Travelling across the 'guru' universe

Bhavdeep Kang has provided a useful anthology of India's leading spiritual gurus and their sprawling global empires

GURUS: STORIES OF INDIA'S LEADING BABAS
Author: Bhavdeep Kang
Publisher: Westland
Price: Rs 295
Pages: 240

Conversations on spirituality often tend to veer into the personal, with individual experience guiding one’s acceptance of or scepticism towards saints and gurus — or “godmen” as Indians are wont to call them. It is understandable, therefore, that author and journalist Bhavdeep Kang introduces Gurus: Stories of India’s Leading Babas with her own encounter with the Ananda Marg religious order.

Her fairly detailed introduction sets the stage for the stories of nine spiritual gurus who have emerged from India: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Dhirendra Brahmachari, Chandraswami, Mata Amritanandamayi, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Morari Bapu, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Baba Ramdev and Bhaiyyuji Maharaj Almost each one of these gurus has immense political and corporate clout, with an illustrious list of Indian and global followers.

Any narrative about “alternative” religions cannot begin without the story of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The man who gave The Beatles the phrase “Jai guru deva om” for their hit single, Across the Universe, Mahesh is largely credited with making yoga popular across countries, especially the United States. Kang’s account of Mahesh’s celebrity draws on well-known biographies and news reports, though she also includes conversations with disciples and historians. Much of it is familiar, but Kang manages to provide an analytical framework written in simple and direct prose that does not make it sound opinionated.

Chandraswam

This narrative template — a detailed personal biography followed by the spiritual leader’s current following — recurs through the rest of the chapters. Though it is possible to read through without being bored, the structure does become repetitive. I comb the pages for a new anecdote, a new dimension to the already-known and find it only in some chapters.

For example, Ramdev’s story is largely familiar to those who have followed his meteoric rise to becoming India’s foremost yoga guru through Astha TV, besides, of course, the story of Patanjali. His political clout is palpable to anyone who even superficially followed the events of the International Day of Yoga. Patanjali’s production units in and near Haridwar are a lesson in how a “simple” yoga guru can also be a shrewd businessman and use the trope of Hindu nationalism to catapult himself to commercial success.

Similarly, Jaggi Vasudev, Ravi Shankar and Amritanandamayi are well-positioned in the universe of conferences and seminars on world peace and other such abstract concepts. The strongest stories from the book belong to the personal histories of these New-Age babas, their unremarkable childhood and youth, which instantly becomes laced with early signs of greatness when they make their way into commissioned biographies. To Kang’s credit, she squarely distances herself from these miracle-laden claims.

The profile of Morari Bapu remains completely out of the universe of miracles. The story-teller, although also a guru to influential Gujarati families such as the Ambanis, makes no tall claims to higher spiritual awareness. His tale is that of a folk artist who found a way to connect to his audience with a mesmerising rendition of the Ramayana and built his fame purely on the foundation of that skill.

The star of the book, though, is Brahmachari, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s personal yoga teacher, who, as a result, was astonishingly at home in the corridors of power. The stories about his proximity to the Gandhi household and his influence over family decisions make for a racy read. The most colourful of all chapters is minutely detailed with Brahmachari’s access to the brass in the Indian government and his power to alter administrative decisions in his favour. One sees Gandhi not as the fierce leader who imposed the Emergency, but as a petulant young woman seemingly besotted with her yoga guru.

Kang has certainly covered a fairly long list of the Who’s Who of this supposedly saintly universe. Inevitably, perhaps, in a poor country where the “godman” enterprise flourishes, there will be omissions from the list of stars, and many readers will have their particular grouse. The omission I would point to is a chapter on the “Guruji”, so prominently written on cars in the cult’s archetypal comic sans font; the following in his temple in Delhi’s Chhattarpur boggles the mind. Simply known as Guruji Maharaj, he is no longer alive but is known for his “healing powers” and ability to take one to his or her “destiny”.

For a sceptic like me, certain bizarre comments from people Kang quotes and incidents from the babas’ lives make for a good chuckle. For example, Vasudev’s moment of enlightenment on a mountaintop when he felt an “indescribable unity with the universe” strangely resembles what William Wordsworth calls the sublime. And yet, one became a poet and the other claimed that it gave him an insight into life, a “raw pulsating mass of energy”.
 

Jaggi Vasudev

Even though it is a neatly divided book that is more accessible for that virtue, it lacks an overall commentary about the religio-political nexus that has been the mainstay of India’s cultural, social and economic fabric. I would have liked to read about how spiritual cults, which sought to move away from ritualism and obviously “Hindu” characteristics, have been co-opted back under the umbrella of Hinduism.

For instance, Mahesh Yogi’s contemporary, Neem Karoli Baba, posthumously found a disciple in Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. And though he has an ashram in the US, remained a largely local phenomenon. That, according to his followers and members of his cult, was because the baba belonged to an entire tradition of siddhis in Uttarakhand, countless seers and saints who became local legends and stayed in the hills.

Those myriad cults and teachings face the danger of being homogenised into the larger, more vocal plot of a monolithic Hinduism, which is also nation-proud. But the Ramdevs of the world fit right into that narrative, even though the miracles they claim to perform are those to one’s health and well-being. Or, for that matter, the Ravi Shankars with their swanky world conferences inaugurated by the country's top political leaders, benign smiles, soft voices and the “healing power of love”.