How Asaram Bapu built a multi-million empire

From the revered Bapuji – father, guide, god – of lakhs of followers, Asaram is now a rape convict. The 77-year-old is credited with other transformations – he declared that Christmas be celebrated as Tulsi Pujan Divas, for his followers, he turned Valentine’s Day to Parents Worship Day. 

More notably, he turned a single-hut ashram in Gujarat’s Motera to an over Rs 10,000-crore empire in little over four decades. What he, however, failed to achieve was taming the monster within.

The story is mind-boggling – a combination of causal breach of laws, devotees’ “donations”, political clout and money mixed well and multiplied.

The money, and the muscle it brought him, built up Asaram’s cult, with his mesmerised followers yielding their time, money, and even sexual agency to “Bapuji”, and allowing him to sexually abuse women under the mumbo-jumbo of “gyan” and “spiritual liberation”.     

Building of an empire

Asaram’s website describes him as the “Benefactor of the Deprived”, “The Spiritual Revolutionist”, and rather more enigmatically, “Embodiment of Causeless Unbidden Mercy”, and “Equipped with Yogic Potency”.

However, his potency extends to more earthly matters too – in 1971, he had one ashram on the banks of Sabarmati, which has now grown to more than 400 across the country and even abroad.

As devotees grew, so did donations, which were used to hold larger events and attract more high-profile followers. These followers then helped with land grabbing and shady investment deals, which brought in yet more money.

The rape case in which Asaram was convicted on April 25 was registered in 2013. After police began probing his empire, in 2014, it was revealed that he had accumulated over Rs 10,000 crore. This did not include the valuation of the land he owned across the country, and was only the amount traced through his bank accounts, and investments such as shares, debentures and government bonds.

In 2016, the Income Tax department found Asaram held undisclosed income of nearly Rs 2,300 crore since 2008-09. A report in The Indian Express says the tax department found “benami investments allegedly linked to Asaram and his followers in real estate, mutual funds, shares, Kisan Vikas Patras and fixed deposits running into several crores, said sources.”

Matters material

Asaram’s business interests are varied – from selling publications to shampoos, running gurukuls to lending money at steep interest rates.

The Asaram Trust prints over 100 publications in several Indian languages. Its Ayurveda unit prepares medicines, incense sticks, soaps and shampoos. A former employee of the trust had alleged that to bring down operational costs, they were asked to compromise on the quality of the medicinal preparations.

The Indian Express report talks of the lending scheme Asaram ran through his followers, “that offered cash loans to individuals and entities, including prominent builders, at a monthly interest rate of 1-2 per cent”.

The report quotes an I-T department source as saying: “The money was loaned in cash, with post-dated cheques, promissory notes and land-purchase deeds as security. We suspect that the scheme was used by Asaram and his followers to conceal donations received by the ashrams,” said I-T sources.

It continues: “Sources said a tax raid on one of Asaram’s followers last (2017) September yielded five haversacks of post-dated cheques, promissory notes, plot purchase deeds and allotment letters of flats allegedly obtained as security from at least 80 borrowers in Mumbai and Pune.”

Charitable trusts run by Asaram had declared only one-tenth of the actual donations received over the last 20 years.

On top of all this, his ashrams, often built on encroached land, enjoyed tax exemptions in various states.

Origin story

Asaram was born Asumal Sirumalani on April 17, 1941, in Berani village in Sindh province, now in Pakistan. His family migrated to Maninagar in Ahmedabad after Partition and set up a business in coal and firewood.

After his father died, Asumal gave up studies, in Class 3. From this point, different reports claim different things – he reportedly ran a tea stall near the Vijaynagar magistrate office, which is apparently still run by his followers, or a cycle repair shop, or an alcohol business.

There were brief spells of running off to various ashrams, including once a week before his wedding. The wedding, however, did take place, and his wife Laxmi Devi now helps him run his ashrams. Asaram’s son, Narayan Sai, a Class 12 dropout, his daughter-in-law Janaki Devi and daughter Bharati Devi all have roles in Bapuji’s empire. Bharati’s husband is settled in the US.

The name Asaram was given to him in 1964, by a spiritual guru Lilashah, who accepted him as her disciple. He was later reportedly asked to leave her ashram, after which he came back and built his own hut in Motera in 1971, from where he started preaching, and did not look back.  

Political connections

Among the political leaders who have been close to Asaram are Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Uma Bharti, CM Raman Singh of Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan’s former CM Ashok Gehlot and current CM Vasundhara Raje, and BJP chief Amit Shah.

The relationship was a symbiotic one – Asaram’s followers were a vote bank ripe for the picking, and in return, the politicians turned a lenient eye on his trust’s encroachment of government land, municipal land, and sometimes, even private plots.

Black magic, sexual abuse

In 2012, four boys were found dead under mysterious circumstances in Asaram’s ashrams in Gujarat and Chhindwara, Madhya Pradesh.

According to a Open report, in the Gujarat case, when the boys went missing and could not be found, the administrator of the gurukul “told them to go around a peepal tree 11 times and ask for the children”.

Later, Asaram apparently suggested that the parents should find a cross-road, "pick up seven stones, put the stones in hot water along with the children’s clothes and then take out the wet clothes inside out and hang them to dry in the children’s room". The children were supposed to then return within four hours. Their bodies were finally found from a dried-up riverbed close to the ashram.

But things really started unravelling for Asaram after a teenaged devotee from Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, accused him of rape.

Asaram would allegedly summon young girls and women to his “gyan ki kutiya”, hut of enlightenment, and sexually abuse them. The victims were brainwashed, threatened, coerced against speaking out. He apparently told women they had all been “gopis” in their previous lives and he was Krishna, and by raping them he was freeing them from material bondings towards spiritual liberation.  

Proving the case against him was uphill at every step – the lawyers who defended him include Ram Jethmalani, Raju Ramachandran, Subramanian Swamy, Sidharth Luthra, KTS Tulsi, Salman Khurshid and UU Lalit. 

Witnesses in the case were killed, the complainant’s family had their lives put on hold. The girl’s father, who ran a transport business, sold off his trucks to fund the legal fight. The girl and her siblings have never been able to enjoy a “normal” life, what with constant threats and the long court battle.

However, they did not give up, and brought down the mighty “baba”.

Asaram and his son are accused in another rape case, by two sisters from Surat. While the verdict in that case is yet to come, his story is an eye-opener of what blind faith and political patronage can lead to.  

Also read: What support for rape convict Asaram says about our obsession with babas