India: Asaram – Piercing the Veil

Asaram’s emboldened escapades and pathological remarks after sexually assaulting the 16 year girl is portentous of the nation’s persistent downslide towards the abyss

It is a harbinger of the rise of dark forces in our nation that Asaram, the grotesque archetype of religious fraud and right wing extremism, masquerading as a ‘Godman’, accused in murder and now sexual harassment holds the nation, law and political establishments of various states to ransom.

Asaram’s view on Nirbhaya rape case

Social and electronic media are replete with the lists of his criminal practices and abusive acts. They reveal the picture of a narcissistic imposter of religion who has used his mass following and political clout garnered in BJP ruled states like Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh to make a complete mockery of law. It is in resonance with Gujarat High Court’s reproach to Justice (retired) DK Trivedi Enquiry Commission, appointed by the Gujarat government in the brutal killings of Abhishekh and Dipesh Vaghela at his Motera ashram, for going soft on him.

A picture emerges where the Commission has, on its knees, with folded hands craved the convenience of the petitioner (Asaram) and his son to record their evidence before it and this has continued for a period of more than one and a half years.

Dipesh Abhishek found dead in Asaram’s Ashram

The Court was reacting to his petition challenging the summons to him and his son. He finally appeared before the Commission, after being summoned six times, but not without his sloganeering cortege. At regular intervals he would leave to address them with utter disregard that he was disrupting the proceedings of the deposition. This brazen contempt for law and licentiousness that is his second nature is glaringly visible again in his backlash at the political and administrative establishment after the sexual assault charge.
Shanti Lal Vaghela and Praful Vaghela, the parents of the children continue to press the charges of black magic and tantric practices against Asaram, his son and other ashram employees, as in their deposition before the Commission and petitions for a CBI enquiry.

On 28 June 2008, days before their killing when Shanti Bhai had visited the children at the ashram, their heads were tonsured and both had sandalwood tikas on their foreheads.

This had made me uncomfortable, yet I failed to read the signs of their sinister designs.

From the children he came to know that Asaram himself had supervised the tonsuring.

Go around a peepal tree eleven times and ask for the children. Soak the clothes of the children and hang them upside down. Then take seven pebbles and keep transferring them from boiling to cold water and back. Asaram Bapu has had a ‘vision’. In a child’s thumbnail he can see the two children stranded at Kalol Highway.

These were the bizarre advices by even some of the ashram members to the distraught parents, aimed at misleading them from a proper factual enquiry into their children’s disappearance and use the delay to destroy evidences. They are itself a proof of their esoteric tantric beliefs and rituals.

The police on two occasions refused to register an FIR. Shanti Bhai described how in their visits to the Police station at Motera two ashram men Uday Sanghani and Vikas Khemka would always reach first to hobnob with the police while the Gurupatis Pankaj Saxena and Minketan Patra would insist on accosting them. The police inspector Pandiyan finally registered a complaint after 48 hours.

On 5 July immediately after the discovery of the mutilated remains pointing forcefully to human sacrifice, the Asaram ashram inmates armed with weapons and sticks threatened the parents. They had to immediately leave the ashram.

On 14 July the parents sat on a fast unto death to protest the shoddy investigation by the police. They received massive public support from the surrounding localitiesculminating in a Bandh call on 18 July. Asaram in an aggressive discourse incited his close to thousand followers assembled at the ashram for Guru Purnima celebrations to attack the residents. Armed with lathis, pipes and sticks they brutally beat up the residents, including women, and children, and many media personnel.

From repeated threats by BJP-VHP goons headed by Govind Prajapati, MLA from Palanpur to Modi’s rejection of their demand for a CBI enquiry, and instead tricking them into ‘ending’ their fast and falsely advocating a ‘compromise’ through the media to sabotage the movement, to the judicial commission that has dragged on for five years, Shanti Bhai sees little difference between the Godman and the Chief Minister acting throughout as his political patron and protector.

Modi himself is a master of the tantravidya, he forces a hypnotic effect on the people and uses all kinds of tricks. During our meeting, we were secretly filmed while being given water to drink and then the entire electronic media went to town with the news that we had compromised with the CM and called off the fast. In the meantime he had ordered his VHP men to dismantle our manch and prevent us from continuing our fast.

It was only after the public outcry an FIR was registered in November 2009. But the government continually stone-walled a free and fair investigation. Consequently the HC judgment of 2011 ordered the CID to quash the charges of culpable homicide. In September 2012, seven ashram workers were charged by the state CID of causing death due to negligence. Asaram was not even named. The Supreme Court bench headed by Justice P Sathasivam rejected their petition pressing for a CBI probe.

Coming to the present, even after the police have established the veracity of the girl’s charge, Asaram continues to freely move from one BJP ruled state to another and his son has exacerbated the crime by calling the girl mentally unstable.

Usually the politicians move from the company of criminals of all kinds at one end to that of godmen and sannyasis at the other. Now we are seeing the criminal Godman move from the shelter of one politician to another. The police and entire political establishment have again abdicated their constitutional duty to arrest him. It is this ghastly fearlessness rooted in total impunity granted to him in previous crimes that should be our biggest fear.

The common emphasis of fanatic politicians and crooked ‘godmen’ has always been the veil of blind faith, superstitious practices and an unquestioning submission, even if it means submission of the laws of the nation, in contravention to democracy. And we are seeing their open embrace in the rise of the religious right like never before.

Post: Asaram – Piercing the Veil
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