Con men in
garb of gurus
A true guru is hard to find these days. Godmen are increasingly
in the news nowadays.
What is surprising is the eager
readiness of individuals, even highly educated ones, to surrender themselves to
the conmen of religion. Con men thrive under the garb of religion. People
nowadays easily surrender themselves to godmen.
That’s the reason why the con men and
bogus godmen mushroom and commandeer hysterically zealous following.
Gandhiji had warned us a long time ago
against 'accepting imperfect ones as gurus'. By trusting these imperfect
specimens of humanity, we degrade and consign ourselves to a low level. We
invite irrationality, existential insecurity and a life driven by falsehood,
hypocrisy and moral anarchy.
Godmen facilitate and perpetuate our
disempowerment. They effect a sort of cultic slavery that conjures up, for the
time being, a specious sort of security. These so-called
devotees even go to the extent of volunteering to fight and protect their gurus
from the consequences of their misdeeds.
This godmen syndrome emerged in the wake
of the failure of religious establishments. Predictably, it did not take long
for wolves to appear on the landscape where naive lambs abounded as easy
targets. The wolves appeared in sheep's clothing.
Following these cultic con men and women
is, in the words of Gandhiji, like a man trying to learn 'swimming by tying a
stone to his neck'. It is our sinking fellow human beings, rather than the
thriving con men who tie these stones around their necks, who should be our
crying concern. The stones are blind faith.
It should matter to all rational
creatures - and matter a great deal - that wolves are being mistaken by
millions for shepherds.
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