Opinion: How big is Baba? BJP and Congress woo Dhirendra Shastri as Madhya Pradesh elections near

By Milind Ghatwai: Dhirendra Shastri, a young preacher from a village near Chhatarpur in Madhya Pradesh, is currently in the United Kingdom wowing religious enthusiasts and curious onlookers as he does in many parts of northern India, and drumming up support for 'Hindu Rashtra' even on the foreign locale.

Little wonder then that the Peethadhishwar of Bageshwar Dham has become a blue-eyed boy of the BJP whose leaders court him at every given opportunity, especially because it’s an election year in the state. His followers call him Bageshwar Dham Sarkar, and are not perturbed by his controversial statements like the one comparing women, not wearing mangalsutra or not decorating their parting with vermillion, with vacant plots.

What’s surprising is Congress going out of the way to woo the controversial preacher who just turned 27. Former chief minister and senior Congress leader Kamal Nath, who will turn 77 in a few months, has invited him for religious discourse in the family pocket borough Chhindwara in the first week of August.

The preacher will hold evening discourse for three days in Simariya village where the veteran Congress leader has built a Hanuman temple with a 101-foot-tall statue. Bageshwar Dham is also a Hanuman shrine. While Nath often bestows the “Hanuman Bhakt” title on himself, the young preacher goes much beyond claiming miraculous powers and clairvoyance. Some of his followers even believe he is the reincarnation of God, and their belief is not dimmed by the occasional invective he hurls when he loses his temper. He blames the verbal lapses, when caught on camera, on his being a Bundelkhandi.

“Hum bhagwan nahi hai, hum ishwar nahi hai, hum Hanuman ke bhakt hai (I am not God, I am a devotee of Lord Hanuman),” he stresses often. In the UK, he thundered among his followers that “Hanumanji ke naam ka danka bajana hogaâ€æ Bharat mein rehna hoga toh Sitaram kehna hoga (One must celebrate and glorify Lord Hanuman on foreign shoresâ€æif you want to live in India you will have to chant Sitaram),’’ he asserted for no reason in particular but the followers appeared to lap every word.

During a discourse in Patna in May this year, he told the audience that if only five crore people from Bihar hoist religious flags on their homes and sport tilaks on their foreheads, the country would well be on its way to becoming a Hindu Rashtra. While the assertion was panned by the JD (U) and RJD leaders, senior Congress leaders chose not to react.

BJP’s love for baba

The BJP has tried to appropriate the baba not just in Madhya Pradesh but also in poll-bound Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, as also in Bihar and Gujarat. In Patna, BJP MP Manoj Tiwari drove the preacher from the airport. Current and former Union ministers such as Giriraj Singh, Ashwini Choubey, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Ram Kripal Yadav called on the baba along with other state BJP leaders.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, Home Minister Narottam Mishra and state BJP chief VD Shukla have openly thrown their weight behind the preacher. In Bhopal, BJP legislator Rahul Kothari organised Bhagwat Katha by another preacher Devkinandan Thakur in April this year. However, the MLA somehow ensured the presence of Baba Bageshwar on the last day of the religious event.

In Chhattisgarh, BJP leaders, including three times former chief minister Raman Singh, were in attention when the preacher gave his sermons. Baba’s stand against alleged religious conversions by Christian missionaries and his campaign for “ghar wapsi” (reconversion to Hindu fold) suited the BJP narrative in the Congress-ruled state.

When the baba faced heat from the Nagpur-based anti-superstition front, Delhi BJP leader Kapil Mishra was among those who held demonstrations in his support.

Now, it’s Congress' turn

The ambiguous stand taken by the top leadership of the Congress has allowed veteran Kamal Nath to chart his own course in Madhya Pradesh by trying to outdo the BJP when it comes to Hindutva. As Pradesh Congress Committee head, he has taken several steps in the last few years, including the brief period when the party formed a government, to not allow the saffron party to accuse him of being anti-Hindu.

In February this year, Nath visited Bageshwar Dham with former Union minister Arun Yadav and senior leader Sajjan Singh Verma, who had questioned the attention showered by the media on the preacher. While bowing before the preacher with folded hands, the look sported by Verma on his face was one of atonement. Verma had also publicly compared preachers with religious shops whose scope was getting bigger by the day, before offering an unconditional apology for his comments.

When questioned by the media after his visit to the shrine on the preacher’s stand on Hindu Rashtra, Nath said the country follows the Constitution drafted by Babasaheb Ambedkar. No one can second guess what the preacher would say in his next discourse, it would be interesting to see if he reasserts his stand on Hindu Rashtra on the platform provided by the Congress or chooses to skip it to save the hosts, including the lone Lok Sabha Congress member from MP Nakul Nath, a potential embarrassment.

The only other Congress leader who has come close to criticising the baba was Leader of Opposition Govind Singh, who does not usually hold his punches. He had accused the BJP of promoting the young preacher, while himself lavishing praise on another preacher from his area.

Former Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh is critical of Hindu Rashtra but hasn’t criticised the preacher. The Congress leader’s son Jaivardhan Singh, however, had received praise from the preacher when he hosted him in Raghogarh in Guna district in May this year. The preacher spent the night at the family fort and left early in the morning. Raghogarh was a small principality. The visit was unscheduled but ensued when Jaivardhan invited the preacher home. The preacher had come to Guna for a discourse.

An India Today survey recently found that there are marginally more takers for Kamal Nath’s Hindutva than the ruling BJP in MP.

A senior Congress leader admitted that the party was trying to appropriate the preacher in an attempt to rob the BJP of exploiting his popularity for votes. “We have taken many steps in the past, and slowly we are giving the saffron party a run for its money on Hindutva,’’ he said, adding that the preacher has made controversial statements and withdrawn them later.

While most BJP leaders openly back the preacher and try to milk his popularity by looking for opportunities to attend his events or invite him to their turf, a section of Congress leaders credit the young baba’s success to a local Congress leader.

The young preacher was little known till the last year though he had amassed a following among devotees who followed his discourses on YouTube. Early this year, he faced his first major challenge when Andhashradhha Nirmulan Samiti, an anti-superstition front, dared him to prove his miraculous powers at an event in Nagpur. He did not accept the challenge, and amid allegations and counter-allegations, chose to move to another place. The preacher’s brother had courted legal trouble when he allegedly showed up uninvited at a wedding with a gun.

The preacher’s comment against a deity had invited the wrath of the Kalchuri community leading to protests. His comment on Saibaba of Shirdi, who is revered by both Hindus and Muslims, had angered his devotees in Maharashtra.

(Milind Ghatwai is a freelance journalist with over three decades of experience.)

(Views expressed in this opinion piece are that of the author.)