Sitting on the stairs of Satsang Bhavan in Rajinder Nagar, Delhi, Durga Prasad Panda—who is in his early 40s and is the caretaker of the bhavan—tries to convince us that his guruji, who passed away in 2007, could cure cancer. He met him in 2004. “There was a woman in her 40s who was diagnosed with cancer. The doctor said that she wouldn’t survive more than a year.She went to the guruji. He gave her some flowers and asked her to recite his name. Within months, she started getting better. She survived for 12 years. This is the power of guruji,” he says.
After witnessing this turnaround story, Panda also got to experience guruji’s miracle first hand. In 2014, he came to Delhi from Damoh in Madhya Pradesh where he was engaged in sound business. “I was earning good money then, but I felt people were jealous of me and my friends tried to harm me. It was then that I started visiting the Chhatarpur ashram of the guruji from Lajpat Nagar,” says Panda. He became a sevak. He used to take guruji’s prasad and recite his name. “Everything changed thereafter,” he says. Though guruji died in 2007, his blessings continue to safeguard the devotees who attend the satsangs, he adds.
Panda is among millions in the country who regularly visit ashrams of different gurujis in a hope of that they would be able to resolve their problems. In some cases, these gurujis ask them to recite their names, and in the other, they give them prasad and miraculous amulets that manifest changes in their lives.
Recently, hundreds of devotees of Bhole Baba died in a stampede in Hathras after they allegedly scrambled to collect his charandhuli (the dust of his feet), which is considered sacred in Hindu tradition. It’s one of those cases that prove that devotion and blind faith could sometimes lead to lethal consequences. However, such incidents have not stopped devotees from attending satsangs.
The idea of such social congregations, as per French Indologist Charlotte Vaudeville, comprises three components—satnam (taking the name of divine), satguru (taking the name of guru) and satsang (to be in the company of good devotees). The importance of reciting the names of gurusis the foundational principle of some satsangs. One of the oldest among them is the Radha Soami Satsang that was established by Shiv Dayal Shaheb in 1861. He used to believe that human beings could achieve higher capabilities through ‘shabda’ or the sound of recitation.
According to scholar and writer Anand Teltumbde, as of 2014, there were at least five million local babas in the country who had a formidable dominance in their respective regions. The claimed miracles of these gurujis shape the notions of devotion and push the devotees toward satsangs. To understand why so many people attend these satnsags, one has to go deep into the psychological conditions that push them to believe in such myths.
On the one hand, scholars think that it is the crisis of modernity that pushes people toward a condition where they need shelter and the gurus offer it; on the other, people want an immediate fix or solution at a time when patience is the last thing they are habituated within a fast-paced world.
Reshma, in her early 30s, never thought that she would be able to save her marriage. Had it not been for her ‘guruji’, her husband would have gone to other women. ‘Guruji’ was her only hope. “I got married when I was just 17. Thereafter, we had a good married life for a few years but when we shifted to Delhi from our hometown Dumka in Jharkhand, everything changed. My husband was working as a construction worker, and he wouldn’t come home for days. Then I got to know about guruji and went to meet him.”
Though Reshma denied revealing the name of her guruji as she fears that the ‘modern-day media’ might spoil his image due to ‘their ignorance in spiritual matters’, she shares how he saved her life. “I shared my problems with him and he asked me to bring my husband to him. He also asked me to recite ‘Jai Guruji’ 108 times a day. He took my husband to a room. When he came out, he was a different man altogether. It’s been seven years, and he has not looked at any other woman,” she says. Her guruji has now shifted his base to Rishikesh in Uttarakhand. But she still recites his name and whenever there is any issue, she remembers him. “Magically, things get sorted within a day or two,” she adds.
Reshma’s friend Shyamli, who also hails from Jharkhand and is now working as a domestic help in an elite locality in South Delhi emphasises the significance of satsangs in life. “When we were little, we used to hear this phrase a lot—‘Satsang me swarg baas, asatsang me narak baas’. This refrain is so true.” Shyamli used to be a devotee of Anukul Thakur, who is one of the first founders of satsangs in the country. He founded his satsangat Deoghar in 1925. Since then, more than 2,000 branches have come up across the globe. “Thakur was a doctor and a healer and taking his name could save you from trouble,” adds Shyamli.
However, the complexity of this devotional attitude in the urban sectors could be traced from the words of Lise McKean, the author of Divine Enterprise, Gurus and Hindu Nationalist Movement. While talking to Outlook, she says: “The tradition of going to gurus is instilled in the Indian culture. People who come from different villages to the cities for jobs, they need a sense of belonging, a community. And these ashrams and gurujis give them this sense. The desire to be part of a larger group also drives them towards devotion,” she says. The celebration of birthdays and other festivals also give them a sense of pleasure and festivity in a society where individuality is dominating the idea of living, she adds.
But how do they select which baba to go for? McKean says that it depends on the magical power of the babas. “They chose to go to those who they believe have more power than the other to resolve their crisis,” she notes. This nature of surrendering oneself to the babasor gurujis, however, impacts the democratic nature of the country, thinks the scholar. One of the EPW editorials titled ‘Grip of Irrationality’ in 2010, notes, “The culture also has a direct bearing on democracy and democratic culture which foregrounds critique and questioning of authority while the message of the Godmen was unquestioning submission.”
Notably, the political culture of going to babas and celebrating them has also been embedded in India. Indira Gandhi’s visit to Mathura-based Devraha Baba as is wellknown. Her strongest opponent Jai Prakash Narayan, whose movement led to the formation of the first non-Congress government in 1977, praised godman Chandraswami as “an eminent spiritual seeker and devotee of Bhagawati”.
However, after decades, Chandraswami proved to be one of the most defamed babas as he defrauded a London-based businessman. He was known as the spiritual advisor of former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao and though he wielded enormous political power, he couldn’t save himself from the wraths of law. In recent times, the emergence of babas like Ravishankar, Ramdev and Bageshwar further gives testimony to such nexus.
However, there is always a prevailing sense of closed community in these satsangs. As Outlook tried to attend several satsangs across Delhi, we were denied permission. “You have to be our part to attend this. There is a sense of devotion that is needed,” says one of the organisers of a popular satsang.
In the wake of the Hathras tragedy, most of the satsangs closed their doors saying: “We don’t want to talk to the media.” Do the devotees also feel like that? Reshma says: “You people just make a mockery of us. Why should we reveal our faith to you? Please don’t take my name. I don’t want any trouble.” Shyamli intervenes, “First be in good companion to become a satsangi. Then, you will realise the power of faith.”
