Babagiri , perhaps the only profession that Indira Gandhi left without licensing and Ministry of Finance leaves without tax , has caused a lot of mental harassment to the policy makers in India . Though still ridiculed in many of Indian television serials, propagating the general Indian disbelief in the babagiri and godmen ,but this still remains one of the most dynamic entrepreneurial activity especially in the rural India - the Bharat . Government of India is neither prepared with any database or any statistics of this profession, nor is carrying any will to regulate it. There is a good reason why the contribution of the profession in the Gross Domestic Product must not be undermined, particularly when many of the national assets exist visibly as beautifully built temples , large sized idols , gold wrapped structures etc. There is much more monetary activity happening in the name of god, and there is no reason why Reserve Bank of India does not release data on M0 money that is circulating in the country for religious activities, and why Economic survey remains silent on economic prospects of one of the chief religious entrepreneurial activity in the country. Whereas a normal taxpayer is contributing to the development of the country, there remains no reason why Ministry of Finance is not taxing the monetary transactions happening in this godly business. Whereas a citizen with entrepreneurial visions move here and there to resolve the fiscal hurdles to the entrepreneurship in this country so much that World Bank ranks India 133 in ease of doing business , any unemployed in this country needs no Government permits in becoming a sadhu and best he needs is to purchase a saffron or white colored godly uniform.
A few days ago , Indians ,on their national television channels ,witnessed the mis-deeds of godmen Swami Nityananda and Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale . As the citizens were already wasting a part of their cerebrum in their misdoings straightforwardly broadcasted on the Indian tele and print media , which made many people question the credibility of the sting operation ,especially those who visited them earlier and took part in their “life healing” programmes but what was shocking is that there was no institution in the whole country that could work out some scholarly on the subject to the people in shock. The government of India , with no will and discretion on the godly affairs , had no answers to the questions on the role of the government in small seismic religious crisis . Owing to this sting operation that, however, increased the TRPs of the news channels, some people got their religious feelings hurt, and some had their children in total disbelief to whatever involves babas and pundits. It is owing to these incidents that the young population of the country which is exposed to the scientific way of looking at life in their textbooks , and habitual of checking the falsifiability of the facts before believing ,is slowly getting atheist , with no belief in the religion they are born with and no belief in religion that others believe.
As an undergraduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology , Delhi , the IIT with only 15 departments , I am ,though, fortunate exposed to be exposed to the humanities department with wide range of streams including psychology , literature , economics , philosophy and sociology excluding theology. My oblivion to theological world often haunted me during the regular debates, which got catalyzed when the news on babas sent shockwaves to the universities and sociological departments across the country.I belong to a place which is presently suffering the semi-annual bandh and sometime attacks due to swami ram rahim ji whose religious affairs have not yet been resolved and is just another pending case in the indian judiciary. I personally don’t think that any religion must be any day allowed to be innovated further and as a taxpayer myself ,will love if my chosen government regulates and controls the babas.
Whereas the challenge of universities worldwide is to catalyze the innovation and build up the knowledge on the subjects their departments are concerned with, the challenge of the theological departments in the universities must be to minimize anymore innovations and stabilize the existing knowledge of godly concepts; both the objectives are not threatened by the secularist targets of this nation.
Further these departments need to work in sync with a regulating statutory body under the Government that should overtake the censoring work of the Television shows that mushroomed in the past two decades starting with the Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana and Mahabharata which are exposed to blasphemical mistakes, which if not regulated can lead to a major religious crisis, considering the present day penetration of the Television networks and sensitivity of some influential polito-religious groups. The country’s common citizen remains exposed to the blasphemy posed by the various music composers who are releasing their songs in the name of religion as an open copyright violations of the bollywood numbers with their changed lyrics .After the portrayal of Indian Gods including Kali and Ganesha in the Horror Show Supernatural, there is need to control the babagiri in the Indian Cyber space. The regulating body needs to preserve the ethnicity of theology as a subject with its departments of theology and scholars doing research there in .
We do need to protect the God. We do need a “Ministry of God”. Godly businesses need to be regularized. There should be policy to regulate the entire activity of Babagiri !!!
