Sad that another Swami is getting caught in a sex scandal! This time from Karnataka! We need to surely weed out such God men & women who treat their Bhakhtas in disdain and indulge in moral depravity and debauchery!
Will the true Bhakhtas stand up against these rogue Swamis who debase the purity of the Math, tradition and culture?
Oct 2, 2015
The High Priest Of Deception
Same old story: powerful pontiff uses divine threat to sexually subjugate woman disciple
Bula Devi, Ajay Sukumaran
Who Are The Havyakas?
The chargesheet is sending ripples in RSS circles because not only is the swami close to the Sangh parivar and patronised by the BJP government of B.S. Yediyurappa between 2008 and 2013, even the victim and her family happen to be devoted Hindus, disciples of the math, and known to a large number of RSS and BJP leaders. More damningly, a celibate has been accused of over 100 sexual transgressions, and the chargesheet, which lists as many as 159 witnesses, has grisly details of a suicide, threats from the underworld, semen stains, DNA matches—a litany of lust.
The chargesheet against the powerful swami, who represents the influential Havyaka Brahmins and has had politicians of every hue falling at his feet during his 16 years at the helm of the math, was long in coming. The Congress government of Siddaramaiah held out till it could no longer do so in the face of mounting pressure from the BJP-appointed chairperson of the National Commission for Women, Lalitha Kumaramangalam. Only a day earlier, the pontiff’s representatives had met the press. But when it finally came, there was disbelief on the part of devotees—and growing anger among cynics and sceptics at the kidglove treatment.
The Ramachandrapura math is the largest of the three maths belonging to the Havyaka Brahmins who largely hail from Karnataka’s Malnad region in the Western Ghats and its coastal districts. Some 18 non-Brahmin communities are also followers of the math. Bharati has been the pontiff since 1999 and is known for his efforts in preserving native breeds of cattle, having organised an international conference on the theme in 2007.Naturally, his initiatives have found resonance with the Sangh parivar’s programmes. The math’s prominence grew from 2008 when the BJP came to power. So much so that the Yediyurappa regime handed over the Mahabaleshwar temple in Gokarna that year to the math.
This, according to people associated with the math, displeased many people, as the seer began to streamline things. They claim many of the seer’s detractors are rallying behind the rape allegation. “The swamiji hails from the same village as me,” says M.L. Bhat, a devotee attending the pontiff’s discourse. “We’ve seen him for so long and we know the kind of person he is. May all those making these allegations rot.” “Look at the number of women gathered here. Would they have continued to come if all this were true?” asks another. They believe the pontiff’s growing popularity has made many jealous. Five years ago, they point out, some people connected with the math were arrested by police for creating a sex CD by morphing the seer’s images. Following that came a public interest litigation over financial irregularities in the math. And now this.
[TABLE="align: left"]
[TR]
[TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
What queers the pitch is that the victim belongs to the same community of Havyaka Brahmins as the alleged perpetrator. Her husband, a garment exporter, has in fact held several administrative posts in the math. Her brother-in-law is a ranking RSS functionary in Delhi. It was in 2011, during a visit to Jodhpur in Rajasthan with the Ramakatha troupe which the math had launched the previous year, that the victim says the ordeal began. In the next four years, over 160-odd sessions of the retelling of the Ramayana through a mix of music, dance and drama along with religious discourse, she was, she says, raped repeatedly by the swami in several towns and cities. Why the victim suffered in silence for so long is anybody’s guess. The charitable version is that the seer had cast a spell and succeeded in convincing her that she was specially blessed to have sex with him. She was also possibly scared of rejection by her family, husband and the community. Moreover, she knew that the swami had powerful political links, besides friends belonging to the Havyaka community in the Kannada media. The continued exploitation, however, had made her irritable and she was unable to lead a normal life. Unable to bear it any longer, she had asked her husband for a divorce last year in July and then blurted out what she was going through.
It was the math, though, which made the first move finally, lodging a complaint of blackmail against the lady and her husband. They were accused of demanding Rs 3 crore from the math. The couple was arrested and spent three weeks in jail. It was their elder daughter, a BBM graduate, who eventually lodged a police complaint about the sexual abuse of her mother even while her parents were in judicial custody. She too complained of receiving threats.
The victim’s family claims that a group of community elders had met them and then the pontiff after the charges first surfaced in 2014. In that meeting, Bharati is claimed to have offered to proceed to the Himalayas as a form of penance after the end of Chaturmasya. But he did nothing of the sort. They also claim that RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale, another Havyaka Brahmin and a math devotee, had called on Bharati and advised him to step down. To no avail.
The chargesheet against the swami is not the end of the story, just the beginning of the middle. Days after the couple was arrested on charges of blackmail last year, the victim’s brother-in-law ostensibly shot himself at home. His widow claimed he was under pressure to get his sister-in-law to withdraw her complaint. While the police had then stated that the deceased had left behind a suicide note, they interrogated an important RSS leader of the west coast, Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat, ostensibly because he had spoken to the deceased a number of times on the day of his ‘suicide’. But Bhat, described then as the south India communication chief of the RSS, merely claimed that the deceased was a friend. Bhat has been supportive of the seer and believes the rape charge is a ‘political conspiracy’.
After much legal to and fro over medical tests, the police claims a conclusive DNA match has been found in the garments handed over by the victim. But a Facebook page (We Are With Raghaveshwara Bharati) that has sprung up in his support debunks the claim. Anybody, it says, can “quickly collect DNA” from the swami and place it anywhere. The forensic report, claim the seer’s lawyers, mentions nothing about semen either. “We have gone by the forensic and circumstantial evidence,” says IGP K.V. Sharath Chandra. Apparently, semen stains from some clothes provided as evidence by the victim have been examined and matched with DNA from the seer. Meanwhile, a medical board has been constituted for his medical test and physical examination to verify the victim’s claims about certain marks on his body. Bharati has approached the Karnataka High Court.
[TABLE="align: right"]
[TR]
[TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The chargesheet, incidentally, came days after the ncw chairperson complained about tardy progress. “Swamijis in saffron are supposed to be chaste and not look at women or have sexual leaning or desire. But this swami very clearly violates what he claims to be,” she told Outlook in an interview. Police officers say the investigation took time because the events dated back a few years and involved visits to places mentioned by the victim in her complaint. The police finally arrested Bharati on September 11 and duly released him on bail. However, Shambhu Sharma, legal advisor to the seer, asks, “If the government was protecting us, do you think swamiji would be questioned for 50-60 hours? Can you see any pressure to save him? No, there is only pressure to file a chargesheet against him. The suicide case is still with the cid. But nobody is asking for this complaint to be investigated.”
Critics of the pontiff say he is fond of luxuries and is surrounded by young, brash and aggressive people. “They like to display their power,” says Sushanth Banari, now erstwhile devotee. Added Chandra Edapathya, “I have gradually lost faith in him after I learnt that he has refused to undergo medical tests. If he is pure and innocent, why is he shying away from the tests?”
Following the controversy, the RSS has made a conscious effort to distance itself from the seer. Earlier he was a regular invitee to important functions and was even the chief guest at the valedictory function of a training programme in Nagpur in June 2008—to be the chief guest of the ‘Tritiya Varsh Sangh Shiksha Varg’ is deemed an honour in the Sangh. But the seer was conspicuous by his absence at the state-level ‘sant sammelan’ in Tumkur organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad last year. Similarly at the Hindu Samaj Utsava in Mangalore the same year, hoardings and banners with his image were removed after the local RSS was told that the swami would not be part of the programme. Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat was also demoted at the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha held in Nagpur this year. Apparently this was done since Bhat was supporting the swami despite the charges against him.
Bharati took charge of the math in April 1999 following the demise of the earlier pontiff. After becoming the peethadhipathi, he apparently came up with a few ideas which mainly attracted the youth and women. A few of his initial initiatives—the Bindu-Sindhu Yojane, putting one rupee every day to the hundi after puja and then donating it to the math once it was full; Mushti Akki Yojane, keeping a fistful of rice aside everyday while cooking and then donating it to math for the poor within the community—were a huge success and brought people closer.
It was only since 2011, in the course of planning and discussing Ramakatha, that the swami allegedly began taking a special interest in the singer. He claimed that he was the incarnation of Lord Rama and that she had a duty to dedicate herself to ‘gurupeetha’ or else she would be at the receiving end of ‘guru shrapa’ and she and her family would be destroyed. She was allegedly made to take an oath in the name of Rama.
There might be more to come. A second victim, a minor, has now stood up to tell her tale of woe. The math also holds a ritual called ‘kanya samskara’ in which the pontiff preaches to teenaged girls in a closed room.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/the-high-priest-of-deception/295480
Will the true Bhakhtas stand up against these rogue Swamis who debase the purity of the Math, tradition and culture?
Oct 2, 2015
The High Priest Of Deception
Same old story: powerful pontiff uses divine threat to sexually subjugate woman disciple
Bula Devi, Ajay Sukumaran
Who Are The Havyakas?
- A small but influential Brahmin community in Karnataka, numbering some four lakh
- Identified by surnames like Bhat, Hegde and Shastri
- Mostly own arecanut plantations
- Speak a dialect called ‘Havigannada’
- Inhabit the Western Ghats and coastal region (Hosanagar, Sagar, Puttur, Madikeri, Kasargod, etc)
***
It’s Sunday, September 27, the penultimate day of Chaturmasya Vrata, a four-month period of prayer and fasting by name but a two-month abstinence in actual practice. In Bangalore’s middle-class Giri Nagar locality, there’s a large crowd listening to a discourse by Raghaveshwara Bharati, the pontiff of the Sri Ramachandrapura Math in Shimoga, 276 km away. Devotees describe the youthful swami as ‘Jagadguru Shankaracharya’, an incarnation of Lord Rama. But the piety and prayers seem incongruous with the 1,340-page chargesheet filed against the 39-year-old pontiff just the previous day, of repeatedly raping a disciple and colleague, a professional Carnatic singer nine years older to him, over three long years.The chargesheet is sending ripples in RSS circles because not only is the swami close to the Sangh parivar and patronised by the BJP government of B.S. Yediyurappa between 2008 and 2013, even the victim and her family happen to be devoted Hindus, disciples of the math, and known to a large number of RSS and BJP leaders. More damningly, a celibate has been accused of over 100 sexual transgressions, and the chargesheet, which lists as many as 159 witnesses, has grisly details of a suicide, threats from the underworld, semen stains, DNA matches—a litany of lust.
The chargesheet against the powerful swami, who represents the influential Havyaka Brahmins and has had politicians of every hue falling at his feet during his 16 years at the helm of the math, was long in coming. The Congress government of Siddaramaiah held out till it could no longer do so in the face of mounting pressure from the BJP-appointed chairperson of the National Commission for Women, Lalitha Kumaramangalam. Only a day earlier, the pontiff’s representatives had met the press. But when it finally came, there was disbelief on the part of devotees—and growing anger among cynics and sceptics at the kidglove treatment.
The Ramachandrapura math is the largest of the three maths belonging to the Havyaka Brahmins who largely hail from Karnataka’s Malnad region in the Western Ghats and its coastal districts. Some 18 non-Brahmin communities are also followers of the math. Bharati has been the pontiff since 1999 and is known for his efforts in preserving native breeds of cattle, having organised an international conference on the theme in 2007.Naturally, his initiatives have found resonance with the Sangh parivar’s programmes. The math’s prominence grew from 2008 when the BJP came to power. So much so that the Yediyurappa regime handed over the Mahabaleshwar temple in Gokarna that year to the math.
This, according to people associated with the math, displeased many people, as the seer began to streamline things. They claim many of the seer’s detractors are rallying behind the rape allegation. “The swamiji hails from the same village as me,” says M.L. Bhat, a devotee attending the pontiff’s discourse. “We’ve seen him for so long and we know the kind of person he is. May all those making these allegations rot.” “Look at the number of women gathered here. Would they have continued to come if all this were true?” asks another. They believe the pontiff’s growing popularity has made many jealous. Five years ago, they point out, some people connected with the math were arrested by police for creating a sex CD by morphing the seer’s images. Following that came a public interest litigation over financial irregularities in the math. And now this.
[TABLE="align: left"]
[TR]
[TD]
| |
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
What queers the pitch is that the victim belongs to the same community of Havyaka Brahmins as the alleged perpetrator. Her husband, a garment exporter, has in fact held several administrative posts in the math. Her brother-in-law is a ranking RSS functionary in Delhi. It was in 2011, during a visit to Jodhpur in Rajasthan with the Ramakatha troupe which the math had launched the previous year, that the victim says the ordeal began. In the next four years, over 160-odd sessions of the retelling of the Ramayana through a mix of music, dance and drama along with religious discourse, she was, she says, raped repeatedly by the swami in several towns and cities. Why the victim suffered in silence for so long is anybody’s guess. The charitable version is that the seer had cast a spell and succeeded in convincing her that she was specially blessed to have sex with him. She was also possibly scared of rejection by her family, husband and the community. Moreover, she knew that the swami had powerful political links, besides friends belonging to the Havyaka community in the Kannada media. The continued exploitation, however, had made her irritable and she was unable to lead a normal life. Unable to bear it any longer, she had asked her husband for a divorce last year in July and then blurted out what she was going through.
It was the math, though, which made the first move finally, lodging a complaint of blackmail against the lady and her husband. They were accused of demanding Rs 3 crore from the math. The couple was arrested and spent three weeks in jail. It was their elder daughter, a BBM graduate, who eventually lodged a police complaint about the sexual abuse of her mother even while her parents were in judicial custody. She too complained of receiving threats.
The victim’s family claims that a group of community elders had met them and then the pontiff after the charges first surfaced in 2014. In that meeting, Bharati is claimed to have offered to proceed to the Himalayas as a form of penance after the end of Chaturmasya. But he did nothing of the sort. They also claim that RSS joint general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale, another Havyaka Brahmin and a math devotee, had called on Bharati and advised him to step down. To no avail.
The chargesheet against the swami is not the end of the story, just the beginning of the middle. Days after the couple was arrested on charges of blackmail last year, the victim’s brother-in-law ostensibly shot himself at home. His widow claimed he was under pressure to get his sister-in-law to withdraw her complaint. While the police had then stated that the deceased had left behind a suicide note, they interrogated an important RSS leader of the west coast, Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat, ostensibly because he had spoken to the deceased a number of times on the day of his ‘suicide’. But Bhat, described then as the south India communication chief of the RSS, merely claimed that the deceased was a friend. Bhat has been supportive of the seer and believes the rape charge is a ‘political conspiracy’.
After much legal to and fro over medical tests, the police claims a conclusive DNA match has been found in the garments handed over by the victim. But a Facebook page (We Are With Raghaveshwara Bharati) that has sprung up in his support debunks the claim. Anybody, it says, can “quickly collect DNA” from the swami and place it anywhere. The forensic report, claim the seer’s lawyers, mentions nothing about semen either. “We have gone by the forensic and circumstantial evidence,” says IGP K.V. Sharath Chandra. Apparently, semen stains from some clothes provided as evidence by the victim have been examined and matched with DNA from the seer. Meanwhile, a medical board has been constituted for his medical test and physical examination to verify the victim’s claims about certain marks on his body. Bharati has approached the Karnataka High Court.
[TABLE="align: right"]
[TR]
[TD]
| |
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[TD="width: 20"][/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
The chargesheet, incidentally, came days after the ncw chairperson complained about tardy progress. “Swamijis in saffron are supposed to be chaste and not look at women or have sexual leaning or desire. But this swami very clearly violates what he claims to be,” she told Outlook in an interview. Police officers say the investigation took time because the events dated back a few years and involved visits to places mentioned by the victim in her complaint. The police finally arrested Bharati on September 11 and duly released him on bail. However, Shambhu Sharma, legal advisor to the seer, asks, “If the government was protecting us, do you think swamiji would be questioned for 50-60 hours? Can you see any pressure to save him? No, there is only pressure to file a chargesheet against him. The suicide case is still with the cid. But nobody is asking for this complaint to be investigated.”
Critics of the pontiff say he is fond of luxuries and is surrounded by young, brash and aggressive people. “They like to display their power,” says Sushanth Banari, now erstwhile devotee. Added Chandra Edapathya, “I have gradually lost faith in him after I learnt that he has refused to undergo medical tests. If he is pure and innocent, why is he shying away from the tests?”
Following the controversy, the RSS has made a conscious effort to distance itself from the seer. Earlier he was a regular invitee to important functions and was even the chief guest at the valedictory function of a training programme in Nagpur in June 2008—to be the chief guest of the ‘Tritiya Varsh Sangh Shiksha Varg’ is deemed an honour in the Sangh. But the seer was conspicuous by his absence at the state-level ‘sant sammelan’ in Tumkur organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad last year. Similarly at the Hindu Samaj Utsava in Mangalore the same year, hoardings and banners with his image were removed after the local RSS was told that the swami would not be part of the programme. Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat was also demoted at the Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha held in Nagpur this year. Apparently this was done since Bhat was supporting the swami despite the charges against him.
Bharati took charge of the math in April 1999 following the demise of the earlier pontiff. After becoming the peethadhipathi, he apparently came up with a few ideas which mainly attracted the youth and women. A few of his initial initiatives—the Bindu-Sindhu Yojane, putting one rupee every day to the hundi after puja and then donating it to the math once it was full; Mushti Akki Yojane, keeping a fistful of rice aside everyday while cooking and then donating it to math for the poor within the community—were a huge success and brought people closer.
It was only since 2011, in the course of planning and discussing Ramakatha, that the swami allegedly began taking a special interest in the singer. He claimed that he was the incarnation of Lord Rama and that she had a duty to dedicate herself to ‘gurupeetha’ or else she would be at the receiving end of ‘guru shrapa’ and she and her family would be destroyed. She was allegedly made to take an oath in the name of Rama.
There might be more to come. A second victim, a minor, has now stood up to tell her tale of woe. The math also holds a ritual called ‘kanya samskara’ in which the pontiff preaches to teenaged girls in a closed room.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/the-high-priest-of-deception/295480
