On July 3, Rekha Jatav, a resident of Garhitamana village in Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh, nearly lost her life when a mob swarmed her 30 minutes after she had left a meeting of spiritual leader Bole Baba, killing more than 100 people. 120 believersMost of the dead were women, many of whom, like Rekha, belonged to the Jatav Dalit community.
“When I left the venue at about 2pm nothing was happening,” the 55-year-old said. scroll“But while we were waiting for the bus, we heard that some women had fainted and that a child had died in an accident. On our way back, we saw several ambulances heading towards the venue.”
Rekha Jatav, along with around 20 women from her neighbourhood, had travelled 40 km to attend the Phurrai vigil. The day after the mob crash, she learnt that three people she knew from the nearby village of Sokana had also died in the tragedy. All three belonged to the Jatav Dalit community.
Spiritual leader Bole Baba, also known to his followers as Narayan Sakar Hari, is from the same community. His real name is Suraj Pal and he used to work as a constable with the Uttar Pradesh Police. After taking voluntary retirement in the 1990s, he started holding satsangs in and around his hometown Kasganj in western Uttar Pradesh.
According to several of his followers, over a period of two decades, he has gained a huge following, especially among Dalits in Etah, Hathras, Bulandshahr, Aligarh and Khurja districts of Uttar Pradesh, and parts of neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
They attributed his popularity to his miraculous powers to cure illnesses. Many cited an incident in 2000 in which Pal claimed to have taken the body of a dead girl from her family and brought her back to life. arrested Under the provisions of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, the episode helped him gain popularity.
“His following and fame grew,” said Dipesh Bharadwaj, a journalist based in Hathras. “People started coming from all over to solve their problems.”
Scholars say there’s a more fundamental reason why spiritual leaders from Dalit families have such large followings in their communities: Hinduism, which is based on the caste system, has a history of discriminating against Dalits. As a result, many Dalits who are alienated from mainstream religions but seek spiritual solace are drawn to places where they can find solace and familiarity.
This rise in religiosity is a concern for many Dalit rights activists, who believe it opens the door to Hindu nationalism and undermines support for more radical anti-caste politics.
The Cult of Bole Baba
More than 250,000 people took part in the Hathras rally, even though authorities had permitted a gathering of only 80,000 people.
According to initial police reports, the mob violence began at the end of the event when a group of worshippers Charged To collect dust from the road where Pal left the venue.
Devotees say the pallu is believed to have healing powers and it is a common satsang practice for devotees to collect dust that has come into contact with the pallu.
Rekha Jatav, a regular attendee at the church in Palu for over 18 years, claims that her chronic migraines have been cured since she started attending the church.
“My headaches kept me up at night,” she says. She brought medicine to the satsang, but the woman sitting next to her told her that medicines were not allowed there. “Baba then also asked me to stop taking my medicines and join the satsang,” she says. “Since then, I have not had any headaches.”
Jatav’s neighbour, Meenu, also a Dalit woman in her 60s, said she owes her two daughters marriages to Pal. “We have been trying for years to marry off our daughters but something always happens,” she said. “I started going to satsang in 2015 and within four years, both of them got married.”
The violence in Hathras has not dented Mr Pal’s popularity among a large section of his supporters. Ramdas, a resident of Choncha Bangaon village in Etah district, lost his 60-year-old wife, Chandraprabha, in Wednesday’s tragedy. But he did not blame Mr Pal.
“Satsangs have been going on for several years but nothing has happened,” Ramdas said. scroll“The mob violence occurred after Mr. Baba had left the venue. Anything that happens after Mr. Baba has left is not his responsibility.”
Pal was not named in the first information report filed by police after the mob attack because Bharadwaj, the Hathras journalist, said the government feared a backlash from the spiritual leader’s followers.
Ramdas said Pal was different from other spiritual leaders in that he never asked for donations at his satsangs. “There are no donation boxes, no pictures of God,” he said. Other devotees expressed gratitude for Pal’s teachings on being kind, honest and free from vices.
Alternative Religions
Yogesh Snehi, professor of liberal arts at Delhi’s Ambedkar University, said Pal’s popularity reflected Dalits’ eagerness to assert a separate religion.
Snehi drew parallels between Pal and the many lower-caste religious leaders in Punjab and Haryana who lead congregations known as deras and have huge community followings.
“Religion is not just a teaching, it is also an expression of connection and ownership,” Snehi said. scroll“These associations are created not only by participation but also by religious function. Who will be the priest? Who will look after the shrine? Dalits do not feature in these roles. [mainstream] “Hindu or Sikh?”
Asha Kotal, a Dalit women’s rights activist who has worked with Dalit communities in Uttar Pradesh for several years, agreed that a “sense of kinship” develops among followers of spiritual leaders like Pal.
“Women tend to have a strong sense of kinship because they suffer from insecurity and face discrimination at home,” Kotal said, “so they want a space where they can be recognised and their issues heard.”
Conflict with anti-caste politics?
But many Dalit rights activists are troubled by the belief system that figures like Pal have created. These spiritual leaders have come to be seen as so-called godmen or even incarnations of Hindu gods, they say, and it undermines the radical politics of Bhimrao Ambedkar, the framer of the Indian constitution, who was a Dalit member of the community.
“Babasaheb’s [Ambedkar] “The craze for Dalit teachings and figures like Bole Baba has asked Dalit people to follow Buddhism, but Buddha himself has said in his teachings that he is not a liberator. No one can claim to be a liberator,” said Sushma Jatav, Hathras district president of the Azad Samaj Party, which represents Dalit interests.
Human rights activist Asha Kotal said the rituals prescribed by spiritual leaders like Pal were often “Sanskritised practices with dotted lines connecting them to Hinduism”.
For example, the term Bole Baba itself is associated with the Hindu god Shiva. After the Hathras riots, a woman claiming to be Pal’s sister told a news reporter: Shiva appears at Pal’s fingertips.
Among his followers, Pal Krishna, another Hindu godPal’s wife, who attends rallies with him, is often referred to by devotees as Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity.
“It is in the interest of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party that Dalits start adopting practices within a Hindu framework,” Kotal said. “It weakens the power of Bahujan politics.”
Bhanwar Meghwanshi, a Rajasthan-based Dalit activist, said spiritual leaders were simply providing a space for Dalits who had been expelled from religious institutions and using their influence to spread a soft version of Hindu supremacy.
Meghwanshi gave the example of Baba Nanak Das, a religious preacher based in Rajasthan’s Nagaur district who ran as a BJP candidate in last year’s Rajasthan Assembly elections. Das built up a following in Nagaur by running a mutt dog parish dedicated to the 15th-century saint-poet Kabir, Meghwanshi said. “But I have never seen him speak about Kabir’s ideals at a rally.”
Meghwanshi adds: “After all, these babas are creating a foundation for the Brahminical tradition among lower caste groups, which alienates them from the Shramana tradition, which has a long lineage of thinkers. [ancient materialist philosopher] From Charvaka to Ambedkar, who speak of the importance of lived experience over ritual.”
However, some scholars have disputed the notion that Pal’s popularity is inconsistent with anti-caste ideology. PoliticsProfessor Surinder S. Jodhkar, from the Centre for Social Systems Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, said reverence for Ambedkar and spiritual leaders could coexist among Dalits too.
“People may go to such babas to get help with everyday problems like giving birth to a boy or curing a relative of their drug addiction,” Jodhka said.
He further added: “Many places in Punjab have pictures of Ambedkar inside temples.”
Sushma Jatav of the Azad Samaj Party summed it up: “Baba is gone but Babasaheb has stood the test of time.”
