(Corboy commentary)
Amma and these other Godmen/women are beneficiaries of the corrupt politics in India today.
These gurus control thousands of voters and staggering sums of money. These gurus and their senior advisors are intimately connected to India's corrupt political
scene.
This editorial from the Hindu given below, is lengthy, thoughtful and deserves to be read in full.
(Some of the quotations selected for this message board post have been
quoted out of the order given by the original article -- C)
The ambiguities of gurudom The Hindu, June 8th 2016 by Meera Chandohi
Full text here [
www.thehindu.com]
Quote
There was a time when statesmen like Jawaharlal Nehru believed that religion was dangerous because it convinced followers that hunger, filth and misery were their natural lot. Today god-men, accomplished practitioners of the art of politics, wield considerable power and political clout. But they wilfully overlook, and thereby sanction misery, hunger and filth.
Consider the paradoxes of this rapidly growing phenomenon. Men of god are expected to be renouncers. New-age gurus dress in flashy apparel, travel in luxurious private planes, host celebrations attended by pomp and splendour, and endeavour to arouse shock and awe among devotees. Ministers, Supreme Court judges, high-ranking bureaucrats, police officers, corporate honchos, and media personalities genuflect at the feet of self-styled gurus. Never have religious leaders fetched such unthinking obeisance, and untrammelled power as they do today. It is not surprising that they have neither time nor inclination to do something about the ills of our society.
Right up till the turn of the twentieth century, a number of religious leaders driven by the quest for a moral order, and fired by the belief that untouchability was a later appendage to Hinduism, tried to retrieve the spiritual essence of the religion.
Over the millennia, others threw up their metaphorical hands in despair, broke away and established new religions — Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Hinduism, smudged deeply by social exclusion, became the object of struggle, the target of social reform movements, and often the butt of ridicule
Do we see any of this questioning by cults today?
o we see any of this questioning by cults today? Perhaps not. Self-styled gurus can hardly launch a critique of a system of which they are the beneficiaries.
When the ‘spiritual’ leader of the infamous Swadheen Bharat Subhas Sena, Jai Gurudev, died in 2012, he reportedly left property and land worth Rs.12,000 crore, a school, a petrol pump, a temple that secured him immortality, ashrams, assets, and luxury cars.
Hinduism is a religion that teaches detachment; ironically, leaders of cults are passionately attached to worldly possessions, power and pelf. Their power is on public display.
Certainly, Indians have bowed their foreheads before gurus, renouncers, holy men, savants and peripatetic sadhus since time immemorial. But these transactions between believers and faith leaders were private, confidential and sacrosanct. These days transactions are public affairs; conspicuously orchestrated mega-events are televised and breathlessly consumed by a global constituency.
Within the tradition, the guru spent many years mastering philosophical knowledge because his role was that of a medium between individuals and the divine. He himself was never the divine. Yet access to the spiritual leader was restricted through elaborate rituals of exclusion of castes and often women.[/quote]
.....
From the sixth to the sixteenth century the Bhakti movement launched a powerful attack on caste-based discrimination in Hinduism. Till today the subversive poetry authored by Kabir is remembered, recited and sung. “Pandit,” he addressed the Brahmin, “look in your heart to know. Tell me how untouchability was born — untouchability is what you made so.”
[/quote]
The author suggests that in old India, gurus had relatively few disciples
and that access to them was limited.
Some of the most celebrated of these earlier gurus challenged caste discrimination.
Today, mass access to God men and God women in which the guru is center stage
of a public event with an audience of thousands has tranformed these Godmen and women into political players and power brokers. When a guru has not a few disciples, as the old gurus did, but has thousands of adorers, this guru becomes
custodian of a block of potential voters, someone to be courted by politicians.
Corruption becomes inevitable.
If you give money to Amma or any of these cast of thousands gurus, you are giving
financial support to political corruption that is tearing India apart.
Never mind if it makes you feel blissful.
Your bliss is built on the backs of thousands who suffer in silence and in poverty while Amma and her relatives and political cronies grow fat, send their children
to elite schools, build marble palaces for themselves and purchase real estate
in London, Paris, Switzerland and the USA.
