The fate of Ranjit Singh did not adversely affect the Sikhs’ un-Sikh faith in astral prophecies. New versions of a book known as the Sau Sakhi (Hundred Fables) ascribed to the last of their Gurus, Gobind Singh (1666–1708) have a habit of being discovered in cave libraries of hermits. One version prophesied a Sikh empire all over India. A year after its appearance, the Sikhs suffered a series of crushing defeats at the hands of the British and even lost their own kingdom. On the outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857 the British themselves published an edition prophesying an alliance between themselves and the Sikhs in which the allies would recapture Delhi from the mutineers and crush the revolt. This ‘prophecy’ paid handsome dividends as the Sikhs were in the vanguard of the British assault on the capital. Thereafter several other versions of the Sau Sakhi appeared, prophesying an invasion from Russia and the downfall of the British Empire. These were often corroborated by prophecies in an equally mysterious book, the Bhrigu Samhita which has been in great vogue in the Punjab. Neither of these books nor any astrologers prophesied the going of the British when they actually went in 1947, nor of the terrible riots which displaced ten million people and took a toll of over 100,000 lives in northern India.
During the 1962 astral crisis, the High Priest of the Golden Temple of Amritsar issued a manifesto reminding the Sikhs that belief in astrology was forbidden by their faith. Few Sikhs participated in the rounds of prayers or slept out in the open for fear of earthquakes; they flocked instead to the bars and restaurants for a hearty final meal. Typical of their race was the reaction of a taxi-driver who cocked a snook at the law by drinking a bottle of country liquor in the centre of the road. ‘Don’t give a damn,’ he yelled to his more cautious mates, ‘tomorrow there will be no police, no law courts, no prohibition—no nothing.’
Faith in astrology is common to all strata of present-day Hindu society. The late President, Dr Rajendra Prasad, was a firm believer and consulted astrologers on the future of the country through the horoscopes of its many leaders. Most members of Nehru’s Cabinet had their favourite astrologers who often travelled across the continent to tender advice on state affairs. The first chief minister of the Punjab had a resident astrologer to help him make up his mind. Another prominent politician also, the chief minister of one of the states of the republic, used to issue prophecies made by him along with the official calendar. He was convinced that Tuesdays were inauspicious for him and would refuse to make important decisions on that day. He was proved right. The Opposition moved a vote of no-confidence on a Tuesday. The chief minister gave up without a fight; it was written in his kismet. A considerable section of even the Anglicized or Americanized intelligentsia succumb to astrological superstition. Between the 3rd and the 5th February, many senior officers of the armed forces and the Indian Civil Service—the elite of India’s bureaucracy—rejoined their families. At any committee meeting in the Secretariat one will see a number of officers wearing rings with ruby, amethyst, opal, topaz or amber, etc. These are not chosen personally; they are ‘good luck’ stones prescribed by astrologers.
The one great exception to the general rule of acceptance of astrology (and all other forms of soothsaying) was the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. He ridiculed the people who went to bathe in the sacred rivers during solar and lunar eclipses in the belief that thereby they were helping the heavenly bodies from being devoured by a demon. He made scathing references to the hysteria which was sweeping over the country. He was promptly rapped on the knuckles by Dr Sampurnanand, ex-chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Astrology, he stated, was as perfect or imperfect as any other science and that the head of the government had no business to deny it without fully investigating its claims. An astrologer may err but astrology was infallible, he said. He also warned the Prime Minister to be more careful in his movements while the planets were in Capricorn.
The Prime Minister survived; so has the rest of the country. Do Indians feel a little silly at the end of it all? Or do they believe that it was the chanting of the Vedic mantras which turned back the tide of malevolent waves sent down by the planets? In some areas angry young men smashed the loudspeakers and deprived the priests of their ill-gotten gains. In tea and coffee bars college students argued heatedly why the government had not been more firm with these charlatans who had made India a laughing stock of the world. There were also letters in the newspapers claiming that the Sanskrit Om contained in it the seed of salvation and if it was intoned in the prescribed manner, it set up vibrations which had the power to repel evil influences; and it was by the chanting of millions of Oms that the Hindus had saved India and the rest of the world. The debate goes on.
Holy Men and Holy Cows
The Jamuna, which flows past the eastern wall of the old city of Delhi, is a sacred river. In sanctity, it ranks after the Ganga, into which it runs a couple of hundred miles farther down its course, and the Godavari, which cuts across central India. On the Jamuna, the most sacred spot is Nigambodh Ghat, where, according to legend, sacred Hindu texts were washed up. To Nigambodh Ghat come pilgrims from distant parts of India. From the early hours of the dawn, thousands of men and women bathe in the stream, throw palmfuls of water to the rising sun and to their ancestors in heaven.
Delhi’s biggest cremation ground is also at Nigambodh Ghat. Strapped in shrouds (white for males, red for females), the dead are brought to the ghat, dunked in the sacred water, then consigned to the flames. In a rectangular space no larger than a football field, at least a dozen pyres can be seen burning fiercely at any time.
After dark, when the mourners have departed, Nigambodh Ghat is an eerie sight. Two attendants are on duty to supply wood and otherwise help in disposing off corpses brought in at night. (Many Hindus cremate their dead within a few hours of death.) The only other people present are ill-clad beggars, who in wintertime warm themselves by the funeral fires, and, winter or summer, groups of sadhus.
For the sadhus, a cremation ground is hallowed ground. It is a burning reminder that the world we live in is an illusion (maya) and that death is the real awakening into an after-life (or if a person has been evil, into a continuous circle of after-lives). Some sadhus smear their bodies with the ashes of the dead. Some require the ceremony of initiation to be performed in the flaming light of a circle of funeral pyres. One sect, the Aghorins, requires a neophyte to eat a bit of a corpse in order to overcome the feeling of disgust.
‘Can I see a ceremony of sadhus’ initiation here?’ I asked one of the cremation ground staff when I went there one night.
The man was armed with a sharp-pointed bamboo pole. His chief function was to puncture skulls to prevent them from exploding with the heat. He wiped the sweat off his brow. ‘I haven’t seen one for more than five years. We don’t like too many sadhus here. If relatives find the ashes of their dead missing, they create trouble.’
‘Who are those people?’ I asked, pointing to three men naked save for their loincloths. They were smoking a chillum (small clay pipe).
‘Those!’ exclaimed the skull-smasher contemptuously. They are common beggars pretending to be sadhus. They do not like to work and they like ganja (hemp). So they smear ashes on their bodies, extract alms from women and have a merry time. There are few genuine sadhus left these days. If you want to meet them you should go to Hardwar or Rishikesh or even farther up the mountains from where the holy Ganga mai (mother Ganges) comes. You will find them in jungles and caves doing penance.’
He picked up a faggot that had fallen off, put it back on the pyre and wandered away to see how things were going with the other pyres. I wandered toward the chillum-smoking trio.
‘Om Namo Shivaya,’ (the greeting used by sadhus who worship Shiva) exclaimed one loudly.
‘Jeevit raho!’ (may you live a long life) chimed in another.
‘Give the sadhus something. Ishwara will reward you in this world and the next.’
I walked past them. I heard one of them mutter: ‘One of those coat-and-pantaloon black sahibs!’
/> The skull-smasher was right; genuine sadhus are hard to find. Charlatans outnumber the seekers of truth. No one knows exactly what entitles a man to call himself a sadhu. And sadhus seldom stay in one place for any length of time. Many live in mountain fastnesses or in dense jungles far removed from the reach of census inspectors. The earlier census reports put their number at five million. The present figure is under half-a-million. The British were eager to swell the figure in order to prove the Indians’ reluctance to work. Free India’s rulers are equally eager to destroy the image of India as yogiland.
‘The word sadhu derives from the Sanskrit sadhana—to meditate. A variety of holy men go under the name sadhu. There are scholars (acharyas) immersed in the study of sacred texts who often become teachers (or gurus). There are men who join hermitages (ashrams or maths) where they live with a community of monks under the guidance of a swami. There are sannyasis (renouncers), who attach themselves to one or the other order of ascetics and spend their time in prayer or meditation at one of the many holy places of the Hindus. There are yogis (from yoga—union) who seek communion with god through a system of physical and spiritual discipline.
In this last category are some whose powers have defied scientific explanation: yogis who can remain alive buried six feet under the earth for as long as a week or drink a pint of nitric acid and munch the glass container without any ill-effect. Some are said to have powers of levitation; some are known to be able to stop the beating of their hearts for a few minutes. At lower levels are yogis who exhibit their conquest of pain by devious forms of physical torture—lying on beds of nails, standing on one leg for many years, keeping a hand raised until it shrivels, holding a hand clenched until the nails pierce the palm. At the extreme end are the Aghorin cannibals who indulge in human sacrifice (when caught, they hang) and conquer disgust by eating carrion and excreta.
Sadhus have many sects and differ in their dress and accoutrements. The nirmalas (unsullied) wear pure white. Most orders wear salmon, ochre or saffron, or, if they are Buddhists, yellow. Many wear only a loincloth and smear their bodies with ashes. Ash symbolizes death; it also keeps away flies and mosquitoes.
The nangas are ‘clad in the sky’. Their hair-styles range from the close-shaven eggshell, to a tuft or a yard-long pigtail, to a matted mound of uncut hair coiled on top of the head or hung loose about the shoulders. Some orders shave their beards; most let them grow. Almost all carry begging bowls, staffs and rosaries made of holy basil, lotus seed or human teeth.
Most sadhu orders enjoin strict vegetarianism and celibacy. The chief exceptions are tantric sects (worshippers of Shakti, goddess of strength, consort of Shiva), who believe in the use of intoxicant and sexual intercourse as a means of achieving mystical experiences. Women are seldom admitted to sadhu hermitages as full members, but it is not unusual to find a woman donning an ochre robe and describing herself as a sadhvi or a yogin.
Sadhuism in all its tortuous forms has been known from the earliest times. It is based on the conviction that self-denial and penance purge the body of sin and so aid a person to break out of samsara—the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Penance is tapas—the heat which burns out impurities from the soul and the body. The law-giver Manu (third century BC) stated the rules categorically:
Let a sadhu go forth from the village into the forest and reside there, duly controlling his senses. Let him offer those five great sacrifices according to the rule, with various kinds of pure food fit for ascetics, or with herbs, roots and fruit. Let him wear a skin of tattered garment; let him bathe in the evening or in the morning; and let him always wear his hair in braids, the hair on his body, his beard, and his nails being unclipped . . . Let him be always industrious in privately reciting the Veda; let him be patient of hardships . . . ever liberal . . . and compassionate toward all living creatures . . . in summer let him expose himself to the heat of five fires, during the rainy season live under the open sky, and in winter be dressed in wet clothes, gradually increasing his austerities . . . departing from his house . . . let him wander about absolutely silent, and caring nothing for enjoyments that may be offered. Let him always wander alone without any companion, in order to attain final liberation . . . let him not desire to die, let him not desire to live, let him wait for his time, as a servant for the payment of his wages.
The patron god of sadhus is Shiva, the destroyer aspect of the Hindu trinity consisting, besides him, of Brahma the creator and Vishnu the preserver. There are seven orders of Shaivite sadhus of whom the dasnami (ten-named—from the ten disciples of Shankara, the eighth-century monist philosopher) are the most numerous. Worshippers of Vishnu also have some sadhu orders. Indeed, sadhuism seems to be contagious. There are Sikh sadhus and Muslim fakirs and even Christian sadhus. Most of them adopt the paraphernalia of the Hindu sadhu, however: ochre robe, begging bowl, pilgrim staff, long hair and beards.
One does not have to go very far to meet some kind of sadhu. Sadhus are found in the marketplaces of every city and town. And every village has its babaji (old man) who has let his hair grow wild, wears saffron and lives in a hut some distance away from habitation. He does no work; he expects people to feed him. And whether he likes it or not, he is assumed to have powers of healing and prophecy. He is medicine man, soothsayer, psychiatrist and philosopher all rolled into one. Women touch his feet and invoke his blessings for their children. The men are less enthusiastic about sadhus—particularly if they happen to be young and handsome—but even the men do not dare to cross a sadhu’s path or speak lightly of him. A sadhu’s curse is dreaded by everyone.
What angers the educated, Westernized Indian is that sadhus not only live off others, they do no work at all. As a people, Indians are not known for their eagerness for social work, but sadhus go to the extreme of concerning themselves solely with achieving peace of mind.
The floods, epidemics, earthquakes, droughts and famines which visit this unfortunate country with tragic regularity are not allowed to disturb the tranquil atmosphere of the sadhu hermitage or ruffle the serenity of the holy man in his samadhi (meditation). Rarely does one see a saffron-clad volunteer in any relief camp. The privilege of service is left to Christian organizations.
Only in recent years has hostile criticism stirred the sadhus conscience and forced them out of their sanctum. But to this day, social service is largely the monopoly of one mission, the Ramakrishna (so named after the Bengali divine, Ramakrishna, 1836–86). Even the officially inspired Bharat Sadhu Samaj, founded in 1956, restricts its activities to ‘the promotion of religious and social progress, building of national character, development of virtue and renunciation of vice, safeguarding religious institutions and sanitary conditions at places of pilgrimage’. It has not responded to the appeal for volunteers made by the Famine Relief Committee.
The sadhus’ professed renunciation of worldly affairs, however, does not inhibit some of them from taking an interest in politics. The politician-sadhu’s excuse is invariably that he is there to protect the interests of dharma (religion). Since Independence, sadhus have been demanding protection for the cow (so strong was Hindu feeling on the subject that cow protection was inserted as a directive clause in the Constitution).
It was left to the states to implement this provision and all but four of the seventeen states have duly made cow-slaughter an offence. But this is not considered good enough and a mass agitation has been launched to force Parliament to pass legislation for the whole of India. In this, Hindu religious and political parties have come together. It has provided the sadhus an opportunity to reassert themselves as defenders of the faith. It has given the sadhu-politician something to say.
There are four sadhu members of Parliament.1 Two belong to the Ramakrishna order; one is a priest of a well-endowed temple. In Parliament, these have certainly observed maun-vrat (the vow of silence) as becomes good sadhus. The fourth, Swami Rameshwaranand, has more than made up for the reticence of his colleagues. He has been named many times by the Speake
r for disorderly conduct. He was the chief rabble-rouser on 7 November 1966, when, at his exhortation, sadhus laid siege to the Parliament House, set fire to government buildings, motor cars and buses. According to the government, seven people were killed in this riot. (The number given by the Hindu right-wing journal Organizer was seventy-four. Pakistan Radio put it at 475). Swami Rameshwaranand is on bail awaiting trial.
It was with my now-obvious anti-sadhu bias that I went to see the secretary of the Bharat Sadhu Samaj. The organization has a spacious double-storeyed building in Delhi’s most select residential area, the Diplomatic Enclave, where all the embassies are and where the local millionaires reside. I had made no appointment but was welcomed and asked to wait. It was a large, cold room divided by a six-foot high wooden partition. On the partition was a calendar with a picture of Pandit Nehru wearing a caste mark (he never wore one in his life). There were also three large posters in Hindi announcing the cow-protection rally of 7 November. Alongside one of the posters was a map of Delhi with the route of procession marked in red ink.
I heard the clip-clop of sandalled feet come down the stairs and enter the room. ‘Did you want to see me?’ the man asked in impeccable English.
‘Yes, sir. You are Swami Ananda, secretary of the Samaj?’ (I answered the question myself by touching his feet.)
Swami Ananda (Lord of Bliss) is a handsome man in his fifties—long grey hair curling about the ears, large bright eyes and a wispy beard covering his Adam’s apple. He led me to the other side of the partition. This was his office. Files were stacked against the walls. Even his table was cluttered with papers.
Not a Nice Man to Know Page 14