There are thousands of godmen in India. They fool people using their little magic tricks. They walk across hot coals, burp out gold eggs, make ash out of thin air, turn water into blood etc. These charlatans are called ‘baba’. Baba business flourishes in India because a large number of people are ignorant and idiot. Politicians, players, film stars, and many famous people are their disciples. They give babas hundreds of millions of rupees. Some babas or spiritual gurus have followers even in the Western countries. The Beatles once fell for a charlatan.
A godman called Asaram Bapu said something bizarre and insensitive today. He said that the victim of Delhi gang rape was as guilty as her rapists.
Despite the continuing national outrage over the brutal gang rape of the 23-year-old student in Delhi, a small minority on the fringe has said, in a case of blaming the victim, that women are also responsible for the sexual crimes against them. The latest to join their ranks is self-styled spiritual leader Asaram Bapu with his suggestion that the gang-rape victim should have prayed to god and begged with her attackers to let her go.
He also said:
Those who were at fault were drunk. Had she taken guru diksha and chanted the saraswati mantra, she would not have boarded any random bus after watching a movie with her boyfriend. Even if she did, she should have taken god’s name and asked for mercy. She should have called them brothers, fallen at their feet and pleaded for mercy. Had she said, I am a weak woman, you are my brothers”, such brutality would not have happened.
Misogynist godmen influence their millions of followers to become misogynists. The female followers also turn terribly anti-women. Misogyny is norm here. Most people protesting against rape of women because they believe their family’s honor lies in their women’s vagina or sexual purity. When a woman is raped by strangers, her honor and the honor of everyone in her family, they are sure, get destroyed. What we need now, is, desexualization of rape. I do not think people in patriarchal society would protest against rape if rape were considered as violence but not sex. People do not take to the streets to protest against violence against women. Hundreds of thousands of women are victims of domestic violence, dowry murder, bride burning etc. But rape makes people angrier than any other violence. The truth is, rape doesn’t destroy women’s honor, if it destroys anyone’s honor, that is rapists’.
This spiritual “guru” is a fucking moron.
Wow, he’s finally found the ‘magic words’ that erase all fears of rape. What an accomplishment !
I wonder why women can’t brainwash people against misogynists while those illiterate moron BABAs brainwash their followers so easily.
Having a concept as all men symbolizing misogyny is not a realistic approach. There are philogynists as well who support women in every walk of life.
Overall an excellent read. Taslima ! I loved this article.
God men are hypocrites, who wanna abuse innocents, poor and women… ! No Gods, No Religion, No Religious leaders, No God men are raised voice for women’s rights and equality .. ! We should sent all those idiots to some other distance planet to live by themselves, without women, poor and innocents .
Instead of presenting a totally workable, real world solution (telling men not to rape) women are to rely on a capricious sky-god for protection. What happens if some woman takes this advice and is still raped and killed? Is the baba going to say she just didn’t believe enough, or did the ritual wrong? It’s kind of disgusting that so few people actually blame the rapists.
I once had it explained to me that the Indian social/religious/legal system has to be taken as a package. A person is reincarnated into a caste and role and given the opportunity to perfect their spirit. If they do well they come back higher up. If not they come back in lower down. Which is mighty handy for a system built around castes because if everyone who suffers is working off a cosmic debt then there is no need to feel sorry for them or to try to change anything. It is a high order of blaming the victim. So high and twisted that brutes and torturers become heroes. By inflicting more suffering they are presumably helping people pay off their cosmic debt earlier, and doing it at considerable cost to themselves in karma. It is a sweet little package where people who suffer deserve all they get and should want more. And torturers are saints who are doing their victims a favor.
In that context the legal system needs to be quite weak because it wouldn’t make sense to punish rapists and torturers. For they are making sure the suffering was great enough to guarantee their victim comes back at a higher station. Civil law is really not needed. The cosmic laws will provide all the reward and punishment necessary for a just society.
I don’t believe a word of it. Sounds to me like a very handy and well thought out excuse system for maintaining a static hierarchy that revels is inequality, suffering and abuse by postulating the existence of multiple lives, immortal souls, and supernatural powers that keep things running. All arranged to maintain some imaginary sense of balance and justice. None of those assertions and assumptions are in any way supported by any evidence.
There is something of a social/religious technology to this. They have created an society of self-flogging slaves, self-blaming victims, and self-justifying abusers. It is not a pretty mechanism, it is bloody and brutal in the worse possible ways. It is fueled by hate, fear, and suffering. It leaves a trail of destruction and mangled corpses in its wake, but it continues to rumble on, and has for thousands of years.
Who actually explained this to you? It’s difficult to find educated Hindus defending the caste system today – it’s about as rare as finding Christians who defend slavery. Both will claim it’s a corruption of their religion.
Yes, and both would be wrong. The dogs, wait I meant the gods they believe in, if they believe in them as they say, do in fact endorse and encourage these behaviors, slavery, rape, brutality against unbelievers, and, as any fundamentalist will proclaim, It is the moderate beliver who defiles their religion and not the fundamentalists. Why then don’t your secular and humanist coreligionists stand up and vocally and loudly denounce these impostors? Could it be because they are themselves afraid of the consequences? I believe that to be the case. And just for information, let it be stated that Mahatma Gandhi supported the caste system, not quite the saint that he is purported to be.
I don’t know, I used to think that fundamentalists were following the “real” religion and moderates were just picking and choosing bits of it, but the more I learnt about the early history of various religions, the more I realised that moderates were not just making shit up when they said parts of their religion were not to be taken literally. There have always been differences in interpretation and arguments over the validity of pretty much any text since the dawn of any religion. Anyway, regardless of whether the fundamentalists or moderates are more true to their religion, I would support the moderates simply because they do less damage to society.
Human beings are born in the same way that animals born. Human beings grow in society but animals in jungle.
Sometimes, it seems to me we are still in jungle.
Finally managed to find information about her boyfriend. After being locked in the bus, he was beaten with an iron bar, stripped of his clothing, thrown naked from the moving bus and and they attempted to run over him. He was knocked unconscious. When he regained consciousness, he managed to rescue his injured girlfriend from being run over by the bus.
Of course, no one cares about what happened to him. He is a disposable male that received practically no media attention. Talk about equality.
Man, talk about butt hurt. It doesn’t take much effort to find out all those things about him, and even find stories where he has spoken.
You can just fuck right off now.
such BABAS are always waste of time. bloody morons.
They walk across hot coals, burp out gold eggs, make ash out of thin air, turn water into blood etc.
It’s weird the things people with “supernatural” powers do. Such small tricks. I’d move stock markets or affect global warming or perhaps disintegrate an aircraft carrier. Then, as they say, “we could talk.”
A charlatan who’s doing the same kind of street magic as countless generations of other charlatans – how is that even interesting let alone believable? Helloooo? The “water into wine” trick? It’s been done!
Of course, no one cares about what happened to him. He is a disposable male that received practically no media attention. Talk about equality.
What happened to him was certainly wrong, and tragic. But it’s not an “equality” issue that the media are paying more attention to someone who was violated sexually and died from cruel treatment at the hands of her assailants. Dying from assault and being assaulted are not equal things, capisce?
SICK SICK SICK SEXIST MORON
Excellent article! Yes, rape is anger expressed sexually and so devastatingly personally. It is violence, pure and simple, and violence is used, and used as a threat, to subjugate people into compliance, and destroy their soul.(Sorry)
Insightful, Taslima Nasreen, and very important, these words
If a godman can burp gold eggs, why does he need people to give him money?
Followers do not question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFavZe9CYNc