In election season, the rolling out of the red carpet for Dhirendra Krishna Shastri aka Baba Bageshwar, at Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath’s bastion of Chhindwara has evoked mixed responses within the party.
On Saturday, the self-styled godman from the State’s Chhatarpur region, arrived in a chartered plane, to hold a ‘katha’ over the next three days until August 7.
Mr. Nath’s son and Lok Sabha member from Chhindwara, Nakul Nath, the patron of the religious event wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “Welcomed Param Pujya Pandit Dhirendra Krishna Shastri [Shri Bageshwar Dham Sarkar] at Chhindwara airstrip. It is our good fortune that Gurudev touched your feet on the holy land of Chhindwara.”
Later, both leaders performed rituals at the inaugural event and listened to the katha, with the senior Nath describing Mr. Shastri as “the embodiment of spiritual power” which was India’s “true power”.
Congress sources said such “warming up” will ensure that Mr. Shastri does not speak against the party in the run-up to the Assembly election. Playing down talk of Congress also pursuing its “own version of Hindutva,” senior leader Ajay Singh ‘Rahul’ — who is the son of former Chief Minister, the late Arjun Singh, and is a former Minister himself — said such events should not be linked to the politics of “Hindutva”.
“We never had the Hindutva agenda of the Congress or the BJP in M.P. Before the BJP even came on the scene [in power that is] in 2003, I had organised the most number of kathas in Bhopal which was duly attended by the top brass of the BJP,” Mr. Singh said.
“Now kathas have become more prominent because they are a kind of status symbol that who is organising whose katha and how many people turn up.,” he added.
However, many believe that given the crowd-pulling abilities of Mr. Shastri, the significance of the event will be beyond its immediate context and have a bearing on the upcoming Assembly elections.
Mr. Shastri, who has a considerable number of followers across India and chooses not to associate himself with any party, has been courted by BJP leaders wherever he goes.
Addressing his followers in Bihar in May this year, the preacher asserted that India was already a Hindu nation and its announcement would be made soon, a comment that was lapped up by many BJP leaders and activists from right-wing organisations.
“Unlike the BJP, our idea of Sanatan Dharma is inclusive and does not discriminate between communities. That’s the core difference between us and them,” senior Congress leader from Bihar Kishore Kumar Jha said.
But a senior leader from Madhya Pradesh expressed a sterner opinion.
‘Babas alone cannot guarantee votes’
“It’s not unusual for people to turn up in large numbers for such religious events. But Babas alone cannot guarantee votes,” said a senior leader who hails from the same region as Mr. Shastri.
“You get votes by working for the people, serving them with the right intent, becoming a part of their joys and sorrows. It’s the pani, bijli and sadak that get votes and if winning elections was so simple, these preachers would have contested themselves,” he added.
On the question of Mr. Shastri’s Hindu Rashtra comment, Piyush Babele, media adviser to Mr. Nath, limits his response to a reference to the former Chief Minister’s statement that the “country will only run according to the Constitution”.
Some leaders such as Kantilal Bhuria, who was recently made the election campaign committee chief, refrained from commenting on the issue. Some others, such as Arif Masood, an MLA from Bhopal, describe such events as an individual initiative. The disclaimer notwithstanding, Mr. Nath attending the katha in Chhindwara on its inaugural day was streamed live from the MP Congress’ official handle on X (formerly Twitter).
As an Opposition party, Congress adopted different stances towards the preachers at different points in time. For example, when he went to Gujarat earlier this year, the local unit of the Congress opposed him.
In his home turf of Madhya Pradesh, however, top leaders of the BJP and the Congress, including CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Mr. Nath, have visited the Bageshwar Dham and sought blessings from the preacher.
Congress sources further claim that it was Chhattarpur MLA Alok Chaturvedi aka Pajjan Bhaiya who mentored Mr. Shastri in his early days as a preacher.
