Vicious fight for control of Swaminarayan Trust

With elections to the board of the multi-crore Swaminarayan Temple Trust just three days away, the vicious game has begun all over again with saffron-clad sadhus and their shishyas conducting a vituperative no-holds-barred campaign against one another. It was the fight for supremacy of this board of trustees, which was behind the godman’s murder and of two more in 1978 and 1986.

Banners, posters, wall-graffiti and public meetings are on, with even AcharyaAjendraprasadji, the reigning dharma-guru of the Swaminarayan sect, himself plunging into the campaign in favour of the Acharya faction. Facing them is the Dev faction, led by the quick-witted Nautam Swami, who pulls back no punches against the dharma-guru’s opulence.

Ajendraprasadji enjoys the luxury of three cars, a Tata Sierra, Tata Estate and Tata Sumo, he has two sprawling mansions, he is paid a monthly allowance of Rs 36,000 even as his food and other requirements are met by the temple trust. The temple trust controls 36 temples across the country, whose accumulated earnings is over Rs 12 crore, and this is besides the lavish gifts and lakhs of rupees each of the 500 sadhus at Vadtal get. Nobody could even guestimate the value of other assets and real estate owned by sadhus.

The godmen are wooing as many as 18,642 voters with election symbols such as elephant, Ganesh, Hanuman, Krishna, rising sun, lamp and lotus. There are 18,000 votes of Grihasthas (rich and religiously active commoners), 362 of saffron-clad sadhus, 262 Paarsads (white-clad shishyas of sadhus) and 18 Brahmcharis. They will elect the eight-member trust board, which has the Chief Executive Kothari as an ex-officio member.

The swamis, as earlier, remain split into two major factions. The Acharya group, representing the descendants of Lord Swaminarayan, an avtaar of Lord Krishna, and their disciples. The other is Dev Group, comprising sadhus and their trainees. Acharya group believes since the “blood of the Lord” runs in their veins, they should control the temple trust, and the Dev group argues the temple is nobody’s ancestral property, it belongs to the devotees and the sadhus. By temple, they mean the cash, the property, the luxuries, and so the power.

The struggle for power between the two groups has come out in the open, with the sadhus now donning the role of street-side politicians as they hurl choicest of accusations against each other. While they tour villages to campaign through public meetings and personal contacts, even the temple premises is freely used as the propaganda field.

Banners hang all over the magnificent temple complex, while the writings on the walls outside call upon voters to elect those committed to the spread of the sect and its message. The names of candidates are painted on the walls with their panel numbers.

Acharya Ajendraprasadji addressed a two-day convention in the assembly hall of the temple on March 25 and 26, but his supporter Sukhdev Swami claims,“It was not an election meeting; it was religious.” He, then, agreed that candidates of the Acharya group did participate in the convention. The message there, and in the campaign, is that the Dev group is trying to topple the Acharya to gain supremacy over the temple.

Nautam Swami asserted, talking to The Indian Express, “The Acharya is behaving like a petty person, unbecoming of the leader of a sect.” In his campaign, he tells the voters that it was during the control of the Acharya group over the temple trust, that the Acharya’s pocket money was raised from Rs 2,000 to Rs 36,000. That was when, he says, they allotted one more car to him, while he does not go anywhere.