India: From faith peddlers to Para Normal claim makers are big on TV, but fraudster Nirmal Baba takes the cake

From: Indian Express The baba and his recipes to stardom Seema Chishti : New Delhi, Thu Apr 26 2012, 03:03 hrs From Ramdev and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to Zakir Naik, television has spawned many faith leaders. However, Nirmal Baba is a class apart. On TV almost thrice a day, on more than 30 channels in India and the US, he doesn’t offer yoga or meditation for ailments, or address followers’ philosophical doubts. His advice includes asking disciples to stock fridge with cold drinks “to change their life”, to travel on a Shatabdi “to add some pace to life”, and allegedly to eat pani-poori (golguppas) to cure a health problem. Today, Nirmal Baba or Nirmaljit Singh Narula has an empire that has burgeoned — by his own admission — to over Rs 238 crore a year. And that’s just from offerings paid by bhakts. But charges too have been pouring out against the baba, even as there has been no let-up in his TV appearances, for which his Nirmal Darbar pays up to Rs 1 lakh for a half-hour slot. The allegations against him include taking advantage of troubled followers, and his samagams (gatherings) being organised TV spectacles with people paid to ask questions. With no visible machinery managing his money, a question mark also hangs over the crores flowing to him. As per a PTI report, there are at least three cases lodged against him in Uttar Pradesh, all by disciples who claimed to have been duped with recipes of “cure”. The Delhi High Court is hearing a defamation suit he has filed against a US-based website that accused him of black magic and tantric claims. The next hearing is on May 5; the court has told the site to remove content against him till then. Attempts by The Indian Express to contact Narula failed. On the web and TV, his disciples have risen to his defence, denying his gatherings were stage-managed and calling up channels to recount “their happy experiences” after coming into contact with him. Others have complained to the National Broadcasters Authority about channels’ “malicious comments” on him. In his samagams, Narula has called the charges “bade paimane ki conspiracy” by channels he hadn’t renewed his contracts with. The Gatherings Followers pay Rs 2,000 each to gain entry into his samagams, which are announced on the web. Payment is only online and bouncers are posted at the gate to ensure only those showing a URN, or unique registration number, generated following the payment, are allowed in. Nirmal Baba meets his followers seated on a larger-than-life leather sofa. As the thousands registered pour in — despite the absence of a public relations team, or any publicity material offline — there is a public outpouring of emotion, all captured on two cordless mikes, one for the local PA system and the other straight for television. A crisper version of these typically one-day gatherings, edited to a 30-minute length, then features on television as Third Eye of Nirmal Baba. The Indian Express tried to register online (unsuccessfully), sent an e-mail to the address on www.nirmalbaba.com (it was not responded to), and eventually went to a samagam being staged in New Delhi’s Talkatora Stadium on April 16 and 17 — only to be firmly turned away by bouncers. His south Delhi office does not have a significant representative other than receptionists at the enquiry counter. Requests for a meeting there, too, drew a blank. People in the broadcast industry estimate the baba pays mainstream channels between Rs 70,000 and Rs 1 lakh for the half-hour slot. Smaller channels are paid Rs 10,000-Rs 25,000. “On an average, he must be spending more than Rs 10 lakh a day to be on TV,” said a senior ad sales executive of a leading TV channel. The Money Not that he has to watch his expenses. In an Aaj Tak interview aired on April 14, Narula put his turnover from bhakts at over Rs 238 crore annually. Apart from the samagam entry fees, some of his followers regularly cough up daswand, a tenth of their earnings. In an interaction with journalists earlier this month, Narula insisted “there should be no problem” as his money wasn’t going to a trust or any such body. He cites Sikhism’s concept of dashansh (or putting one-tenth away for charity) to justify daswand. While it is to be paid before the 14th of each month, Narula says, it’s all good as it’s all voluntary. Justifying that his earnings were needed to pay for his TV shows, Narula is open about having no plans for charity. He is collecting the money, he says, to build “a large temple complex to house the shaktis (powers he claims to posses) after me, no schools, nothing else”. The Followers T V Venkateswaran of Vigyan Prasar, a government body mandated to promote rationality and a scientific temper, attacks Nirmal Baba. “Today, while the certainties of traditional religious beliefs, some very retrogressive, have gone away, they been replaced not with scientific worldview but with pseudo-science and half-baked ideas that modern-day cults have in particular caught on,” Venkateswaran says. “Cults of various kinds like this one rely not on core of ideas but just quick-fix ideas.” The baba’s followers will have none of it. Sudhir Kumar, an accounts manager from Ghaziabad, was waiting outside the Delhi samagam earlier this month, accompanying his wife and curious to know what the baba had told her. A family from Nagpur, having spent at least Rs 8,000 just to secure entry, told The Indian Express this was the third samagam they were attending. FULL TEXT HERE: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-baba-and-his-recipes-to-stardom/941484/0