Of saints and demons

Here in Bengaluru the headlines have been constantly engaged with attempts on the life of the Aol leader.

Being in the middle of a shoot (for a film, not any other kind, I promise) I've been glancing at the papers in passing and thinking - I guess it's a tech city so something must have happened in the world of the Internet and money and computers and all that good stuff. Hence, I felt a bit sheepish when I realised that the world had so moved on and Aol is in fact Art of Living and that the alleged, supposed, perhaps but probably not assassination attempt had been on Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the leader of the spiritual organisation, and not some corporate visionary. Oh well, I think you can say that at a metaphysical level the confusion may be excused, since capitalism seems to call up as much cultist hysteria as religion, which spirituality has most certainly become of late.



But the responses to the incident have not been of hysteria as much as pique.

Given that the police were informed some hours after the incident took place, there wasn't really a whole lot of scope for the assailant to be caught. Anyway they came, they investigated and they concluded that this was not an "attack" but an "incident." Since Sri Sri had left the pandal in his car just before, it appeared the shooting was caused by inter-devotee rivalry. I can understand that in an organisation whose whole purpose is the achievement of beatitude, this sort of high emotionality cannot be good for the image.

Still, you'd have expected relief that no one wishes guruji harm and a general thanks be to result. Instead, there was outrage. The devotees issued various Hercule Poirot type statements about how at 6.03 the guruji moved towards his car and at 6.07 something happened -- believing perhaps that only where there are numbers there can be truth.

The Guruji said he had got into his car to leave-but he had not yet left. Apparently his driver had had a premonition that there may be an attempt on Guruji's life soon, in which case it's unclear to me what they were waiting for. Should they not have left even sooner? But ignore me -- after all I thought Aol was an internet service provider, for Gods' sakes. What do I know?

The DGP stoically stuck to his position- pointing out that no one fires a .32 at 700 feet with intent to kill, and further it had only sort of hit a devotee because of which "a small portion of his trouser was torn and his thigh had slightly changed colour."

But who wanted to listen to his reasonable assertions when there are grandiose narratives in the offing? Followers declared Naxalites hate Guruji, as he had been converting their kind to the path of peace, and it was they who had attacked. Sri Sri also put forward his feelings on his website -- "This evening, a terrorist entered the Ashram. He fired a shot but it didn't cause much harm to anyone. His heart also got transformed after coming in this field of spiritual energy."

At this point we do not know which is the bigger bogeyman in India -- the naxalite or the terrorist. But we do know now from these claims, that goodness and a message of peace isn't enough to prove that something is important. A man must be attacked only by the highest order of demon as proof of his seriousness and significance. So I guess for our own self-esteem if nothing, we're going to have to keep those demons coming, eh?

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer, teacher and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. She runs Devi Pictures production company. Reach her at www.parodevi.com