The Advantages of Being Asaram Bapu

Strdel/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Spiritual leader Asaram Bapu during a ceremony in Jodhpur, Rajasthan on Aug. 11.

Asumal Sirumalani, a popular Indian spiritual leader who is known to his followers as Asaram Bapu, has fought a long battle against sex.

At his crowded satsangs (spiritual assemblies), which are telecast live on India’s proliferating religious channels, Mr. Asaram, who goes by one name, takes great pains to condemn sexual desire in men and women. Among his most persistent campaigns against the growing sexualization of Indian society has been one for the abolition of Valentine’s Day, which the guru sees as just the excuse all these young people need to have sex.  “Chhora Chhori ko phool de, bole main tumse pyaaar karta hoom; chhori chhore ko phool de, bole main tumse pyaar karti hoon. Satyanaash ho jaata hai. Pyaar ke bahane gandi gandi harkatein kar ke khali ho jaate hain.” (“Boy offers flower to girl, says he loves her; girl offers flower to boy, says she loves him. It leads to destruction. They engage in dirty acts in the name of love, wasting themselves in the process.”)

This year, he proposed to all state governments that they declare Feb. 14 “Matri Pitri Pujan Diwas” (“Parents’ Worship Day”). He even got Chhattisgarh, ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., to impose it as such; circulars were sent to schools all over the state, its chief minister, Raman Singh, piously announced at the guru’s Raipur ashram in January.

Earlier, at another of his satsangs with a social message, he advised married couples to abstain from sex during auspicious days in the Hindu calendar like Holi and Diwali. “Husband-wife behavior” on these days led to lifelong diseases, even mentally and physically crippled children, the preacher said. “Tabahi, tabahi, tabahi” (“destruction, destruction, destruction”), he warned his horrified audience. A recurring feature of Mr. Asaram’s spiritual assemblies are yogic tips for maintaining celibacy, which include stuffing one’s ears with wet cotton and rolling the eyes back into the head.

Given his puritanical background, it’s not surprising the guru’s name was splashed across local newspapers after a 15-year-old girl filed a police complaint on Aug. 20 in Delhi against 72-year-old Mr. Asaram, accusing him of sexually abusing her five days earlier at a farmhouse in Jodhpur, where he was staying at the time. The girl, who studied at a school run by his foundation in Madhya Pradesh, had been brought to Jodhpur by her parents, devotees of the godman, to be rescued from evil spirits.

Mr. Asaram was booked under Sections 376 (rape), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) and 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the Indian Penal Code and Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act.

In fact, Mr. Asaram has not exactly been immune to such controversy in the past; the Gujarat police are investigating the mysterious murder and mutilation of two young boys in his ashram in April 2008. The sage said sadly, however, it was that the “dirtiness” of this latest accusation that stung him.

You’d think an accusation of sexual assault would be career-ending for your hard-working professional saint, but Sant Shri Asaramji Bapu has nothing to fear. At a time when people want the harshest punishment for the five slum dwellers, four of them reportedly Muslim, accused of raping a young working woman in Mumbai, the charges of sexual abuse against the guru have led to an outpouring of sympathy and support. While it’s neither the first time a religious leader is suspected of sexual exploitation, nor the only occasion when concessions are made for him or her, the difference in the political and public response to the two parallel cases reveals uncomfortable truths about our system.

Sanjeev Gupta/European Pressphoto Agency Asaram Bapu, center, being escorted by police officers at the Raja Bhoj airport in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, on Thursday.

The country’s Hindu-nationalist establishment - peaceable organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, the Hindu Kranti Dal, the Hindu Jagriti Manch, and the Hindu Dharma Raksha Samiti - has put its firm weight behind its soldier, terming the incident a motivated attack against India’s saints and religious leaders. Press conferences have been called across central and north India â€" Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh â€" to put forth explanations. It is the work of Christian missionaries, someone suggested; it’s a foreign conspiracy to finish Hindu culture, said another.

Leaders of the B.J.P. see this as a political conspiracy, hatched by the rival Congress. Raman Singh, an old follower of Mr. Asaram, said the guru had long been on the radar of “a particular party.” Tweeted another B.J.P. politician, the saffron-clad Uma Bharati: “Saint Asaram Bapu is innocent. He is being punished for opposing Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. False cases have been lodged against him in Congress (ruled) States. Saints are with Bapu.”

Then there’s Subramanian Swamy, a recent entrant to the B.J.P. best remembered for calling for Muslims to be disenfranchised: “Need to probe why there is a spate of allegations against Asaram Bapu. Is it because he asked TDK [a reference to Sonia Gandhi] to flee from the country?” Mr. Asaram does indeed share these luminaries’ concerns about Western influence, beyond just Valentine’s Day, and had indeed once appealed to Mrs. Gandhi, the Congress Party president, to leave India.

His spokeswoman, Neelam Dubey, has, meanwhile, speculated about the role of foreign corporations (“videshi takatein”) associated with coffee shops or soda brands, since “Pujya Bapuji” often spoke of the harmful effects of these Western imports. In one of his spiritual addresses, all of which are available on his Web site, the godman solemnly warned that dancing to “rock and pop” music at nightclubs, especially while sipping cold drinks, could lead to permanent pain and weakness below the knees.

People sometimes malign even the gods, Mr. Asaram has himself said of the girl’s charges. Not that his followers care. In a series of rallies in various cities and towns, his devotees have expressed their pain at his persecution, some threatening nationwide revolt if the charges were not withdrawn. “He is god to us and we will shed our blood for him,” said a young woman in Punjab on A2Z channel.

Aware of their unwavering devotion, the guru has moved from Jodhpur to Ahmedabad to Indore and now Surat on a spiritual tour even after receiving the summons for police interrogation. During a rare television interview to the ABP channel at his live satsang in Indore, he asked the reporter to turn the camera toward the cross-legged multitude before him, who let out wails of outrage for the camera.

It is an old trick for him. In January, after he was criticized for first saying that the young woman gang raped in a moving bus in Delhi could have saved herself by acting helpless and addressing the men as “Bhaiyya” (brother), and then suggesting that stricter rape laws could be misused by “bazaaru auratein” (“loose women”), he amassed a large gathering of his female followers for an address titled “Does Asaram Bapu Really Hate Women of India” and asked them, on live TV, if they thought he was against them. “No!” came the resounding response, unsurprisingly. “Every time there is an accusation against me, the number of my followers goes up,” he said in an interview to a local newspaper in Indore this week.

The most zealous of his followers are, however, neither in his satsangs nor the street demonstrations, but online. And as Internet champions of Hinduism are known to be, they are very angry. “Why only saints like Bapuji n baba ramdev is targeted? the answer is clear… because they inspire people … these anti-social elements know that defaming these prominent personalities will give a serious dent to Hindu religion” responds one of them to a news telecast on Satsang TV. “This is Conspiracy by Christian Missionaries and Her SISTER IN RULING PARTY OF INDIA to Defame INDIA HINDU GODMAN” writes another in a comment on the Web site FirstPost.

Mr. Asaram could turn out to be innocent, and this whole controversy may well be a conspiracy of the Congress or of Coca-Cola, but one thing is clear: rape is not yet a real issue in India.

Snigdha Poonam is Arts Editor at The Caravan. She is on Twitter at@snigdhapoonam