Word: sadhus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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There are other brakes on progress: the rigidly entrenched caste system, the antipathy of the educated toward manual labor, the 8,000,000 wandering sadhus or holy men (80% reputed to be frauds) who live in idleness. These and the leaden weight of superstition and ignorance make of Indian life, in Nehru's despairing words, "a sluggish stream, living in the past, moving slowly through the accumulations of dead centuries...
Sadhu is the Sanskrit word for "straight," and the straight-living, ascetic sadhus of India were once the bearers of Hindu holiness. Robed in saffron or stark naked, smeared with ashes or painted vermilion, shaven bald or mat-haired, they wandered through the world with their begging bowls, dispensing sacred teaching, sage advice and examples of the unworldly life. Inevitably another breed of sadhu arose that was anything but straight. Trading on the enormous prestige of the holy men, these daubed wanderers move from village to village dispensing magic charms and quack cure-alls and mulcting the credulous peasants. Today...
Blood In the Brain. Purpose of the project is twofold: 1) to issue identity cards to all sadhus and thus drive the crooks out of business by denying them cards; 2) to harness sadhu selflessness for the social betterment of India. The pilot plant at Rishikesh, run by the Indian Association of Sadhus, is a complex of one-story concrete-and-brick buildings equipped with such unascetic features as electric lights, telephones, and outboard motor dinghies to ferry sadhus and supplies across the river. Fifty holy men from all over the country are spending a month there studying political philosophy...
...sadhus-in-training (one is an M.A. in philosophy and psychology, and several are retired government officials) rise at 4 a.m. and go to bed at 9 p.m., spend the day in prayers, lectures, exercises and devotional chants, plus the chorusing of such slogans as "Help Raise India" and "The Way to Godhood Is to Be Good, Do Good...
Double-Edged Sword. The "government sadhus," as old-line holy men already contemptuously call them, are expected to return to their own parts of the country equipped to combat such evils as the caste system, official corruption, adulteration of foodstuffs and the disuniting influence of local dialects. They will also try to debunk the sadhu as an object of superstitious awe by presenting themselves simply as do-gooders, rather than miracle men, and interpreting Hindu scripture in terms of social service...