Article from Tehelka - Swami Premananda, Sai Baba etc.

Holy ghost! Unholy fathers

Three godmen in one month, charged for raping, killing. Gullible victims, a society steeped in spirituality. The gory trail.

By Chinmayee Manjunath


God Game: (top) Gnyanachaitanya and Premananda (below) Chandraswami, Sai Baba
In the past month, two godmen have been charged of sexual molestation. Swami Premananda in Tiruchi, Tamil Nadu has been accorded life imprisonment and Swami Gnyanachaitanya in Kottakal, Kerala was arrested and is now on bail. These are just additions to a list of famous names, accused of similar charges. Chandraswami. Sathya Sai Baba. Yet, in a society steeped in the spiritual, no amount of sordid cases seems to taint the lure of ochre.

In early April, the Supreme Court accorded 57-year-old Swami Premananda a double life sentence. He was convicted of 13 rapes and a murder in his ashram in Tiruchi. Premananda moved to India in 1984 from Matale in Jaffna. He claims to have discovered his “spiritual powers” at 18 when “a great spiritual vibration entered the prayer room and my white robes slowly turned to orange.”

With his uncanny resemblance to the Sathya Sai Baba, Premananda’s popularity grew in Tiruchy and by 1989 his ashram was sprawled across 150 acres, had branches in 15 countries, and an international youth wing.

Like the Sai Baba, Premananda’s repertoire included creating vibhuti but his speciality was producing lingams from his abdomen. Vasuki, of the Chennai wing of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (aidwa), says, “He was very popular, the ashram continues to be so.” But in 1997, the aidwa was approached by two disciples, Sureshkumari and Lata, who complained of being raped and reported the murder of Ravi, an ashram inmate who had threatened to expose him.

Medical tests confirmed the habitual rape of 13 girls. One of them, Aruljothi, was pregnant and a dna test established Premananda’s paternity. Ravi’s body, which had been buried in the ashram, was also found. Premananda and his secretary, Kamalananda, were jailed; the latter also given a double life sentence.

Doris, a European, now manages the ashram. “Swamiji is a great innocent master,” she says. “He has been painted as a black devil by the media. He never raped anyone.” Then why has he been convicted? “Because no one will listen to our truth,” she snaps.

The truth, in most cases, seems to stay buried out of fear.