Serving a twenty year prison term, godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim may be released on parole as reportedly the Haryana government has supported his parole application. It may be recalled that sometime back in April 2019, the Punjab and Haryana High Court had raised suspicion over his parole plea lest a law and order problem arose akin to 2017 episode where many innocent people lost lives. Criminal law jurisprudence provides that a prisoner can seek parole which is basically a conditional release.
As has been observed by the Supreme Court of India in Asfaq v. State of Rajasthan (Civil Appeal No.10464 of 2017 Arising out of SLP (C) No.16803 of 2017 ), a parole can be defined as “conditional release of a prisoner, conditional on good behaviour and regular reporting to the authorities for a set period of time.”
It may be granted for several things; Ram Rahim petitioned to attend the wedding of his foster daughter in April 2019. His plea was turned down by the concerned High Court. Now he seeks parole to farm his fields in Sirsa, Haryana. Personalities like Ram Rahim do furnish a spectacle to the media as they flourish and thrive on public approval or disapproval of their life acts. Reams of paper have been published, millions of words have been typed to castigate, lampoon and mock the condemned godman Ram Rahim.
Noticeably, his trajectory to fame was astonishing. He mastered the art of building a reputation of a spiritual leader and people flocked in droves to him. He built a spiritual mini-empire popularly on known as the Dera among his followers. According to scholars like Jagroop Singh,“Deras give their followers a sense of security and belonging.”
Post the conviction, every bit of news about him was lapped up by media. Looking beyond his conviction, the spectre of spirituality which was on display all these years needs to be viewed from a different perspective. How did he manage to pull crowds? How can we lose sight of the fact that it took a massive mobilization of paramilitary and police machinery to contain the conflagration after the ‘guilty’ verdict was returned on Gurmeet Ram Rahim? It was not difficult to miss the fact that the sheer numerical strength of his followers almost overawed the administration and police agencies for a while. From a social standpoint, it is quite befuddling to gauge the reach of his influence among his followers.
What leads people to have such blind allegiance towards these godmen and godwomen? Perhaps, these sects dish out an alternative narrative of spirituality which sways the disenchanted ones stuck in formal religious structures? It has also been opined by some scholars that most of the followers of Gurmeet Ram Rahim belonged to castes which are placed low in the social hierarchy. Perhaps, the Dera offered these disempowered classes a ray of hope for grabbing dignity in socio-economic milieu which otherwise slipped out of their hands like sand.
Dignity and respect comes askance for Dalits and other disempowered classes in the Indian context. These classes continue to face discrimination at formal institutions of religion. For example, it has been argued by sociologists that over a period of time in Punjab, the Dalit community felt alienated from the mainstream Hindu and Sikh religious way of life. They find a life full of dignity to be out of their reach at the ground level.
In such a scenario, the Dera proved to be a fertile ground for capturing the soured aspiration of these classes as they were promised to be led towards spiritual upliftment. Post the conviction of Ram Rahim, a disenchantment with his flashy lifestyle and misdeeds has grown.
However, this discontent among his followers may give rise to another form of alternative faith allegiance. Society is in ferment and the ensuing discontent with organized religion may give rise to more alternatives in near future for the disappointed and dejected followers of Ram Rahim and their ilk. Media reports inform us that the subscriber base of Ram Rahim has depleted but not evaporated. Meanwhile, the fate of the parole application of Ram Rahim hangs in the air.