Historian Ramachandra Guha’s Misstep

Ram Guha, one of Bharat’s leading historians and author of the scholarly work India After Gandhi (2008) made a serious misstep in entering a field he is clearly not qualified to speak about, the realm of spirituality. CNNIBN ‘s Face the Nation had a program called ‘Are spiritual movements turning into business empires?’

It was well moderated by Sagarika Ghosh and the participants were Rani Jethmalani,Namrita Bhandari, Ram Pragya(director of the Art of Living Program) and Ram Guha.

Dr.Guha dismissed Hindu spiritual leaders such as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as rather shady characters who hobnobbed with money and big business.

Factually, ofcourse, this is not true since the thousands who attend Sri Sri’s discourses are far from being wealthy or business people, although many influential and wealthy people also do patronize his events. Sri Sri has millions of followers around the world. Similar charges were laid against Mahatma Gandhi during his lifetime, namely that he befriended wealthy business people, such as the wealthy millowner Shankarlal Banker in Gujarat.

Both Ms Jethalmani and the head of the Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Foundation easily rebutted Ram Guha, the former with a powerful battery of arguments on the significance of Vedanta and its role in bringing spirituality to the street (which
individuals like Baba Ramdev and Sri Sri do, and exceptionally well), and the latter in a smiling calm manner, displaying the maturity of a well honed aspirant in the spiritual life. His manner and style of speech indicated that grace and
graciousness (that Deepak Chopra observed about Sri Sri himself), a certain smiling lack of ego.

It is important to remember that Vedic spirituality celebrated existence in the
universe. It also elaborated on the four purusharthas : kama,artha,dharma and moksha and clearly laid out the Varnashrama Dharma, the four stages of life: brahmacharya,grahasta,vanaprastha and sannyasa. The active and dharmic involvement with life was advocated since the time of the Rig Veda itself.

Dr.Guha’s weakest moment came when he brought in the name of Mahatma Gandhi and upheld him as a a truly spiritual person, in contrast to the other two. In the first place, Gandhiji himself would have modestly turned down that compliment. As that commentator extraordinaire, Raghavan Iyer (as he has been called), observes in his book on Gandhi (The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi) one cannot but be impressed by Gandhiji’s goodness. However, that is a different matter from communicating spirituality to millions of people.

His ethical philosophy was crafted in the political realm and as he himself called his autobiography, it was an experiment with Truth. He was modest enough to admit that he had made some Himalayan blunders and he merely presented his
philosophy of non violence not as a finished creed but as an experiment which he was working with, in a pioneering way, in his Satyagraha or militant non violence.

He would never have allowed himself to be placed in the category of a Buddha(as Ram Guha did) and certainly would not have derided Sri Sri Ravi Shankar or Baba Ramdev as near charlatans, again as Ram Guha did.

Where he shares a commonality with these two spiritual figures is what Ms.Jethmalani described so eloquently as their capacity to internalize the truths of Vedanta and communicate this to the ordinary person for spiritual progress and for countering the abuse of power in politics. Both Sri Sri and Baba Ramdev in their respective domains, have empowered the everyday Indian,just as Gandhiji did.The association with wealthy people is only incidental to their work,again as in Gandhiji’s case.

And here it is important to emphasise that Gandhiji drew extensively on Hindu Dharma for his guidance. Most readers are familiar with his interpretation of the Bhagavad Gita and his exaltation of Rama as the ideal hero in politics,but he was also familiar with much of Hindu religious literature, a fact not as well known as it should be.

Hence, he would in no way, countenance the running down of authentic spiritual Gurus such as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Baba Ramdev He would have done the opposite. Dr.Guha would have been on more solid ground had he confined his remarks to some well known recent figures among godmen who have been less than godly. Both Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Baba Ramdev were the wrong targets to pick.

Charlatans exist in all religions, Hinduism being no exception. On the other hand,no country has produced such remarkable spiritual leaders from generation to generation. And the tendency in contemporary Indian intellectuals/scholars to
lump them all together is a sign of the times.

Hindus are prone to get bogged down by fashions in politics and the new dispensation is clearly unfavourable to the Hindu ethos.

Hopefully, Dr. Ram Guha will not fall prey to these new fashions. One hopes that this misstep on CNN IBN was a blip in what is otherwise a serious historian and his work.

(Dr. Rajiva is a Political Philosopher and taught at a Canadian university)

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