Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev on Tuesday said that it was up to the people to decide whom they would like to trust after the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad (ABAP) issued a list of “fake babas”.
“The people of our nation need to understand by their (Babas’) appearance; we get to know their intentions. If they are fake or truly a saint. In our culture, we worship character, not the image. If we believe in Karma, then no fake baba can influence anyone,” said Ramdev.
“One is a person and another is culture, whatever happened is because of decline in someone’s character and Indian culture is very old and we had so many saints with pure and divine knowledge; the whole world used to take lessons from them and believe in them,” he added.
The Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad has asked the government to amend new laws against the “fake gurus”.
Narendra Giri, president of the Parishad, said that a total of 14 offers were presented where all the sadhus came together to talk about this issue.
“The committee was held on the topic of the Arth Kumbh Mela. There are many fake babas in the society and we are upset because most of these so called babas are being defamed. They are not baba and after thinking on this, we have listed a few who should not be called one,” he said while addressing the media.
The following names are included in the “fake baba list”:
• Asaram Bapu
• Sukhvinder Kaur aka Radhe Maa
• Sachdarangi
• Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh
• Om Baba aka Vivekanand
• Nirmal Baba
• Ichachadhari Vishwanand
• Swami Asimanand
• Om Namah Shivaay
• Narayan Sai Rampal
This comes after the Dera chief, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, was convicted in twin rapes cases, in which he has been sentenced to 20 years in jail.
Earlier, Asaram Bapu was arrested by the Jodhpur Police in an alleged rape case, on 3 August 2013, and since then, he has been in prison.
