Word: sadhus
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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...
...Best House. "In our country," runs the preamble to an Indian parliamentary bill which now seeks to put the sadhus under some form of government supervision and control, "the number of holy men is increasing day by day. Most of them indulge in vices, which, if not checked, will help crime to increase unabated." But to millions of superstitious Hindus, the sadhus, good and bad, are potent miracle workers who transcend the laws of men. Three months ago, when the beardless holy man who called himself Baba Raghubaranand arrived in Mokhim-pur, established himself without a by-your-leave...
...Last Stand. When military police reached the scene, many of the sadhus had fled, but a sturdy minority, including Pagala Baba, had retired to a maze of underground cells within the tunnel-honeycombed fortress, and had to be flushed out one by one with tear gas. In the courtyard the police found a huge chariot in which the mad monk's disciples were wont to haul him about. Statues of Pagala Baba were displayed in the gardens and orchards of the math. His bedroom was adorned with tiger skins and statuettes of nude women. Underground, behind steel doors...