Like the nagas of Hanumangarhi, the residents of Chhoti Chhawani are also known for taking a keen interest in the succession of mahants and the management of temples in Ayodhya, and for working ruthlessly to expand their influence. Even though the two groups are careful not to engage in any direct showdown, they have virtually divided the town into two camps. On rare occasions, the conflict between the naga groups of Ayodhya’s two most powerful establishments has descended into physical violence. The rest of the time, their relationship is defined by a sullen hostility and bitter rivalry.
The two sides came dangerously close to a showdown towards the end of 2012 when Rambalak Das, the mahant of Bhanpur Ram–Janaki temple located in the vicinity of Chhoti Chhawani, suddenly died while travelling in Basti, a district adjacent to Ayodhya. ‘Even before the body could arrive, nearly fifty nagas of Chhoti Chhawani barged in and took control of our temple,’ recounted Nandini Dasi, who had served Rambalak Das for over three decades and was his chosen successor.11 ‘Two of them, Bajrang Das and Vijayram Das, sat in the courtyard and started talking to their friends about the last rites of Maharaj as if I did not exist. When the body came, they asked me to stay away, took the body to the Sarayu and performed the rites themselves. Once all that was over, they asked me to leave the temple. I refused and told them that Maharaj had chosen me as his successor and that they were the intruders.’
As the dispute escalated, Nandini Dasi called her neighbours for help. ‘It was risky to carry on the fight alone. So I called my neighbours, and one of them informed the police. But no one could stop them. Despite the police presence, they put their own lock on the gate of Maharaj’s room and took into their possession all the jewellery, property-related papers and bank passbook. They also appointed their own priest to perform regular puja in the temple.’
Vijayram Das, the Chhoti Chhawani resident who was among the leaders of the group, rejected her claims outright. ‘Rambalak Das was the disciple of Ramratan Das, who was the priest in Mani Ram Das Ki Chhawani [Chhoti Chhawan],’ he explained, when I interviewed him on 20 January 2013. ‘Later, Rambalak Das came out and started staying in the Ram–Janaki temple. Since his guru belonged to Chhoti Chhawani, this temple should go back to it simply because Rambalak Das did not have any disciple.’
For a week after Rambalak’s death on 29 October 2012, the nagas of Chhoti Chhawani had control of it, and it seemed like Nandini Dasi would be thrown out any time. What followed was something the nagas had not expected. In a dramatic turn of events, one fine morning, Bhavanath Das, a powerful naga vairagi of Hanumangarhi known for his close ties with the top leaders of Samajwadi Party, then in power in Uttar Pradesh, reached the Ram–Janaki temple along with his own group of sadhus and formally declared Nandini Dasi the successor of Rambalak Das and the new mahant of the temple. He also offered her the ceremonial chadar.
The nagas of Chhoti Chhawani were taken aback. Instead of resisting Bhavanath, they watched the development coldly, knowing that any attempt to stop him would bring all of Hanumangarhi into the picture. That would have meant a humiliating defeat for them. Nandini Dasi, emboldened by the support from Bhavanath Das, moved the court. Ousting her was no longer possible. For the time being, that was victory enough. The rest would be decided by the court.
VI
Sometimes a mahant takes extraordinary steps to ensure that he can die in peace. Ramlakhan Das, mahant of Sitaram Vaikuntha Vihar Kunj temple at Begumpur in Ayodhya, was ill for over a year before he was diagnosed with stomach cancer in the first week of January 2013. By then, he had become quite weak and it looked like he would not survive for long.
‘The moment the cancer was diagnosed, our friends in Hanumangarhi told me that some nagas of Nirvani akhara [who live in Hanumangarhi] were planning to forcibly capture my temple after my death,’ Ramlakhan Das, who was then in his late seventies but looked as if he was over ninety years old, told me on 20 January 2013.12 ‘I cannot leave it like that. I will fight it out whether it takes a week or a year. There’s no other way.’
Roughly two weeks later, he passed away. But before that, he did what no mahant had ever done: he submitted a petition to the district magistrate of Faizabad detailing his properties and the successor he had identified and expressing the apprehension that a conspiracy was afoot. ‘I have come to know that after my death the mahant of Ujjainia patti of Hanumangarhi [Santram Das] and his disciples together with some criminal elements would try to capture my body forcibly so that they can capture my properties,’ Ramlakhan Das wrote in his petition.
He also laid out his last wish in it: ‘It is my last wish that after my death my body should be cremated instead of immersing it in the water, and my last rites should be performed by my ablest disciple Avadhesh Das.’ He even wanted, as he mentioned in the petition, to personally go to the district magistrate’s office and record his statement in the magistrate’s presence. But his condition deteriorated so fast that he could not do that.
Ramlakhan Das’s story followed a familiar pattern. He and Santram Das were disciples of Sarayu Das of Hanumangarhi. Later, while Santram Das stayed back, Ramlakhan Das left Hanumangarhi and became the sadhak of Vaikuntha Das, from whom he inherited the Sitaram Vaikuntha Vihar Kunj temple. Over time, using his own resources, Ramlakhan increased its landed properties. But as he fell ill, the motives of Santram Das started becoming clear. ‘Santram Das is now claiming that since he is the guru-brother of Ramlakhan Das, all the properties in the latter’s name should revert to Hanumangarhi after his death,’ Prahlad Saran, a close aide of Ramlakhan Das, told me while the ailing mahant was still alive.
The last few weeks of Ramlakhan Das’s life were extremely hectic. Not only did he have to battle cancer but also struggle to live long enough to foil the unholy plot. The end came silently in the early hours of 4 February 2013. ‘When I went to wake him up in the morning, Maharaj-ji was lying motionless, his body as cold as ice, his open eyes reflecting the rays of the morning sun streaming through the window of his room,’ Saran recalled.
‘Despite all kinds of rumours that started spreading after his death, no one from Hanumangarhi dared to enter our temple,’ Saran told me later. ‘He tortured himself towards his end so that he could rest in peace forever.’
VII
The change in Ayodhya’s atmosphere has taken its toll. Violent coups by disciples desperate to grab mahantships—often helped by outside forces acting for political or financial reasons—have, in particular, ruined the relationship between gurus and chelas. It is unlikely that any other Hindu religious establishment in the country knows such toxic levels of distrust in that most sacred of bonds.
The guru–chela relationship has been the bedrock of Hindu asceticism for many centuries. The bond with the guru is considered the most important social connection for a sadhu. Looking for or meeting a guru often marks the beginning of renunciation. The preceptor is seen as the pivot in a renouncer’s social life and the route to his spiritual awakening. The guru leads the novice into ascetic life, provides him with a new name, a new religious practice and a plan for religious education. The religious experience itself is contingent upon the guidance of a realised guru.
The importance of this relationship cannot be overstated. The guru is worshipped like god, not because of his ascetic accomplishments, but because he is considered the necessary intermediary between the chela and God.13 In all Hindu ascetic discourses, guru-tattva, which literally means ‘the element, or the reality, of the guru’, is repeatedly underlined as the route to the highest spiritual plane—the transcendence of the material world. Surrendering to a guru is a precondition for obtaining real knowledge.
To reciprocate this devotion, the guru takes up the responsibility of his chela and ensures his protection. Not only does a guru set out his disciple’s programme of religious instruction but also initiates him into his own lineage. Once initiated, the disciple becomes part of a new social order with an individual identity within the larger ascetic community. This relati
onship ensures that a renouncer is never outside of a monastic social structure. Even if he opts for complete isolation, he remains part and parcel of a social web through his connection to the guru.14
In Ayodhya, this very relationship has now come under huge strain. The forcible expropriation of mahantship has injected a massive dose of suspicion in an association that was once akin to a parent–child relationship. Earlier, a mahant could choose a favourite disciple as his successor and the disciple used to inherit the temple without much trouble. But now, almost every succession here gets contested, and every time a mahant dies, rumours about whether the death was natural or not start doing the rounds. Most of these stories contain an element of truth, too.
It is largely in this backdrop that mahants, haunted by an obsessive need for security in their old age, have increasingly started falling back on their relatives. Theoretically, as per the Ramanandi tradition, an ascetic is supposed to observe strict celibacy and remain cut off from his family, burning his attachments through ascetic initiation.15 That is why the Ramanandi sadhus in Ayodhya immerse the body of a dead sadhu in the Sarayu instead of cremating him as in a Hindu household.
The theoretical world of naga vairagis is a far cry from what they practise. Though the VHP’s intervention in Ayodhya greatly accentuated this gap, it existed earlier too. Even in the late nineteenth century, this deviation did not elude the watchful eyes of John Collinson Nesfield, who writes, ‘In Ayodhya, Ramanandi sadhus have acquired large properties in land given them by pious laymen as offerings to Vishnu and for the benefit of the poor. The boy disciples whom they initiate into their order are often their illegitimate sons, and it is to such disciples that they bequeath the lands given to them for the purpose so entirely different. Probably the day is not far distant when marriage will be openly recognised as one of the customs of the order.’16
Though marriage is yet to be recognised among naga vairagis, the sadhus’ dependence on their relatives—especially since the 1980s—has become so widespread that it is no longer a secret in Ayodhya. The great majority of young vairagis to whom I spoke remarked that their future seemed bleak because, by and large, mahants have been appointing their relatives as successors. ‘We become vairagis in order to obtain knowledge from the guru,’ said Ram Milan Saran Shastri, the disciple of Yugal Kishore Shastri of Saryukunj temple in Ayodhya. ‘We don’t come here to become a mahant or grab a temple. But knowledge nowadays has become obscure, and property has become all important. In the majority of cases these days, the mahant’s overwhelming concern to keep his property within the family makes him declare his nephew or some other relative as his successor, bypassing even the ablest of his disciples in the temple.’
The unsuspecting disciples—those who would like their temples to provide them with basic sustenance, and have no interest in being part of the marauding group of ascetics out to grab temples by force—blame both sides for this bloody scramble. ‘It is true that disciples in many cases behave like criminals, but what about gurus? Do they always give disciples their due? Don’t they use disciples for all sorts of work and, when it comes to nominating their successors, they bring their relatives from villages? Do they ever think about what would happen to their disciples, who, after having snapped ties with their families, come to their gurus believing that they will show the way?’ asked Ram Milan Saran Shastri.
The sorry state of affairs goes further than fighting over mahantships. Take the case of fifty-year-old vairagi Raghuveer Das. In his teens, he renounced the world and became the disciple of Gopal Das, mahant of Shyama Sadan, a well-known temple located in Ayodhya’s Ramghat area. Around the beginning of the twenty-first century, the mahant announced publicly that Raghuveer Das would be his successor. A few years later, he brought his brother’s grandson Shridhar Dubey to the temple and initiated him into the Ramanandi order under a new name—Shridhar Das. Later, he formed a trust and named Shridhar Das the future mahant of the temple. For some time, Raghuveer Das resisted his guru’s move, but when it became difficult for him to stay on in Shyama Sadan, he left the place forever. He, however, did not wish to speak against his guru. ‘Guru is like God,’ he said. ‘Perhaps this is my destiny.’
However, Ajit Das, disciple of Dharam Das, the shri mahant of Nirvani akhara, defends a mahant’s need to depend on his family: ‘The place is just not safe for our sadhus. What should the mahants of Ayodhya make of this change of atmosphere, which is full of instances of disciples turning into monsters? Isn’t it safe for a mahant to rely more on a known disciple than on someone whose past he hardly knows?’
Perhaps. But what about the mahant acting out of a desire to keep the temple properties within his own family? Ajit laughed. ‘Ram and Janaki alone are real owners of properties in Ayodhya.’
VIII
The vairagis for whom it all goes wrong have little to look forward to. Some have no idea how to go about getting back their lost empires. Others, blithely believing that they will be able to return to the premises they were banished from, continue to roam the courts and corridors of power. Increasingly, most mahants who have been thrown out of their temples, often by their own disciples, seem to accept it as their fate and walk away without a fight.
Many ousted mahants can be seen living in makeshift huts of tarpaulin and thatched roof in a desolate corner of Ayodhya called Vasudev Ghat Manjha on the banks of the Sarayu. In one of these huts lives Chitrakoti Baba, who, till about a decade ago, was the mahant of the famous Chitrakoti Asthan temple in Ayodhya. After he was ousted, he took a vow of silence, talking to no one and rarely emerging from his hut. Though he warded me off with his silence the first couple of times I approached him, eventually his bitterness got hold of him and he hurled abuses at me, breaking his vow.
There is another category of victims, for whom the sense of abandonment is so profound that they simply leave Ayodhya to never return. I was told one such story by three different nagas, each time accompanied by the laughter of those present or overhearing it. About a decade ago, Yugal Bihari Das, an old resident of this temple-fortress, was away from Ayodhya, when his disciple Ramagya Das declared him dead, organised a bhandara in honour of the ‘departed soul’ and became the mahant of his aasan in Hanumangarhi. Soon after that, Yugal Bihari Das returned, and for months tried to convince the nagas of Hanumangarhi as well as the local officials of Ayodhya that he was not dead. But no one believed him. He became so frustrated that he left Ayodhya for good and is said to be living somewhere in Bihar.
Life in Ayodhya seems normal at first glance, holy even; the town’s blood-soaked underbelly is well concealed by a thick layer of faith; after all Lord Ram was born here.
2
THE THUGS OF AYODHYA
Finding nothing to arm himself with before entering the fight raging between the two groups of naga vairagis of Ayodhya, Ajit Das surveyed the dead body of the old naga lying abandoned on the ground. The bamboo tikhti, on which the corpse had been kept, was dismantled, its canes repurposed for the fight. The face of the dead naga made Ajit Das pause momentarily, before the war cries from the fighting nagas spurred him into action. He held the body by its legs and lifted it off the ground. Fiercely swinging the corpse in the air, he raced into battle.1
Welcome to Hanumangarhi, the baithak of Nirvani akhara. It is the most prominent akhara of the Nirvani ani, one of the three main anis of the Vaishnava sect that has under it several akharas, among which Nirvani, Nirmohi and Digambar are the most prominent. The 600-odd residents of this massive fortress-like building of red sandstone in the centre of Ayodhya are the most influential group of sadhus in town and wield power over not only Hanumangarhi’s and Nirvani’s subsidiary temples but also the local economy of Ayodhya.
This temple-fortress does not look more than a few decades old, but it took almost two centuries for Hanumangarhi to become what it is today. At the centre of this high-walled structure lies an old, magnificent temple dedicated to Lord Hanuman. Scattered haphazardly around it are one-room tene
ments for the naga vairagis. Some of these dark but spacious rooms, called asan, are carved out in the hidden corners of Hanumangarhi, revealing a glimpse of nineteenth-century architecture otherwise camouflaged by the restoration work of recent times. Outside the complex are hundreds of shops, all owned by Hanumangarhi and leased out. To the south is an undulating stretch of land called Imli Bagia, literally tamarind garden. In the past, Imli Bagia used to serve as a garden for local vairagis, but now a major portion of it is occupied by a double-storey building, which houses Gyan Das, Hanumangarhi’s most influential naga vairagi since the 1990s.
It was on a dusty tract of Imli Bagia, between the main structure of Hanumangarhi and the house of Gyan Das, that the unusual fight took place on the morning of 25 November 2005. A violent showdown ensued between the naga followers of Gyan Das—who abhorred the VHP’s interference in Hanumangarhi’s affairs—and Dharam Das—a highly ambitious ascetic who had gained status and influence by leveraging his connection to the Sangh Parivar. The two naga heavyweights, in their younger days, used to wrestle in Hanumangarhi’s wrestling pit under the guidance of the same ustaad, Harishankar Das, a senior naga vairagi and wrestler par excellence. But the two students gradually became sworn enemies.
Gyan Das, whose writ no naga in Ayodhya would dare challenge, had been the de facto ruler of Hanumangarhi, and by extension, all of Nirvani ani, till the morning of the fight. His large army of ferocious followers, who guarded him and his empire, were ruthless in meting out severe punishments to anyone caught defying him. Meanwhile, Dharam Das, a naga with a small but dedicated following of his own, enjoyed the backing of the VHP, which had been steadily gaining a foothold in the akharas of Ayodhya. Gyan Das was determined to prevent Dharam Das from getting what he wanted the most: the coveted post of shri mahant of Nirvani ani.
Ascetic Games Page 5
