India’s twitter map. A hashtag proclaiming his innocence or one attacking ‘anti-Hindu’ forces or anti-national media appears on this new-age heat map of national consciousness; this in spite of the fact that the godman is at the mercy of the courts and it is unlikely that any hashtag, no matter how potent, or backed by how many supporters, will make the slightest difference to what happens to his bail plea. That the godman has so many followers who are so passionate about freeing him is by itself something that needs greater examination, for the case against him is of rape of a minor. Interestingly, those defending him are happy to challenge the age of the girl, rather than challenge the action itself. The fact that so many witnesses testifying against him have come under violent attack, with more than a few having been killed too, is deemed to be of no consequence. Of course, Asaram Bapu is no stranger to sordid controversy – in the past, he has been accused of having something to do with the mysterious disappearance of two young boys from his ashram.

 

The peculiar immunity that godpersons seem to have for their actions is one of the many puzzling aspects of the influence they seem to exercise over so many people in India. Ram Rahim also faces a rape charge and that hasn’t come in the way of his enormous following. Radhe Ma has been accused of inciting the in-laws of a young woman to harass her for dowry, as well as of trafficking and is currently in the middle of a sordid media-drenched frenzy. Various other religious figures of this kind have been embroiled in scandals and sometimes even publicly exposed, some as frauds and others found engaging in a whole range of criminal activity from land grab to money laundering. By and large, however, a significant proportion of a guru’s flock stays intact, even after the most damaging accusations and sometimes even the availability of concrete evidence, including televised stings.

And while this is a phenomenon that has been seen to be at work across cultures and over time, there is something about the India of today that the need to believe in such figures defies conventional notions of rationality. It would seem that in some ways these marketers of faith sell a product that by definition cannot fail. They cannot be ‘exposed’ because at some level, what they provide cannot be challenged. The guru is seen in some ways as an inverted version of oneself – the faith reposed in the powers of the guru is in part an acknowledgement of one’s own powerlessness. Admitting that the guru might be as ordinary as anyone else is then the ultimate defeat.

The almost blind worshipping of various religious leaders is by no means a new phenomenon. But in the current version, there are elements that are strikingly new. Spirituality as a consumption product marries the material with the ethereal in interesting new ways. There is something about rituals today that focuses increasingly on the evocation and fulfilment of individual desires. The idea of prayer is changing from being a form of surrender to a list of demands. The deity is held hostage by one’s prayer and a list of aggressive and highly specific demands is placed for divine consideration – one’s material well-being, health, success in business, the demand for progeny, preferably male and a very active desire to bring about the defeat of one’s sundry enemies that everyone is deemed to have. The idea of ‘enemies’ working hard to undermine one’s fate is a recurring theme; the self is thought to be under siege by forces inimical to it that adopt a variety of unscrupulous means, including invoking ‘evil spirits’ and marshalling the black arts. The guru here acts as a broker, negotiating a deal between the individual and the mysterious forces of the divine, accessing for the individual the desire of choice.

 

Prayer has always been a form of personal petitioning, a device to make the gods cast a more benevolent eye at the appellant. The purpose of prayer is both to establish one’s own insignificance while underlining the power of the deity being prayed to. Prayer is both plea and demand, hope and expectation, submission and greed. Earlier, the mental model of prayer was that outcomes could be legitimately expected only after putting in a high amount of selfless input. Earlier generations have grown up with stories of devotees praying for extended periods and suffering untold agonies before they could propitiate the gods. The difference we see today is that the relation between the invested input and expected output has begun to change. Prayer today begins with expectation, and carries with a sense of urgent demand.

The commercial nature of religiosity finds reflection in the way in which it manifests itself in popular consciousness. Cable television carries a full complement of spiritual channels that operate as ways of promoting individual gurus, as well as selling products that offer a better tomorrow. An emerging mental model of spirituality is that it is another form of technology in that it can offer a precise answer to a specific need. The job performed in an earlier time, by prayer, jaap, the writing of ram-naam one lakh times, is now supplemented by yantras – machines that connect desire with outcomes. The yantras come in a wide variety, with options of gold-plating (24K), and offer among other things ‘victory in competition, lawsuits and over enemies’.

 

The desire to influence circumstances that influence the course of one’s life is visible in new ways too. There is an openness to believing in the new technologies of the divine; there are any number of new-age practices that are enthusiastically embraced by the educated and the affluent. Reiki, magnet therapy, aromatherapy, vaastu, and fengshui are some of the more popular new age methods that we see around ourselves today. In all of these, the understanding of the principles involved, whatever they might be, is neither attempted, nor are they put to any test – the interest lies purely in the outcome. Who knows, it might work. It is interesting how some of these techniques have become branded with each godman having his own patented way of providing succour.

In the past, the various paths that led one towards the divine were usually quite onerous. One either sought self-knowledge, which called for introspection and quite abstract thought and took a very long time to bear anything resembling fruition, or one chose more practical methods involving sacrifice and pointed acts of self-denial before one could catch a glimmer of divine fancy. Today, there is a growing segment of the religious minded who are looking at this a little differently.

Nirmal Baba, for instance, offers a road that drops one right to one’s chosen destination and cuts out any messy spiritual stuff. If the purpose of spirituality is to eventually get what one desires, why not get straight to the point, is his insight. And it is one that seems to resonate with his public, going by the amount he charges people to sit in an auditorium (Rs 2000) and seek his blessings which consist of what seem like, to the unspiritual observer, the first random thoughts that come to his mind. Eating popcorn, wearing a scarf, getting a suit stitched by a ‘big’ tailor rather than the neighbourhood one, keeping money in a black purse – these are some of his prescriptions for getting one’s heart desires. In return, he asks for a modest sum of 10 per cent of the devotees earnings (daswand).

 

The recasting of religion as a practical tool that helps one fulfil one’s desires has been achieved by its integration with the market. The market has enabled rather than pushed back displays of religiosity, having discovered that it is more profitable to ride religion rather than to pose a challenge to it. A case in point is what is the virtual invention of Akshaya Tritya as a festival that calls for buying gold. While it was always a festival celebrated in parts of India, it has now become a national event thanks to aggressive marketing employed by jeweller brands, as has Karwa Chauth, another North Indian practice that has, thanks to Yash Chopra and Karan Johar, become a nationally celebrated ritual. Importantly, from being a marker of sacrifice by the woman, it has been reimagined as a festival of consumption. It is not the fasting that is important; it is now what happens after the fast is broken that becomes key.

In a more everyday sense too, religious rituals continue to be an integral part of our lives, with temples being full, particularly at exam time. The role played by large brands and corporations also comes to the fore during community festivals. In an earlier time, festivals like Durga Puja, Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri and Dahi Handi were organized and funded by communities with contributions from residents and local businesses. Today, these have become playgrounds for brands to connect with consumers, and local budgets have skyrocketed. Organizers vie with each other to put up a grander show, fuelled by corporations that are ready to bankroll such efforts.

 

The festival increasingly serves as a site of fantasy, with the dominant mode of expression being that of display. The idols in the festival invite darshan but simultaneously project outwards, testifying to the social and economic position of the organizers. Crowds throng venues because of the spectacle provided by the pandals, in terms of the decorations, the celebrities that come to watch and be watched and the cast of performers that complete the mission of entertainment. Religiosity here plays the role of a legitimizer of consumption and fantasy; prayer is not much more than a foothold that allows one entry into this religious carnival.

If the personal utility of religion has gone up significantly, its social utility has arguably diminished. Religion is increasingly seen as a personal instrument of progress, a device that can be pointed heavenwards to shop at the altar of the divine cloud. The social role played by religious leaders, which was to provide their version of a moral framework within which to lead one’s everyday life, is no longer in evidence. An important need today is to align one’s internal compass with a rapidly changing external reality, and to find new codes of behaviour appropriate for a new era. This is the kind of role religion could play, and that too in a pluralistic way, given that individual leaders could provide alternative ways of coping.

 

One arena where these leaders are playing a more significant role is in politics. By itself, this is an age-old phenomenon. One could argue that no one, not even Baba Ramdev has the kind of influence that a Dhirendra Brahmachari or Chandraswami once did. What has changed is the manner of exerting influence – if earlier it worked through the hold that individual spiritual leaders had over individual politicians, today the influence is of a more widespread and generalized kind.

In a more general sense the relationship between politicians and people claiming to have a special connection with the divine has a lot to do with the nature of politics as a profession. Unless one is born into a political family, there are few established ways of entering the field. The progression of one’s political career follows a highly uncertain path, given that parties do not have the requisite internal mechanisms to assure their members of any kind of a career path. The lack of inner-party democracy in most established political outfits implies that one grows by means that are largely the combination of luck, opportunism and a finely honed instinct for survival. Competition is intense, and there is little to distinguish one claimant for power from another, and the search for any instrument of advantage is a natural consequence. Even after achieving a measure of success, the ups and downs in politics are of an extremely high order and no one, not even the most secure dynast in the country, can claim immunity from political volatility. The losses or gains that accrue on account of the change in one’s fortunes are of a very high magnitude, making it a game with high stakes.

 

The combination of these factors, and the inherent uncertainty that surrounds politics, makes the idea of recruiting some divine help an attractive one. The idea of good and bad times sits naturally with the cycle of electoral politics as does the notion that there are forces in the world that are conspiring against the individual. The idea that something could be done about a situation where one otherwise feels a strong absence of control through the powers that are at the command of some gifted divine intermediaries is one that fulfils a very real need. Whether one gets a ticket or not, is given a position of some power or not, or gets elected or not, these are imponderables that need some form of mitigation.

In the absence of any other basis that could serve as a guide to the future, godmen and godwomen cater to the market that exists for a greater sense of control over one’s political destiny. The need is partially emotional, for volatility is of such magnitude that it is not always easy to make sense of how dramatically one’s life script can change, often for no apparent reason that one can discern. The comfort provided merely by having someone powerful in ways beyond the ordinary in one’s corner helps serve as a form of insurance.

In today’s context there is a blurring of lines that is taking place between the social, the religious and the political. The current regime at the Centre has an economic and cultural agenda that accords a new significance to the religious. The overt acknowledgement of the institution of the guru, the more public significance of rituals, the increased visibility of religious figures in politics and the more casual invocation of quasi-religious terminology in political discourse all point to a more comfortable coexistence of these arenas. There exists a natural alignment between Hindu religious leaders and the government and it is interesting how some of these godmen who were once part of the Anna Hazare movement are today such unselfconscious votaries of the Modi government.

 

Godmen/women fill the gaping void that exists between matters of life and death, effort and reward, the personal and the cosmic, the material and the intangible, the graspable and the ineffable. The ability to transact in opposites and to reconcile what appear as contradictions gives to the godperson a freedom that is unavailable otherwise. They mediate between worlds, using a currency that derives its strength from the most fundamental needs of its users.

The growing integration of the market with media, religion and politics has meant that each field has come to be dominated by the instrumental. Apart from addressing a sense of spiritual disquiet, they increasingly speak to a desire to use access to the divine as a way to change the rules of the very high stakes game of life today. Like politicians, they have their own following and unlike politicians, this consists largely of believers who have no other avenues to meet the needs that these intermediaries of the divine cater to. The market for divine intervention is a robust one for it thrives both in good times and bad. More importantly, there is no competition.