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STATES: UTTAR PRADESH
Gunmen Of The Gods
Chitrakoot's holy men have private armies, guns and land worth crores.
Concerns purely material get precedence
over things spiritual in this town
By Subhash Mishra
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SAFE HAVEN: Mahant Anoopji Das of the Khaki Akhada owns about 40
bighas of land and needs two "disciples" for security
because holy men have been killed for property
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Chitrakoot is where,
according to legends, Lord Ram spent 14 years in exile. Numerous ashrams,
muths, akharas and temples dot this pilgrimage town in Bundelkhand, the
most backward region of Uttar Pradesh. Little would distinguish them if
it were not for their holy men or mahants. They all carry firearms, and
the more important ones have their own private armies. For people who
have renounced the world, the holy men do very well for themselves.
Mahant Divyanandji Maharaj of the Swargashram
Pilikothi is typical of the breed. He owns property worth over Rs 100
crore with ashrams in more than 250 places across the country and about
1,300 acres of agricultural and commercial land. The low-profile Maharaj,
in his late 30s, has followers all over the country who send him cheques
and donations in the form of land and buildings. He owns three firearms
including a pistol, apart from a "small force" of a dozen security
personnel. The Maharaj never moves about in the city without his "commandos".
"Most of us have firearms for our personal security and to fight
against unscrupulous operators who are disguised as sadhus," says
Divyanandji. There had been many incidents in the past when a disciple
has killed the head priest for ownership of the property attached to the
religious places, he says. "Agricultural and urban land in Chitrakoot
is very costly. In some places, it's as high as
Rs 20,000 per sq ft. There are miscreants who want to grab the land either
by dethroning the head priest or implicating him in
false cases or even eliminating him physically," says the
Maharaj. "So what is wrong with us preparing ourselves
against such elements".
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SPIRITUAL WEALTH: Mahant Divyanandji Maharaj of Swargashram Pilkothi
(seen here with his private army) controls 250 ashrams and has property
worth Rs 100 crore
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Echoing the same sentiments, Mahant Ramji Das,
who heads the Santoshi Akhara, says that some time ago, a temple head-priest
was murdered by his so-called disciples. "We do not want a similar
incident and that's why I bought this rifle for my defence," says
Das. Purushottam Narain Sharan, a sadhu in his late 60s, heads an ashram-Pramod
Van-and also runs a hospital in the same premises, distributes medicines
and performs surgical operations on the patients. He was a medical officer
in Kanpur before he renounced the world and spent 12 years in the jungles.
Returning to civilisation, he established Pramod Van in Chitrakoot. He
possesses an old double-barrel gun. "We are saintly people and cannot
afford to make repeated rounds of the police station and district administration
for any kind of help. So, I have this for my own protection," says
Narain, who claims to be a crack shot.
For a priest, Mahant Ram Kirpal Das, district
VHP chief and head of the famous Sankat Mochan temple has quite a past.
He once faced three cases of murder, but has been acquitted now. His logic
for carrying weapons is infallible: "When Lord Ram came to Chitrakoot
he was armed with a bow and arrows to eliminate evils and monsters."
The suggestion, of course, is that Das is merely following in the Lord's
footsteps.
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HOLY SMOKE: Mahant Purshottam Narayan, a former medical officer
turned religious leader, keeps his double-barrel handy to ensure
that body and soul don't part company
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Mahant Anoop Das of the Khaki Akhara which has
about 40 bighas of land attached to the temple has two firearms with him
and has two "disciples" for his security. He parrots the lines
about security that everyone else does.
Obviously, it's material rather than spiritual
wellbeing that lies at the bottom of the gun culture here. Bundelkhand
falls in the Vindhyachal ranges with barren rocky terrain, where agriculture
is hard, even impossible. Acute water shortage despite governments of
the past having squandered several hundred crore rupees on solutions,
makes the life of locals very hard. The rocky land is divided between
the haves and have-nots and it has generated a culture of baaghis (rebels)
who rose to fight against the atrocities perpetrated by feudal landlords
and neglect by governmental agencies. The Bundelkhand region has, in the
past decades, seen the rise of notorious hoods who initially began by
plundering the rich and helping the poor. Gradually gun-culture engulfed
the whole region to the extent that people in Bundelkhand have been known
to sell off land and valuables to buy a gun, legal or illegal. The craze
eventually caught the holy men too. "There are more than 500 small
and big temples, muths, ashrams and akharas in Chitrakoot and 90 per cent
of them have arms, ammunition and their private armies too," says
Divyanandji Maharaj.
It is a state of affairs not everyone likes.
Ashok Gupta, a senior high court advocate based in Chitrakoot's district
headquarter, Karvi, says he feels the town is slowly but surely being
"polluted" by anti-social elements in the garb of sadhus. "When
one is in the service of God, having renounced the world and materialistic
things, what is the point in having arms and ammunition to protect property?"
he asks. Many so-called saints are involved in criminal activities, he
adds. "We have to save Chitrakoot from such elements." That
is also the stated motive for Divyanandji's All-India Saints Committee,
which has been constituted to fight criminals unitedly. Most sadhus and
head priests of the temples and muths are members and assist each other
against bids to "invade" their abodes.
District magistrate Juggannath Singh, for one,
is quite happy to let them fight their own battles. Over 2,000 firearm
licences have been issued in the past three years. Finding itself short
of funds, the administration raised over Rs 2 lakh in a day in 1999 by
auctioning licences at Rs 5,000 apiece, he recalls. The crime graph has
considerably declined after the liberal policy of issuing licences to
the "gun-starved" people of the region, he says, and "licence-bandhuas"
are a feature of the past. Earlier, says Singh, middlemen used to collect
money from people on the pretext of providing them with licences. These
middlemen would then keep the impoverished people as bonded (bandhua)
labour. "Even dacoits avoid sneaking into the villages now,"
says Singh.
The battle between the forces of good and evil
rages on in a Chitrakoot Lord Rama might be loath to be associated with.
The question though is who's on which side.
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