Dera Sacha Sauda and Gurmeet Ram Rahim: A Decade-long Investigation by Anurag Tripathi

Author:Anurag Tripathi [Tripathi, Anurag]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9789353050191
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2018-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

‘Mujh Par Rehmat Ho Gayi’

As you approach house no. 323 in ward no. 11 of the Tohana Bazigar area of Tohana, in Fatehgarh district of Haryana, you can hear music wafting out. The soft strains of a mandolin play in the background to accompany voices of children singing bhajans in unison. One can’t help but stop for a while outside, just to listen to the music. The nondescript house has a small signboard that says ‘HS Academy’.

After savouring the music for a few moments, I rang the bell. A man who seemed to be in his late forties opened the gate. I told him that I had an appointment with the music teacher. I was ushered into a room where the music teacher, in his mid-thirties, appeared completely lost in singing, his fingers plucking at the mandolin. There were five students in the room who repeated after him. I sat quietly, not wishing to interrupt the class, while enjoying every single note emerging from the group before me. While the bhajan was in Punjabi, and it was difficult for me to make out the exact meaning of the words, there was something so soulful about it that one could not help feel stirred.

Time seemed to glide past. It was impossible to make out from the face of the teacher, lost in the world of music, all that he had gone through and continued to. Today, I was to meet Hansraj Chauhan, a former Dera sadhu, who had been subjected to castration in 2000.

In another half hour, the class came to an end. ‘You have a soulful voice. I was lost in the song and your music,’ I complimented Hansraj. He smiled and said, ‘This is all I am left with. My life hinges solely on music.’

I had first met Hansraj in 2012. In the five years since, his appearance had changed considerably. He seemed to have put on a lot of weight and had little trace of facial hair. ‘It’s all the effect of castration. The body is thrown out of balance. The hormones are completely unbalanced, which has had an impact on me,’ he said, perhaps sensing my gaze on him.

Hansraj’s family were Bazigars, a scheduled caste, and barely managed to make ends meet when they joined the Dera in the early 1970s. Hansraj became a follower at a very young age. During his teenage years, he remembers once being assigned to do seva (service) in Kota, Rajasthan. ‘Kota was flooded because of the overflowing Chambal River. The lives of the Dera premis camping in Kota was in danger. I was a good swimmer and managed to save the lives of seven premis,’ he recalls.

His courage was much talked about among the Dera followers and reached the ears of Gurmeet Singh. ‘Baba praised me and presented me with a bouquet of flowers.’ Since 1990, Hansraj had been working as a sevadar in the Dera canteen at Kota. In 1995, Gurmeet Singh went to his house to meet his parents.

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