The official government patronage of godmen and sadhus is worrying
It has been reported that these godmen had planned to launch a Narmada Ghotala Yatra on April 1 to highlight a slew of ills from Chouhan’s apparent failure to stop cow slaughter to alleged corruption in the planting of saplings along the Narmada river. columnsUpdated: Apr 06, 2018 20:06 IST

Namita BhandareAhead of the assembly elections due later this year, the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday accorded the minister of state status to five Hindu religious leaders(HT)
By some uncanny coincidence, the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led Madhya Pradesh government’s decision to confer minister of state (MoS) status on five godmen, one of whom goes by the name, ‘Computer Baba’ (apparently he has a memory ‘like a computer’), comes days after Netflix began streaming Wild Wild Country, the true story of the misadventures of ‘Bhagwan’ Rajneesh in Oregon, USA.
You’d be forgiven for believing it’s fiction. A charismatic godman, flowing beard and all, sells his koolaid philosophy of free sex and conspicuous consumption (one of his wristwatches cost a million bucks – that’s dollars, not rupees) that finds a market among westerners but is greeted with somewhat less enthusiasm in Pune where the ashram is based.
High on hubris, the Rajneeshis resolve to build their own Shangri La, choosing a tract of 64,000+ acres in Oregon, California. You know right then that the red-robed Rajneeshis are doomed to clash with the local god-fearing Christians. Add to this, some hard-to-miss bigotry (one state official describes Rajneesh as an Ayatollah Khomeini) and you pretty much know the ending; no spoiler alerts here.
India’s fascination with godmen is probably as old as its history and past regimes have flaunted their own Rasputins: Dhirendra Bhramachari for Indira Gandhi and Chandra Swami for Narasimha Rao.
Nearly 18 years after Rao’s death, we’ve moved past those days when shadowy figures lurked in the corridors of power peddling their shady dealings. Today, we have a range of godmen from Asaram, currently in jail on rape charges, to Baba Ram Rahim, also in jail after a rape conviction.
Some like Baba Ramdev, “the penniless yogi who controls a billion-dollar corporation” have built empires and others like Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar have social solutions to current problems: Muslims should gift the land in Ayodhya for the building of a Ram temple, he says.
Yet, Chouhan’s decision to confer MoS status on five unelected godmen in an election year is unprecedented. And worrying for two immediate reasons.