If Government of India publishes statistics of leading wealth owning groups, then group of people owning industries, would definitely lead and Matth owners will be the proud second. There are allegations that some of these Sadhus (or Gurus, as they are called) are also involved in women trafficking, rape and murders, and crimes of other serious nature.
But that is not the reason for writing his post. As it stands, in India, crimes against powerful is hardly ever proved, so we can leave this as always for God to do something. How can people of the largest democratic country, have any say against the powerful and mighty? So to hide my ‘KAMJORI’, I will say that let this matter rest.
The serious problem with these Math owning Sadhus is that they have hijacked Hindu religion, for creating wealth for themselves through their Matths. The advent of multiple TV channels have witnessed phenomenal growth in their assets, they managed to market their products successfully, and today, they may be controlling about 10% of the vote bank of India. They say and claim that seva performed in their ashram/Matth is sufficient to discharge all the Dharmic obligations of Hindus, which is totally wrong and erroneous.
Hindu religion, in order to fulfill the aspiration of the faithful, has to have roots in the house of an individual; it must interact through this individual, with his family, his larger family and his neighbors and people living in his Mohalla or Society.
Until and unless Hindu religion comes back to the residence of an individual, it is not going to solve any problems. True people will argue that every event in the life of a Hindu starts and ends with religion, and it happens in his place of residence. Yes that much is true but only partially. Our attitude has become so perverse that we consider and accept that only rituals and pooja constitute Dharm or religion. It is important for everyone to understand that pooja and rituals are performed to inspire and motivate people to satisfactorily perform the physical part of the religion.
For instance birth of a child or marriage in one’s house is often accompanied with lot of pooja and rituals. They are there so that one is motivated, blessed and performs the Dharm. The Dharm when a child is born is simple…the entire family has to take care of the infant make sure that he/she gets all assistance in his/her growth. This is the physical performing part of the Dharm for which one seeks blessings and motivation by pooja and rituals. Similar is the case with marriage.
One can straight away see that all the physical performing part of religion, which Hindus know as DHARM is required to be performed by the individual, his family, by the people living in his society or Mohalla, and this Dharm, can only guarantee a complete satisfaction, or a ticket to heaven or a moksh. Even the Dharm of Ram Rajya is almost similar (read my post: RAM RAJYA… THE FORGOTTEN DHARM) Since the attitude of a Hindu is passive, very educated Hindu has to work on this issue in right earnest.
After all this happens to be our Dharm.
Dear
ReplyDeleteMr Kulbhushanji,
Keep continue to write this kind of blogs who reads they will defenatly
be understand the Hinduisam or say sanatan dharma,the defination shadus
become a shame on our religion,if you
study about the same events happen in the past with Catholics in USA Ireland and Italy vetican city too.
Further more go and study about BAPS
strong Displine! wonderful system of operations a unique example for us The inspirer hisHoliness Pramukh swami maharaj and their 700 hundred santos no one has a right to keep one rupee on their hands or watch the face of a women that's it's Proud monument is pride of India a
Akshardham!
With respect,
Yogeshkumar
Namaste,
ReplyDeleteSir, amassing wealth is not a bad thing if that wealth is used for the purpose of propagating Hindu Dharma in my opinions. You will find that most modern Sadhus are actually doing a great service to the Dharma. Without their aid and knowledge Hindu Dharma would fall apart.
‘Sadhus’ like Deepakbhai from the Dadabhagwan foundations or Sri Sri Ravi Shankar or current Sai Baba or Morari Bapu and Gurus of Swaminarayan sect or Hare Krishna sect and many others all need money to bring their wisdom to the world. TV is the modern way of doing it. WE are not living in the past where one should travel from one village to the next.
I don’t believe we can rely on the lifestyle of Saddhus of the past like Buddha, original Sai Baba, Swaminrayana, Jalarama, Meerabia, Guru Nanak etc who were more like wondering monks to bring us Dharma.
With technology and modern living these Saddhus do need to pay for air flights, car travel, train fares, TV transmission fees, electricity bills, food money, loan to buy building and temples etc etc. These do not come free. These are material wealth they do require for spreading their wisdom.
We cant expect them to live like beggars and be sponsored by rich people. Its better if they have control of their own money then relying on some rich merchant.
Today you are using computer to spread you message and not leaflets or books or spoken words from one village to the next or words written on some leaf.
Its not how much wealth they have but how they go about spending it.
Yes there are criminals who abuse religion with their ‘saddhu’ guise but that is a different matter and they need to be tackled with full force of police backing. Report these ‘saddhus’ to the police and Government must act.
I don’t think we should generalise that all sadhus are criminals.
Also is ‘Saddhu’ a wrong word to describe these modern Gurus? Are they not just teachers or Gurus? Even if they describe them self as Saddhu XYZ then are they simply not just Gurus? Has the meaning of the Saddhu been lost? Perhaps that should be the angle of this article.
If they are not saddhus then what are they?
How would we describe Krishna who was a rich king who brought us the message of Dharma?
There are big problems within Hinduism and we should never be in denial of this but we should not criticise our religion unnecessarily. Where we have proof of crime and not proof of speculation then we must report it to police for investigations.
My serious problem is that there is no central authority for Hindu religion to which problems can be addressed.
ReplyDeleteOnly then such discussions will become useful.