Guns speak louder than words in Chitrakoot, where Lord Ram lived in
exile. Prime property in this Madhya Pradesh town, on the border of
Uttar Pradesh, costs Rs 30 lakh a bigha (8,000 sq. feet), much more than
in big cities in the state. Some 30 lakh pilgrims visit the 500 temples
and mutts here every year, filling their coffers with liberal offerings.
To safeguard their temporal powers, many sanyasis and priests carry
firearms; the district administration has issued more than 2,000 gun
licences in the last two years alone.
Shooting swamis (not flying ones), muscle power (not mind power) and
market logic (not maya)-these are the new traits of mystic India. In
Ayodhya, the birthplace of Lord Ram in Uttar Pradesh, where there are no
fewer than 8,000 mutts, 109 swamis stand accused of crimes ranging from
gun-running to murder. Sadhus in Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh are
engaged in holy wars with one rival sect or the other to grab land.
It is in the name of God that Anoopdas Maharaj, mahant of Khaki Akhara
in Chitrakoot, carries a revolver and bullets round his waist. "What's
wrong, even Parasuram carried arms," he says, referring to the Brahmin
sage who avenged his father's slayers.
Puroshottam Narain Sharan, a doctor-turned-sadhu who has been in
Chitrakoot since 1978, says he would have no compunction in taking up
arms. "You have to protect your house from someone who enters it. It is
the same with ashrams," he says. "It is better that you protect it than
turn to the police."
The battle of sanyasis in Ayodhya caught national attention on May 29,
2001, with the attack on mahant Nritya Gopal Das, the deputy chief of
Ram Janmabhoomi Nyas, a trust for building the controversial Ram temple.
Das had apparently played an active role in removing Devramdas Vedanti
as mahant of the prestigious Ramvallabha Kunj temple and enthroning Ram
Shanker.
In 1998, saffron-clad sadhus opened fire on the residents of Guptar
Ghat, 10 km from Ayodhya, killing four. The sadhus, said to be the
disciples of Mohan Das alias Mauni Baba, mahant of Yagya Shala Ashram,
did it to scare local people away to grab land. In another gruesome
incident 10 years ago, the 70-year-old mahant of Jankighat temple was
strangled by three sadhus to gain control of the temple whose property
was worth Rs 15 crore.
Criminal swamis became a problem in Ayodhya three decades ago when
lawbreakers from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh started taking shelter
in temples there to escape the police. One of them, Kamdev Singh, died
in a shootout with the police.
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