Scandal, Sex, and Skeletons: Aashram and the predictable villainy of on-screen godmen
The MX Player web-series Aashram (2020) follows a similar blueprint in tackling India’s fascination with seductive, flawed godmen—mysticism, sex, violence, and masala—without daring to truly examine the deeper roots of society’s discontents.
From its onset, Prakash Jha’s series Aashram (2020) exposes you to the eerie reality of navigating 21st century India as a Dalit—an India where Dalit oppression is the norm and caste identity trumps merit. Pammi (Aditi Pohankar), a talented and fierce Dalit woman wrestler, is unfairly made to lose against her upper-class, upper-caste rival. Her caste proves to be her undoing. “Sada gala caste system hai aur sadd gal rahe hai hum…Daliton ke ghar janam liya hai to bhugatna to padega.” The caste system is rotten, she says, and, as a result of this, we are rotting. We have to bear the consequences of being born as a Dalit.
She is heartbroken and dejected at her dashed dreams, leaving viewers behind with the sting of her words. Minutes later, we witness a wedding procession where words such as ‘uncchi-jaat’ (high caste) and ‘azadi’ (freedom) are interspersed in the festivities, and the atmosphere palpably tense. The groom (Pammi’s cousin) wants to sit on a mare, as goes the Hindu tradition, and take his baraat through the forbidden upper-caste locality. He is emboldened, despite the protestations of elders in the family, by his ‘upper-caste’, ‘upper-class’ journalist friend who thinks, much like many others, that caste is a thing of the past.
But caste lies seeped in the very fabric of the country, enveloping its inhabitants like second skin. The wedding procession is attacked brutally by a violent mob that believes it has the right to show them their place, should they dare to transgress. “Suar ke bachche keechad mei khelein toh hi theek, sadak pe naachenge to aa jayenge gaadi ke neeche” (Piglets belong in the muck, of course they would be run over by a car if they come on the streets). The message given by them is clear, demanding the maintenance strict compartmentalisation between ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ castes. A baraat is allowed to celebrate, but with some caveats; those that defy the norms of the society will face sordid repercussions.
The ignominy hits the already wounded Pammi harder. Determined to bring the perpetrators to task, she files an FIR much to the dismay of the presiding police officer. The ripples of this act jeopardise her brother’s life, who is lying unattended in the local hospital, blood drenching from his wounds. The ‘upper-caste’ men lock up the doctors, denying treatment to the dying till the FIR is retracted.
Despite the solid beginning, Aashram eventually ends up looking cluttered with a lot of familiar themes—blind devotion, politician-baba nexus, shady business deals, forced castrations, and sex scandals—all jostling for space.
I clenched my fist, grit my teeth and hung my head in shame, startled at the injustice faced by Pammi and her clan, almost guilty of the privileges of my own birth. Just when Pammi is forced to bequeath her fight for justice, walks in Baba Nirala (Bobby Deol) hailed as the Gareebon wale Baba—the godman of the poor—flanked with his followers thronging outside the hospital. A devotional background score accompanies his arrival, flowers flung on him as a sign of awe and respect and men and women prostrate in front of him as an act of complete devotion. In a truly Robin Hood-esque manner, Baba sets things right the minute he sets foot in the hospital providing the much needed—albeit momentary—release of the pent-up emotions.
The irony of a spiritual guru setting things right in a hospital is not lost; it looks even more farcical especially because the viewer understands early on that Nirala is no messiah. The first scene of the series captures the valiant Pammi defiant against this predator in the garb of the protector (the succeeding episodes transpire as a flashback). We know his is a mask waiting to fall.
As expected, we soon discover that this ‘saviour’ has skeletons in his closet: the unearthing of a literal skeleton traces the bloody backstory of the baba.
This is precisely the point where the series falls prey to predictability. It is marred further by an outlandish love-at-first-sight sub-plot involving a forensic expert Dr Natasha (Anupriya Goenka) and the same corrupt cop Ujagar Singh (Darshan Kumaar) who dissuaded Pammi from filing the FIR. Except now he is on the right side of the law, propelled to action by a pang of love, rather than call of duty. The skeleton becomes the perfect opportunity for corrupt cops and conniving politicians to reap handsome dividends as the investigation closes in on Nirala, throwing the plot into a tiring rigmarole we are all too familiar with. The show begins to lose its sheen here, despite solid performances by the cast, especially Deol who is effectively measured.
Despite the solid beginning, Aashram—streaming on MX Player—eventually ends up looking cluttered with a lot of familiar themes—blind devotion, politician-baba nexus, shady business deals, forced castrations, and sex scandals—all jostling for space.
Though Jha carves out Nirala as a somewhat composite baba fashioned after many godmen of our time, the parallels with the flamboyant and flashy Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh are obvious. Nirala’s sprawling ashram, fleet of fancy cars, countless ‘sevadars’ and ever-increasing followers are all a nod to Singh’s ostentatious lifestyle, and serve no other purpose than to refresh public memory. The series would have been more gripping if it attempted instead to uncover how an ordinary man from an ordinary background grows into this quasi-god like figure, who seems to be above the law.
For a series that began as a tirade against the caste system, the show also fails to showcase how Nirala (and many babas like him) use caste as a tool to make bigger bargains, sacrificing those they seemingly protected at the altar of dirty politics, which is behind their subjugation in the first place.
Aashram could have been Jha’s redemption after a string of shaky films such as Chakravyuh, Satyagraha and Jai Gangaajal, which were marred not by the subject but by the director’s formulaic execution. Unfortunately, this series too succumbs to clichés, which is as much a disservice to the viewer as to the filmmaker who has played a huge role in enhancing our understanding of issues such as caste politics, police apathy and corruption as they play out in the Hindi hinterland.
A part of the tired familiarity of watching Aashram stems from our own fatigue of the godman genre. The genre, which has seen its hay days in the Hindi cinema of 70s and 80s, has had a renaissance of late converging with the rise of the OTT platforms. Think Wild Wild Country (Netflix), Sacred Games (Netflix), and the very dreadful Sadak 2 (Hotstar). The medium has evolved, but the subject and the execution remain archaic, with little new or remarkable to pique the viewer’s attention.
Wild Wild Country (2018) is perhaps the only exception which speaks to the audiences but it differs from the rest in both form and execution. For one, it is a documentary that delves into a so-called spiritual movement headed by the immensely popular cult leader Osho, who captured public imagination in an almost unprecedented manner. Besides, it takes the viewer straight to the Rajneeshpuram community by putting the spotlight on real members of the controversial commune, on Ma Ananda Sheela, westerners who followed ‘Bhagwan’ mesmerised by his charisma, and the disgruntled local inhabitants of Oregon who were vastly inconvenienced by the unexpected infiltrators. The contrarian viewpoints, the attention to minute details, and carefully curated real time footage deftly interspersed in the narrative, making it an immensely satisfying watch.
Fake gurus are way too many in number in our culture that by now we know these are cults built on indoctrination, manipulation, and cognitive dissonance… We know their empires are built on a symbiotic relationship with those holding highest corridors of power. And we know beneath the foundation of the empire is a pile of skeletons.
The succeeding attempts at showcasing fake godmen on screen have mostly fallen between the cracks. Take the commune part of Sacred Games featuring the exceptionally talented Pankaj Tripathi as Guruji, which almost looks like a clone of Wild Wild Country. Guruji is projected as a man who would lead the world from darkness—or Kalyug—into Satyug. The real life Osho wanted to nudge humanity to some kind of awakening of which he would be the harbinger. He was careful enough to position himself as the crusader against the empty spirituality of the East and mindless materialism of the West. ‘Bhagwan’ famously called his followers materialist spiritualists. For his followers of course, he was “modern, hip, a fashion…he was bigger than a rockstar”. At one point in Wild Wild Country, Sheela says, “I saw Bhagwan and that was the end of me…My life was complete. My life was fulfilled.”
In Batya Abelman (Kalki Koechlin; Sacred Games 2), we have another Ma Ananda Sheela. She is the perfect aide to Guruji, much like Osho’s Sheela. Batya calls the shots in Guruju’s commune just like Sheela who almost has a free run in Rajneeshpuram.
Meanwhile, Makarand Deshpande as the ridiculously farcical dhongi baba in Sadak 2 – the newest (and most dispensable) addition to a flurry of onscreen representations of Godmen comes across as a caricature straight out of a 90s movie.
These representations fashioned after the very many real-life examples of fake godmen such as Asaram Bapu, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, Nirmal Baba now seem anachronistic, unless the makers find a truly ingenious ways to present a story. What do they have to offer to an audience saturated by reel representations of real conmen? Fake gurus are way too many in number in our culture that by now we know these are cults built on indoctrination, manipulation, and cognitive dissonance. We know their solutions to navigate a world marked by inequalities. We know their proclivity towards free love and unhinged sex. We know they are smooth-talkers shrouded in a cloak of mysticism. We know their empires are built on a symbiotic relationship with those holding highest corridors of power. And we know beneath the foundation of the empire is a pile of skeletons.
This is precisely the reason a show such as Aashram loses its allure after the first two episodes. It would be truly remarkable if the makers manage to turn things around—no tacky subplots, no mindless diversions, and no meandering episodes stretching to an hour—in the impending Season 2 of the web series. By the looks of it, this next season will have a lot more to offer. There are too many loose ends and unanswered questions in the first season that I would definitely want a closure on: How did Monty become Nirala? What is the back story of the skeleton that launches an investigation against the infallible Baba? Will Pammi succeed in busting the racket?
And perhaps, most pertinently, will the caste battle that is so impressively staged in the beginning find space in the subsequent narrative?
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Harshita Murarka is a communications professional currently associated with a UK-based firm. She holds a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Delhi and a Master’s in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has an inclination towards arts, culture and Hindi cinema which leads to occasional stints in writing. You can find her on Instagram: @nectar_in_a_sieve and Twitter: @HarshitaMurarka.
