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Journalism of Courage
Forget it. If Yashwant Sinha asked me what India’s biggest business (if thoroughly planned and properly executed) could be, the answer would be: spirituality. Already scores of saints thrive and prosper on this business for which Indians are to the manner born. No technical skills required. So why not expand it into a high priority, fast track industry?
Middle-class foreigners, accustomed to techno-luxuries and sanitised homes, travel to India with nothing but a backpack, live in the most abysmally filthy surroundings and yet smile through it all. Their attention is focussed wholly on their guru, with them as supplicants yearning for peace of mind. Or simply a change from their mechanical routines.
Not surprisingly then, contemporary Indian saints spend more time travelling to the West and inaugurating ashram after ashram. They establish a plethora of trusts and foundations without bothering about inessentials like tax returns. And they no longer present the spartan, clad-in-khadi or loincloth look. They wear silk kurtas and banarsi saris and flash bejewelled fingers while performing “miracles”. Their plush homes in India also see more foreigners than Indians, most of them sporting tilaks and turned out in dhotis and salwar kameezes.
And far from exhorting people that they are not God, but just a medium to reach Him, they project themselves as gods incarnate. With immense marketing elan, they distribute posters, car stickers and calendars emblazoned with their beatific image. The sages of old are consigned to the flames. After all, what is the use of sitting and meditating in a cave in the icy Himalayas if you remain unknown and unsung?
This fast growing cottage industry produces special CDs and cassettes of bhajans based on popular film tunes, with words in praise not of God, but of the guru in question. Day and night, devotees are encouraged to listen and absorb those words till they replace shadowy images of Krishna or Ram. And a new cult is born.
So what happened to all those lines in our great epics, asserting that till you renounced your love for all material things you would remain on the lowest rung of the spiritual ladder? That it was attachment and greed which spawned anger and hatred? That selfless seva was the ultimate goal you must strive for? Nobody seems to believe in such things any more.
The Himachal Pradesh government must be the most spiritually evolved. With the realisation that religion and business make for a potent cocktail, it is determined to promote pilgrim tourism. The scenic mountain resort of Dharamshala is a perfect example of this. The town’s USP is the Dalai Lama. If he were to migrate from here, Dharamshala’s economy would simply collapse. Penniless, jobless Himachalis would still be eking out a miserable existence if the Dalai Lama had not sought refuge here. Now shopkeepers fatten themselves on the multitudes who flock, rain or shine, to seek his blessings. Shady drug traders happily market dope-induced hallucinations. The foreigner feels he has obtained instant nirvana.
In neighbouring Punjab, there is no economic growth of this nature. True, an eclectic spectrum of cults and babas pursue their programme of self aggrandizement. Large tracts of land are swallowed up by them on the pretext of constructing deras and gurudwaras. Unfortunately they are all small-timers sought after by locals and politicians, but not by the high spending foreigners. They drain rather than boost the state’s fragile economy.
But with each passing day, the number of cults and living gods and goddesses in India expands. Call it material spiritualism — or shall we say spiritual materialism?
