India is a land of faith and God men and women of all types and hues proliferate here. They manage to snag the devotion, following and of course the wealth of countless souls looking for solace and guidance in life. These ‘spiritual leaders’ manage to inspire unshakeable devotion, no matter how outrageous or downright criminal their conduct /words may be. For instance Baba Ram Rahim may be a convicted criminal but his followers still sing his praises and are a force to reckon with on social media. Ditto another baba in jail for his sexual abuses; Asaram Bapu! Is it any wonder that these babas feel fully confident making all sorts of bizarre statements? Statements such as these:
In the heyday of Asaram Bapu, he had our current PM bowing down and paying obeisance to him. Today he languishes in jail for alleged sexual crimes. One of his most spectacularly stupid statements was the one where he gave a fool proof formula to prevent rape: call the attacker brother! The godman then made suggestive comments to the nurse who looked after him in AIIMS: apparently the nurse was ‘soft like butter’ and her cheeks like ‘juicy red apples of kashmir’. Ugh.
When he isn’t promoting his own Patanjali products by running down competitive products as ‘foreign’ or ‘artificial’, he makes other bizarre statements. According to India’s most successful FMCG baba, homosexuality is a ‘disease’ and he has the ‘cure’. Baba Ramdev also has some unique ideas about population control. According to him, those who have more than two children should lose their voting rights. At other times he has also referred to political opponents in less than flattering terms.
He famously asked a devotee what colour of chutney he had with his gol gappas. When the devotee said ‘red’, Nirmal Baba advised the consumption of green chutney to ensure that the devotee’s son would pass his exams. In this video he suggests the offering of expensive liquor to appease a deity.
Some years back he was in the news for reportedly saying that government schools breed naxalism; words that he denied uttering. More recently, he was addressing a gathering where he spoke about homosexuality; which according to him is a ‘tendency’. “This tendency is not a permanent thing. It may change. I’ve seen many men who were gay later turn into heterosexuals, and there are those who are normal, who are called straight people, end up being gay later in life. I would like you to focus beyond the body identity,” he reportedly said. He also helpfully told a man who faced abuse for being gay, “Don’t think something is wrong with you”.
Dera Sachchaa Sauda’s Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insaan is currently in jail after being found guilty of raping and sexually abusing his followers. However he had a strange defence for the crimes he was accused of. In a statement made to the CBI judge Jagdeep Kumar, Singh had said “since 1990, he is not medically fit to do sex with anyone and he cannot perform sexual intercourse”. This, in spite of reports about the Baba's two biological daughters of his own… that we know of.
Then of course there is Nithyanand, beloved of social media users! When he isn’t telling us about ghosts being benign creatures looking for help, he generously gives out gyaan about science. He memorably told us how he would teach cows to speak Sanskrit and Tamil; that he would make animals ‘grow’ human-like organs that they lacked. He has plenty of ‘scientific’ knowledge; which he distributes freely: fluoride apparently enters the body through the skin and initiates a flight, which deprives a person of their power. He also said that if he was removed from the planet he would return in some other avatar; because he knows how to “take on more bodies and do what I need to do”.
There is a wealth of spectacularly bizarre statements that the man has made. Watch as he speaks about marriage being like a public toilet. It is the embellishment of an old joke, which he presents as his own… a joke that he apparently finds uproariously funny.
I leave you with this one last video where Nithyanand explains some scientific concepts. I challenge you to make any kind of sense out of his words.
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