Jagat

In Patiala and Delhi, I had a TV in my room and so I checked out what was going on in the 24-hour news cycle world. There were two major scandals in the last couple of weeks involving Indian sadhus, gurus and what-have-you, whom they call by the generic name "babas". At least they seem to have given up the term "God-men" which was a longstanding favorite of theirs I particularly hate. (I seem to be wrong about that.) There was even a little juicy video to play over and over again, what to speak of other clips of the babas dancing ecstatically. One TV station even played that up by juxtaposing the dancing guru with a belly dancer to make him look even more idiotic. The anchor man very sincerely said, "We are doing this as a public service as so many people put their faith in babas and they need to know who is genuine and who is not." Then Baba Ramdeva went on record in calling for the death penalty (!) for bogus babas, saying they are giving g...