National

Greed, Godmen And Land

The founder of the Jawahar Bagh camp is disowned by the sect he swore by

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Greed, Godmen And Land
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The UP government, say sources, plans to change its freehold land policy to legalise illegal landholdings. This would have benefited Ram Vriksh Yadav and his outfit and Jai Gurudev ashram too.

In the early 1970s, Jai Gurudev ran his ashram from a tiny plot on the Delhi-Agra highway. The UP government acquired this land but the Allahabad High Court and the Supreme Court quashed the land acquisition notification following a writ petition by Gurudev’s devotees. Many farmers, however, never returned to reclaim their land and the ashram’s size grew overnight. However, the plot has mysteriously remained in the name of UPSIDC all these years.

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Gurudev promoted jute textiles and ethnic wear stitched from the fabric was a hit among devotees. Doctor devotees would wear it while seeing patients and the godman’s lawyer wore a black coat stitched from jute in court. The poorest wore outfits made from jute sacks.

Named Tulsidas Malhar by his parents, Gurudev was born in Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s native Etawah. At a Kanpur rally in the mid-1970s, he allegedly claimed to be Subhash Chandra Bose. He was arrested for fraud but was let off.

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In A Sack

A Jai Gurudev devotee

Photograph by Tribhuvan Tiwari

Three of his closest disciples were Charan Singh, Umakant Tiwari and Ram Vriksh. He inspired Charan Singh and his son Pankaj to study law so they could handle his legal affairs. Pankaj drove the godman around. “Like lord Krishna drove Arjuna’s chariot,” Charan Singh tells Outlook.

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Ram Vriksh is said to have been expelled from the Mathura ashram in 2009-10 and his chosen successor, Umakant, was persuaded to shift to Ujjain after the godman’s death in 2012. This allowed Pankaj and his father to take over the Mathura ashram and 300 other properties, say some devotees. Mulayam’s brother Shivpal Singh Yadav, a disciple of Gurudev, is said to have been the mediator. Other trustees have challenged this tacit settlement.

Ram Vriksh took over the ashram in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, but he had bigger ambitions and began a march to Delhi. He is believed to have been killed during the June 2 violence at Jawahar Bagh, Mathura.

Admitting the Trust is embroiled in several litigations, Charan Singh tells Outlook that Ram Vriksh had never been associated with Gurudev. “In 2011, this man had led a rally near our ashram and assaulted some of the devotees,” he claims. “We lodged an FIR and the case is still under investigation. Our sect has nothing to do with him,” he claimed.

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