Love Charger is Ram Rahim’s most famous song. He performs it on a stage which at times appears like it will take off to outer space, shooting green beams on the crowd, and at other times, with its abundance of colours and props, seems to be headed to the Ram Leela Maidan. From a wide angle, we see an immense crowd. Men and women are dancing, some with infants in their arms. Ram Rahim’s largest concert had 360,000 attendees, it is claimed. Officially, Rod Stewart holds the record, performing to 350,000 at the Copa Cabana beach on New Year’s Eve, 1994.

It is night. The public holds light-sticks – millions of fireflies unable to escape. Ram Rahim is wearing gold jewellery, supersized, like his big, bare, beary arms. His pants, loose dungarees, are shiny stripes of green, yellow and red. His black vest is heavy, also laden with jewellery. He looks like a peacetime warrior, a devotee of bling, I think about the actor Puneet Issar as Duryodhana in B.R. Chopra’s Mahabharat. Behind Ram Rahim is a golden throne, behind the throne, a psychedelic video, and on the golden throne a red parrot, could be made of paper-mache.

In Pandharpur, Vitthal, an avatar of Vishnu, froze on seeing Pundalika’s devotion to his father. In Sirsa, the parrot appears to have frozen, shell-shocked, on seeing the public’s devotion to their father. Ram Rahim is called Pitaji (father), by the young and old alike. I notice two other parrots. They lack stage presence. An LED-lit man is floating in the air, hanging under an air balloon. The lyrics stay in my mind for days.

Say everybody

our Sadguru, the love charger

true love charger.

You are the love charger (X 6)

I am so lucky because

you are my love charger (X 3)

You are the love charger (X 3)

 

You are love

but you love

you are the power house of love

very very desi your love.

You are the love charger (X 3)

 

Billions battery when goes down

you charged up with love

so strong your power love

you are the love charger (X 3)

you are care taker

you are love care taker

you are the care taker of the world

your love make spring of the world.

You are the love charger. (X 3)

 

Any moment any problem in heart call you the one (X 2)

next moment every work your done.

You are the love charger. (X 3)

 

Meet heart meet soul was very very dull (X 2)

Satnamji give full power.

make me himself for all.

You are the love charger. X 3

 

Is Love Charger nirguni rock? Ram Rahim imagines that God is like an AC current, like the mains, like an electric grid. We are shocked into devotion. Power, charge, battery, current, tyre – if I bumped into these songs with no prior information, my mind would take me to an auto-repair shop, in it an SUV, underneath the SUV a floorboard, and emerging from the floorboard, covered in grease and oil, a blue-collar bhakt, singing with his blue-collar bhakti. But Ram Rahim is not that, he is sitting in that SUV and it is fluorescent green.

Sant Dr Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insaan, is the current Apostle, Master, Guru (their terms, not mine) of the Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS), a universalist religious organization, an NGO, headquartered in Sirsa, Haryana. DSS was founded in 1948 by Beparawah Mastanaji Maharaj from Baluchistan. The name is undoubtedly poetic. Ram Rahim is the third in the lineage of ‘divine apostles’. DSS is huge by any standard: it has millions of devotees (their website claims 60 million), 46 ashrams spread across many countries, and land and assets unmatched in the region. Ram Rahim’s omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, is validated with 53 world records – one is for the largest number of people in a selfie, another for the most people tossing coins simultaneously – as I read on I find myself in the position of a blind man describing an elephant the size of a juggernaut carried by millions of devotees. In his last movie, MSG 2: Hind Ka Napak Ko Jawab, Ram Rahim had 43 credits; actor, director, choreographer, singer… as the credits roll, a line flashes on the screen ‘the most versatile person in the history of world cinema.’ It is meant for people like me who can’t even fathom the miracle, let alone…

 

Apart from Love Charger, two of Ram Rahim’s songs have been seen over five million times on YouTube alone. In early 2018, Tujhe Paa Ke had 10.53 million views and System Hil Gaya, 7.23 million. Love Charger had 7.59 million.¹ There are others songs, across musical genres. These three songs are but a few grains of sand in a desert, a few drops of water in an ocean; nevertheless, they are indicative, they are representative, and so we shall spend some time in their company.

Tujhe Paa Ke is from Ram Rahim’s film MSG 2: Hind Ka Napak Ko Jawab. In the first scene, Ram Rahim is exercising his biceps. The usual gym equipment is entirely insufficient. He has to make do with a tire… of a truck…it is huge. After a few lifts, he dumps it on the side. There’s a Baluchi girl, the female lead, who is also fond of exercising. They work on their biceps with that tyre, he is holding it with one hand, the girl with two. She is avenging the murder of her family so this intensive form of jungle gym training begins to make sense. In the next scene they marry. The guests are forced to stand in a semi-circle around the couple, yet they are required to perform as if their spatiality is organic. Whenever someone attempts a conversation, Ram Rahim refuses to look at their faces, his eyes are fixed on the videographer. They dance. Ram Rahim does not participate. As the guests take off with all the wedding decorations, he also offers them some money.

In the next scene, Ram Rahim is in a children’s boat in an amusement park. There’s a small lake. He floats under a toy bridge, dodges it, and waves to his wife. She is crying from the grief of separation. In a few seconds, he returns on a new boat covered with petals and grass. He uses a shovel to lift the petals to throw them on her. She does not eat any – she is not a horse. Still, she loves the attention and whirls around, then begins to laugh. He returns to doing push ups in the middle of a river as if all this marriage and honeymoon business was a detour in his gym routine. He likes wearing pink. She follows him. In the river basin, he offers her some tactical advice on self-defence. Towards the end, they reach their love nest. It has a pink heart-shaped entrance. My five-year-old daughter loved it.

The lyrics of Tujhe Paa Ke (see Annexures 3 and 4 for a transcription and a translation) express the thrill of finding love and equate it to finding God. The corresponding emotions follow; he cries, laughs, agonizes, feels mischievous.

 

Another choreographed love song in his film MSG 2: Hind Ka Napak Ko Jawab is System Hil Gaya. While Tujhe Paa Ke is post-coitus, System Hil Gaya is pre-coitus. Why not add one more bhakti typology while we are at it? Ram Rahim is Salman Khan with facial hair. The dancers are in gold. The lead dancer with long hair and a goatee is Bollywood material. Ram Rahim does not dance. The choreographer tries, one limb at a time. In step two, the act quickly goes downhill – the problem is his trunk, it is stable as a rock. ‘What is the most difficult part of working in a film,’ he is asked in an interview. ‘Dance – 16 hours of meditation for 20-25 years has taken its toll,’ Ram Rahim confesses, gallantly. He is forced to dance with his fingers. The other dancers compensate by moving…that is sufficient. Once he is done with his fingers, he walks around, usually with hands in his pockets. He wears sunglasses throughout except during a specific verse in the song – Toone Tirchi Aankhon Se Dekha Yun (when you glanced at me sideways/in that way) – here he is forced to stare with cocaine lit eyes. This music video has an obsessive number of set and wardrobe changes. There’s a wedding. There’s a lounge where he is in gym clothes, black and gold, a cap turned sideways, like Justin Beiber. There’s the crescent moon, he rests on it in what appears to be nightwear. There are also some clouds. He dances on them wearing leopard prints. The dancers stick to either all gold or all silver. A cracker bursts, the song ends.

In System Hil Gaya, Ram Rahim expounds on the experience of darshan (see Annexures 1 and 2 for a transcription and a translation). The first time she glanced at him, in that way, his system shook – could be due to the vibrations that can run through a body that is connected to a love charge. He proceeds to declare, like Kabir, that he is intoxicated in her love.

 

At this point, I worry that my tone towards Ram Rahim is being determined by taste, not morality. Ram Rahim sits on the shoulders of the giants of bhakti. Kabir Jayanti is a public holiday in Haryana and Punjab. Like bhakti poets, Ram Rahim has vernacularized. He sings in English, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Haryanvi, all together. He has sung in all genres, from devotional to rock to rap. Never Ever, despite Ram Rahim doing most of his dancing with his fingers again, can stand its ground against any American West coast rap video, it has 2.8 million views. In Ram Ram, another hit, he is singing on top of a large flying lion.

Like bhakti poets, he has de-mediated – he has antagonized all the reigning religious institutions in the region, including the Akal Takht (the highest temporal seat of the Sikhs) and the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC). In 2007, Ram Rahim’s followers clashed against the SGPC when he posed as Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th Sikh Guru, a blasphemy. In response, the Sikh clergy demanded that all DSS property be confiscated by the state. Later in 2014, Ram Rahim was implicated in a case of mass castration. Allegedly, he told his followers it was a path to salvation, just like gyana yoga, karma yoga, and bhakti yoga. In 2015, his film MSG was banned in Punjab due to fears that it would incite religious violence.

 

Like bhakti poets, he has de-centred. DSS mobilizes lower castes. It has followers in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. DSS support is pivotal in winning state and national constituencies in the region.

DSS is also international. I came across several photographs of DSS volunteers, called the ‘Welfare Force’, donating blood, offering assistance during earthquakes – in Italy, planting trees, running cleanliness drives, and next to them, thankful citizens. In these images, one is forced to acknowledge a reversal of the usual narrative, a reversal of the saviour and the saved.

Despite an abundance of bhakti, I am left with an uneasy feeling in my stomach. Ram Rahim’s songs are non-brahminical, non-vedic, syncretic (across denominations and religions), inclusive, vernacular, all boxes checked. If I am critical of Ram Rahim in the 21st century, I fear I would always be on the wrong side of history. In the 13th century, wouldn’t I have been against Dyaneshwar, who vernacularized religious writing – used Marathi instead of Sanskrit? In the 14th century, against Kabir, who faced the wrath of both Hindus and Muslims for his syncreticism? In the 15th century, against Guru Nanak, who stepped away from Hinduism and Islam to found Sikhism? In the 16th century, against Mirabai, who is believed to have engendered bhakti, rescued it from the clutches of patriarchy? In the 17th century, against Ramdas and Tukaram, who popularized non-vedic, non-ritualistic religious practises such as folk music?

 

Every bhakti movement emerges as a breach from the previous, and so does Ram Rahim. In my current reincarnation, I am against Ram Rahim, against the bhakti movement of the 21st century, against bhakti rock, against bhakti electric. It is I who is losing touch, not Ram Rahim. Ram Rahim style devotionalism is a democratic impulse, a tendency towards populism, whatever form the popular takes. Talk to Ram Rahim, as many have done, and he responds, ‘the youth have abandoned religion, what better way to bring them back in?’ What better way than to fuse Kabir and Yo Yo Honey Singh? We are sliding in this downward spiralling equilibrium, a Guru appeasing his devotees, the devotees appeasing their Guru, and religion falls through. This is blasphemy.

Religion is produced individually and collectively. Most of us free ride. We consume without producing. A mediator, the Guru, arrives, produces religion, imposes a form of devotion, we follow. The outcome, an unskilled untaught devotee and an unenlightened idiosyncratic Guru. Devotion is not a gift one arrives with, but a skill that requires discipline and practice. I do not mean it has to be mediated or regimented, simply that it requires working on oneself. It is not a subscription form. Not everything should pass as devotion and not all forms of devotion are equal. To reiterate, devotional acts, whether singing or dancing or theater or praying, requires one to work on one’s body, one’s mind. Without this work, the act of devotion is not embodied affectively. The emotions do not arise. The body does not vibrate. The ecstasy does not arrive.

 

I am forced to commit, at least in the specific context of devotional songs, where I think is the core of religion. It could be associated with ecstasy, joy, wonder, awe, elevated states. This is where folk singers like Parvathy Baul carry out their work. Beyond this core is the social dimension of religion that encourages cooperation and trust. Outside the social are the institutions, accretions of rules and norms. Calls of blasphemy generally operate at this institutional exterior: text, elevated individuals, etc. Generally, when we accuse someone of blasphemy, we tend to protect the house without realizing we have long been pouring water over the fire, the song, the dance, the music. The fireplace, the place of communion, has become cold and dry. The limits of populism are reached when the Guru caters to a lowest common denominator and no action is required from this devotee.

Ram Rahim operates way outside the core. He is programmatic – he runs a large number of charitable works such as schools and hospitals. His messages are social – do not drink, smoke, consume drugs. He is clientelist – a lot is available to his followers. He is rent-seeking – he has a lavish lifestyle in which his inner circle participates. He is nepotistic – the inner circle is mostly family. These are characteristics of politics, not faith.

I am in a Mumbai local train from Dadar to Churchgate. The children, who ask for money in the coaches, sing Tu Pyar Ka Sagar Hai (see Annexure 5 and 6 for a transcription and translation). Later, I return to the raw experience when I listen to Chi-Cha-Ledar (sung by Durga, written by Varun Grover and composed by Sneha Khanwalkar), also Tain Tain (sung, written, and composed by Sneha Khanwalkar) in the Gangs of Wasseypur. I also return to it, in a subtle form, in the film Seema (1959) where the song Tu Pyar Ka Sagar Hai (sung by Manna Dey, written by Shailendra, composed by Shanker Jaikishan) is first encountered. Balraj Sahni and a group of children render it calmly against Nutan’s chaos. One finds the sacred luminosity of the religious in the secular – in Seema, in Gangs of Wasseypur, and the profanity of the secular in the religious – in Love Charger.

 

We must recognize this is also a technical problem, of tone and pitch, of musical literacy, of schooling. If students engage with devotional music and dance, they will locate religion in joy and self-expression, not identity. In public spaces, ecstatic forms of association exist at the fringe, in sufi traditions for example. Even outside of religion, this argument is not new. Ravish Kumar and others sing it every day in the context of politics. We, as citizens, are poorly trained in civic ethics. We rely on identities as short cuts. This results in intermediation from politicians, which is generally welfare reducing. Like many others, I add to the chorus. In devotional songs, like in religion, and in religion like in democracy, only the self-discipline of daily practise will allow us to free our inner selves. it is essential to locate this self-discipline in joy. Only then will groups come together with songs, not swords.

Another time, another route, another local train, we are body to body. Some twenty or more men are singing kirtans as they have been doing for decades. They are called the bhajan mandalis. Many are declared as a public nuisance and slapped with a fine. Some have ceded, some have returned. The friction persists. What is ecstatic for some is a nuisance to others. Nowadays, we have bhakti-proper, embodied in secularized classical forms such as Hindustani, sung at music festivals in the tradition of Bhimsen Joshi singing praises of Krishna and Vitthal, Kumar Gandharva singing Kabir’s dohas – Udja Hans Akela and Sunta Hai. Yes, we have Vaishnav Jan, Raghupati Raghav, and yet …I have lost receptivity towards these traditions in their popular form. They have been transformed from the vernacular to the exclusive.

 

Here’s a summary. On the one hand, vernacularization of religious practises, in music, dance, drama, has served us well, and led to variety in our experiences. On the other, we are now arriving at a poor equilibrium – the joyful ecstatic core of religion is being hollowed out because devotees and Gurus, both, have abandoned inner work which is located first in the self, then in group practises. None are taught to us. Another part of the problem is the unconditional bhakti of bhakti – the persistent conflation of bhakti with subalternity, or democracy, these terms mired in conceptual opacity and overlaid by liberal patronizing tonality. Today, the song is substituted by the sword, abdominal breathing by chest breathing, joy by fear, the vibrating ecstatic body with a rigid muscular one. The religious morphs into the political, the Guru sings – belts – and the public sways without discrimination.

Much like travelling in a local train where the only sounds are the steel handrails going taka tak, taka tak, in their Bombay meter, alongside public announcements ‘Platform kramank paanch par aayi hui local saat bajkar, untees minute ki Churchgate jaani wali bara dibbo ki jalad local hai…’(The local on platform number five is the 07:29, 12 coach, fast local to Churchgate.)

 

Footnote:

1. Please forgive the lack of a guide towards transliteration and romanization. I also apologize for the broad interpretation of fidelity in translation.

 

 

Annexure 1 System Hil Gaya (Transcribed) Mera system hil gaya. X 3 Toone tirchi aakhon se dekha too, mera system hil gaya, hil gaya, mera system hil gaya. X 2   Tu aur main rehte hain abb, jaise chand sang chandni. Sang sang tere jo aaye mazaa, kar sakoon main bayan nahin. Tujhe paane ka chaya nasha, ho gaya main talli. Tere nashe ne andar bahar macha di mere khal bali. X 2   Toone tirchi aakhon se dekha too X 2 mera system hil gaya, hil gaya, mera system hil gaya. X2   Sargam ka sur ridhum hai tu, oh yaara pyare. Deen bhi tu imaan bhi tu, jaan tu ishqzade. Ek duje ki pehchan bane, ab hum too yaara. Do jahan mein tu hi tu hai mujhe sabse pyara. X 2   Toone tirchi aakhon se dekha too, mera system hil gaya, hil gaya, mera system hil gaya. X 2	Annexure 2 System Hil Gaya (Translated) My system shook When you glanced at me, sideways, my system shook, it shook, my system shook.   You and me are as close as the moon and the moonlight. I cannot express the joy of being with you. The desire to have you has intoxicated me. I have become drunk. Your desire has agitated me inside out.   You are the notes to my scale, my rhythm, my companion, my lover. You are my religion, you are my faith, know this, my rebellious lover. Let me be known by you and you by me, my companion. In both worlds, it is only you that I love the most.
Annexure 3 Tujhe Paa Ke (Transcribed) Ye jaana tujhe paa ke, Rabb pa liya tujhe paa ke. X 2   Lamha jo gujra, tere saath kya bataon. X 2 Tera ishq aisa rog, chupana chahoon, chupa na paon. Ye maana tujhe paa ke, Rabb paa liya tujhe paa ke. Ye jaana tujhe paa ke, Rabb paa liya tujhe paa ke.   Yaara tera ishq, dil ko lagga dil hi jaane. X 2 Ye rulaye ye tadpaye, ye hasaye, gawaye gaane. Aaya jeena tujhe paa ke, Rabb pa liya tujhe paa ke. Ye jaana tujhe paa ke, Rabb pa liya tujhe paa ke.   Jakhmi aisa hua, tu hai to hoon, nahi to mua. X 2 Meri jaan bana tu, jise dilse tune chukka. Chadhi masti tujhe paa ke, Rabb pa liya tujhe paa ke. Ye jaana tujhe paa ke, Rabb pa liya tujhe paa ke. X 2	Annexure 4 Tujhe Paa Ke (Translated) I knew when I got you, I found God when I got you.   The times we spent together, what can I say? Your love is such a disease, I can’t hide even if I want to. I believe when I got you, I found God when I got you. I knew when I got you, I found God when I got you.   Companion, your love, only my heart knows what it felt. It makes me cry, it makes me suffer, it makes me laugh, it makes me sing. I learnt to live when I got you, I found God when I got you.   I am so wounded, I am because you are, or I am nothing. You became my life, you tasted me with your heart. I became ecstatic when I got you, I found God when I got you. I knew when I got you, I found God when I got you.
Annexure 5 Tu Pyar Ka Saagar Hai (Transcribed) Tu pyaar ka saagar hai X 2 teri ek boond ke pyaase hum. X 2 Lauta jo diya tune X 2 chale jaayenge jahaan se hum. X 2 Tu pyaar ka saagar hai X 2 teri ek boond ke pyaase hum. X 2 Tu pyaar ka saagar hai.   Ghaayal man ka paagal panchhi udne ko beqaraar. X 2 Pankh hain komal, aankh hai dhundli jaana hai saagar paar. X 2 Ab tu hi ise samjha X 2 raah bhoole the kahaan se hum. X 2 Tu pyaar ka saagar hai teri ek boond ke pyaase hum. X 2 Tu pyaar ka saagar hai.   Idhar jhoom ke gaaye zindagi udhar hai maut khadi. X 2 Koi kya jaane, kahaan hai seema uljhan aan padi. X 2 Kaano mein zara keh de X 2 ki aaye kaun disha se hum. X 2 Tu pyaar ka saagar hai teri ek boond ke pyaase hum. X 2 Tu pyaar ka saagar hai X 2.	Annexure 6 Tu Pyar Ka Sagar Hai (Translated) You are an ocean of love, we are thirsty for your single drop. If you send us back, we will leave this world.   The mad bird, heart wounded, is desperate to fly. Soft feathers, blurred eyes it has the ocean to cross. Now, you console her from where did we lose our path?   Here, life sings with rapture there stands death. Who knows, where the border lies such a conundrum.   Whisper in our ears where did we come from?