Asaram

Asumal Sirumalani Harpalani (born 17 April 1941), known by devotees as Asaram, is an Indian spiritual leader and convicted rapist, who started to come into the limelight in the early 1970s.

Asaram was born on 17 April 1941, in the Berani village of the Nawabshah District in British India (present-day Berani Town is located in Jam Nawaz Ali Tehsil of Sanghar district Sindh, Pakistan), to Menhgiba and Thaumal Sirumalani, in the Sindhi caste.

His birthname was Asumal Thaumal Harpalani or Asumal Sirumalani.

Following the partition of India in 1947, he and his family moved to Ahmedabad, then part of the former Bombay State in India (now Gujarat), leaving behind their immovable assets in Sindh, where Asaram's father founded a coal and wood selling business.

Asumal ran this business for a short time, after his father's death.

He received his formal education at Jai Hind High School, up-till class III, when his father died.

Asumal had a history of running away from home, beginning at the age of 15 when he fled to an ashram eight days before his eventual wedding.

In one such event away from home, a local religio-spiritual figure had ordained him as his disciple at an ashram in Gandhidham, and named him Asaram on 7 October 1964.

Sources mention him to have been involved in a variety of professions ranging from selling liquors and tea to repairing cycles and trading sugar, prior to his establishment as a religious leader.

Asaram is married to Laxmi Devi.

They have two children, son Narayan Sai and daughter Bhartishree or Bharti Devi.

Asaram remained a householder and was never ordained a monk.

Their son Narayan worked with Asaram.

According to his official biography, Asaram returned to Ahmedabad on 8 July 1971 and on 29 January 1972, built a hut at Motera, then a village on the banks of the Sabarmati.

Although his official biography does not mention it, Asaram had lived in Motera's Sadashiv Ashram for two years, before setting up his own hut adjacent to it.

He became a popular katha-vachak (narrator of religious stories), combining his discourses with humour, music and dancing.

Initially outside of his own Sindhi community, he attracted Other Backward Classes and Dalits.

After he became well known, he started attracting the upper-caste listeners also.

His ashrams offered free food.

In the tribal areas, feasts were organized where utensils and clothes were distributed.

He converted his hut into a small ashram in 1973, and started with 5–10 followers.

With successive local governments from across the political divide, paying economic patronage to him including by grant of lands for expansion of his ashrams, and a growing Hinduisation of the Gujarati society in the wake of Hindutva centered politics.

By 2013, he was estimated to have established over 400 ashrams and 40 schools in India and abroad.

Multiple legal proceedings have been initiated against him, in connection with illegal encroachment, rape, and tampering of a witness.

Many political leaders went on to visit him to pay him respect through the decades; primarily in lieu of commanding the votes of his followers, including Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Narendra Modi, Digvijaya Singh, Farook Abdullah, George Fernandes, Raman Singh, Uma Bharti, Kapil Sibal, Ajay Maken, Motilal Vora, Krishna Tirath, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Kamal Nath By 2013, Asaram claimed to have four hundred major and minor ashrams in India and 18 other countries, with over forty million followers.

Asaram's core teachings align with Hindutva-centred views.

Ram Puniyani notes overt Brahminical tones in his teachings.

Emphasizing upon the prominence of Brahmcharya and Guru-Shishya relationship, it was instilled among the devotees, to accept Asaram (and his son) as infallible, be blindly obedient to them and not to question them about anything, whatsoever.

Physical violence is advocated for against any dissident.

Asaram has been long vocal against increasing sexual liberation of the society and deemed the adoption of Western culture artifacts as corruption of morality.

Shri Yogi Vedanta Seva Samiti organized a Matri Pitri Poojan Divas ("mother-father worship day") on 14 February, as a form of protest against Valentine's Day, which is supposedly symbolic of a Western cultural invasion.

Asaram's proposal was supported by many prominent Indian politicians including union ministers and the President of India.

In 2014 he started Tulsi Poojan Diwas (a day to worship Tulsi - the Holy Hindu plant) to counter the celebration of Christmas.

In 2015, the Government of Chhattisgarh state even institutionalized the practice, and directed all schools to observe Matru-Pitru Diwas ("mother-father day") every year on 14 February after Asaram urged the Chief Minister Raman Singh in this regard.

Similar statement was also issued by Hindu Mahasabha.

In December 2017, Asaram was declared as a fake baba by Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad, the apex organisation of Hindu Sants (saints) and Sadhus (ascetics) in India.

In 2018, Asaram was found guilty of the rape of a minor girl by Special Judge Madhusudhan Sharma of a special Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe court in Jodhpur and is currently serving life imprisonment in Jodhpur.

In 2019, a sessions court sentenced Narayan to life imprisonment in a rape case filed against him by a former woman devotee in 2013.

Laxmi Devi and Bhartishree were also arrested in relation to Asaram's offences, being accused of aiding and abetting the crime.

They were acquitted for lack of evidence.