Why is it easy to be a godman in India?
We have so many godmen in India. The other day I asked myself this question.. and of course there is an answer.. all thought up by yours truly. In my opinion there are 6 reasons. Of course the prime mover is the fact that in our culture, and perhaps other cultures as well, people have a need for religion in their lives. They need it and they want it and when they can’t get it from traditional sources, they will get it from godmen.
• Godmen must have a size-able following before they are recognized as godmen. Here they have a bumper opportunity. With India’s 1.1 billion population, no shortage of followers / devotees. If you have a relevant (or even sometimes irrelevant or even no message at all) becoming a godman is easy on India.
• Another reason is that Hinduism is a very unstructured and open religion. If someone is seen as a godman or proclaims to be one, there is no Pope or Ayatollah like figure to question the claim. Also, since popular Hinduism is not mono-theistic (we have Vishnu, Shiva, Ram, Ganesh, Lakshmi and many more), the existence of a godman does not contradict any popular Hindu belief.
• A third reason is that the traditional religious heads, such as the Shankaracharyas of various Mathas/ Mutts are very reclusive. They are hardly seen in public and they do not engage with their followers on any noteworthy scale. They do not point out a moral path or provide spiritual solace to the masses of Hindus in India. In effect they have ceded religious leadership and there is a leadership vacuum ready to be filled by godmen.
• Traditional Hinduism prior to Independence looked down upon dalits and backward classes. They were not allowed to enter temples. Even now the leaders of Hinduism are very aloof, even apathetic, to dalits and backward classes. So people from dalit and backward classes are very willing to align with a godman who promises religious inclusion with social equality.
• To be a godman in India one des not need any special knowledge or scholarship or spiritual ability. Instance are available where people have become revered by doing such odd and ordinary things as not speaking for an year , standing on one foot for a long time or living on a machaan (a raised wooden platform) for a period of time. Even the ones who appear on TV channels have no special ability. One has to only watch one 30 minute episode to see that most of them talk pure nonsense.
• For godmen it is easy to attract urban middle-class women followers because attending a bhajan gathering or a satsang is a socially acceptable and even desirable for a woman in conservative / orthodox families. One of the things that surprises me about the upper caste TV godmen is preponderance of women in their audience.
We have so many godmen in India. The other day I asked myself this question.. and of course there is an answer.. all thought up by yours truly. In my opinion there are 6 reasons. Of course the prime mover is the fact that in our culture, and perhaps other cultures as well, people have a need for religion in their lives. They need it and they want it and when they can’t get it from traditional sources, they will get it from godmen.
• Godmen must have a size-able following before they are recognized as godmen. Here they have a bumper opportunity. With India’s 1.1 billion population, no shortage of followers / devotees. If you have a relevant (or even sometimes irrelevant or even no message at all) becoming a godman is easy on India.
• Another reason is that Hinduism is a very unstructured and open religion. If someone is seen as a godman or proclaims to be one, there is no Pope or Ayatollah like figure to question the claim. Also, since popular Hinduism is not mono-theistic (we have Vishnu, Shiva, Ram, Ganesh, Lakshmi and many more), the existence of a godman does not contradict any popular Hindu belief.
• A third reason is that the traditional religious heads, such as the Shankaracharyas of various Mathas/ Mutts are very reclusive. They are hardly seen in public and they do not engage with their followers on any noteworthy scale. They do not point out a moral path or provide spiritual solace to the masses of Hindus in India. In effect they have ceded religious leadership and there is a leadership vacuum ready to be filled by godmen.
• Traditional Hinduism prior to Independence looked down upon dalits and backward classes. They were not allowed to enter temples. Even now the leaders of Hinduism are very aloof, even apathetic, to dalits and backward classes. So people from dalit and backward classes are very willing to align with a godman who promises religious inclusion with social equality.
• To be a godman in India one des not need any special knowledge or scholarship or spiritual ability. Instance are available where people have become revered by doing such odd and ordinary things as not speaking for an year , standing on one foot for a long time or living on a machaan (a raised wooden platform) for a period of time. Even the ones who appear on TV channels have no special ability. One has to only watch one 30 minute episode to see that most of them talk pure nonsense.
• For godmen it is easy to attract urban middle-class women followers because attending a bhajan gathering or a satsang is a socially acceptable and even desirable for a woman in conservative / orthodox families. One of the things that surprises me about the upper caste TV godmen is preponderance of women in their audience.
