How Ram Rahim, the head of the Dera Sacha Sauda, Turned the Nepal Earthquake Into a Photo Opportunity for His Organisation

On 1 May 2015, as Nepal was trying to pull itself together in the wake of the 25 April earthquake and its continuing aftershocks, the country was greeted by an unexpected visitor: Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insan. In the midst of the chaos that followed the disaster, and the ensuing squabbles that took place at all levels of the government regarding aid and relief management, the brief presence and quick exit of the chief of the Dera Sacha Sauda appeared to have gone unnoticed. The Dera Sacha Sauda is a “socio-spiritual” organisation based in Sirsa in Haryana that claims to have over 50 million followers all over the world. It is actively involved in diverse activities such as helping people “quit homosexuality,” curbing alcohol and drug use and rescuing sex workers by finding “young eligible bachelors” willing to marry them.

Better known for the movie, MSG: The Messenger, which was released earlier this year—and in which he played director, writer, actor, singer, stuntsman and more importantly, himself—Ram Rahim, along with a contingent of nearly 1000 volunteers, reached Nepal on 1 May to assist in the wide scale relief effort. According to Aditya Insan, a DSS spokesperson whom I spoke to over the phone, the organisation chose to send a contingent to Nepal instead of getting relief material delivered to the country because, in times of disaster, when arterial supply lines are choked, “relief never reaches the last mile.” As a result, the DSS brought its door-to-door relief model, presumably, to reach the worst-affected areas and to ensure the efficient delivery of its supplies through appropriate channels. A press release that was published in The Telegraph on 15 May claims to have done just that: “volunteers, under the guidance and directions of Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan, provided tireless services, to restore normalcy in the affected areas of Nepal.”

What the press release neglected to mention, however, is that Ram Rahim had to be given special permission by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to enter Nepal, due to a pending list of criminal cases against him. These cases include charges for the rape of female volunteers within his organisation, the murder of a journalist for publishing news against the DSS, and abetment of the castration of 400 men to bring them “closer to god.” When I asked Insan about these cases, he appeared to believe that they were the work of those who were threatened by the Dera’s position on alcohol and drugs. He told me over email, “There is no Saint, leader, philanthrope or social worker in the history of mankind who has de-addicted 50 million plus people, created world records in blood, organ and eye donation, planted millions of trees, rescued women from forced prostitution and undertaken the mammoth 111 simultaneous humanitarian endeavors.Yet, if the powerful vested interests are trying to defame us with baseless accusations, the liberal intelligentsia ought to see through those designs.”

The DSS website states that 59 vehicles, which included “34 truckloads of foodgrains and rehabilitation material, 2 mobile hospitals with ultra modern medical facilities, 5 ambulances, 1 fire brigade, 9 buses and 8 Innovas,” were dispatched by the organisation to Nepal on 30 April. Insan told me that, “We distributed the entire relief material that we had brought to Nepal, including trucks originally intended for Bihar.” However, according to documents released by the Department of Customs in Nepal, on 4 May, only one pickup van belonging to the DSS was recorded as having gone to Nuwakot, one of Nepal’s 75 districts, which is about 75 kilometres northwest of Kathmandu. Beyond that it was difficult to confirm, given the lack of data with the Nepalese authorities, the number of volunteers, vehicles, or the quantity of relief that reached the district. I could find no records to verify the DSS’s claims either at customs, which is meant to keep track of all vehicles carrying relief items that enter the country, or at the administration’s office at Bidur, the district headquarters of Nuwakot, which was coordinating aid efforts in that area. The most that I could gather were anecdotes from locals and administrators in the area who told me that they had seen at least 20 to 25 trucks and around 1000 uniformed volunteers setting up tents and distributing relief.

The contents of the trucks are unknown, although the DSS website claims that the “Revered Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan HIMSELF [emphasis theirs]” along with 1000 volunteers of Shah Satnam Green S Welfare Force Wing, a unit that works specifically on disaster relief, distributed Milk powder, turmeric powder, Red chili powder, Candle, Sugar, Rice, Wheat Flour, Salt, Matchsticks, Refined Edible Oil, Plates, Cooker and other essential items to the earthquake victims.” When I spoke to the inhabitants of Peepaltar village in Nuwakot, where the DSS had gone for distribution, they seemed bemused. Not everyone had received a relief package, and they indicated that the primary concern of the baba and his volunteers appeared to be getting pictures of themselves clicked as they held blankets and pressure cookers once the tents had been set up, each of which bore the hand painted sign “MSG.” Ram Rahim’s Twitter feed is replete with these images and videos that show the villagers receiving their relief packages from the volunteers, who, the website declared, “have been the true angels for the victims of natural calamities.”

Given the scale of the disaster in Nepal, the relief efforts have been haphazard throughout the country. A majority of the distribution here has been carried out by relying on quick ad-hoc arrangements, citizen volunteer efforts and some form of state coordination with both foreign and local non-government organisations (NGOs). A lot of the aid is administered through various Village Development Committees (VDC) and is coordinated by the Chief District Officer (CDO) of that district, an administrative position for which the appointment is made by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Nuwakot district, severely affected in the earthquake, has 61 VDCS and one municipality itself.

When I first spoke to the CDO of Nuwakot, Koshahari Niraula, on 9 May, Ram Rahim had already abdicated his mission and fled the country. Niraula was incensed: “How can he come barging in here, spreading propaganda and promising to turn around all of Nuwakot, raising people’s expectations and just disappear without telling me!” According to Niraula, after reaching the district, Ram Rahim had insisted on staying put at Devighat, an old village on the banks of the Trishuli River, and an area that had already received enough relief. He was finally allowed to work in the villages of Ward 7 in Bidur. Niraula said that the DSS insisted on choosing this location, even though there were 18 other VDCs that the District Disaster Relief Committee had attempted to direct him to because they needed immediate attention. Niraula told me that, instead, Ram Rahim wanted the “freedom to go wherever he wanted unchecked” and do whatever felt convenient to him.

When I asked Insan about this allegation, he responded by saying that, initially, the DSS was “deliberately” given areas that were difficult to access.  “We were not informed that there were 30 kilometre long road blockades in certain VDC’s which made it impossible for the trucks to even reach there,” Insan told me. He believed that their insistence on choosing the area that they would go to was justified, since these conditions would have hampered their speed and efficiency.

According to the press release in The Telegraph, the DSS volunteers had completed reconstruction of a school, the Shree Ranbhuvaneshwari Secondary High School, in Nuwakot and “handed [it] over to the natives of Devi Ghat” on 9 May. Oddly, when I happened to reach the school that day, it was completely empty except for a lone staff member, and a few children who were loitering. All of them told me that it had been a day or two since anyone had seen either Ram Rahim or any of his volunteers in the area. As Pushpa, a member of the DSS, confirmed when I spoke to her over the phone on 27 May, the DSS had apparently left Nuwakot for Kathmandu on 7 May.

The press release goes on to state:

In this school, 10 new rooms were built and the flattened ones were repaired. Apart from this, a boundary wall was also constructed to ensure safety of the students. The Management Committee and the entire staff of the school expressed their wholehearted gratitude to Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan and the volunteers for this humanitarian gesture.

Although I could see an elongated structure of ten windowless rooms made of plywood and tin sheets, all of which were embellished with “MSG,” painted over the whitewashed walls, there was no boundary wall. When I asked Insan about this, he said, “I never said anything about a boundary wall to anyone. If it is in the press release, it is probably a case of bad translation or miscommunication, as there is a language problem in Nepal.” Pradeep Nepal, who runs the school canteen, also told me that no one had come to the school in the morning, making it difficult for the entire staff to express “their wholehearted gratitude” to Ram Rahim. Another building on the school premises, which contrary to the DSS’s claim had not been flattened during the earthquake, had simply been whitewashed and stamped with DSS messages on the walls.

Nevertheless, among the people I spoke to, those who had received relief from the DSS seemed to have reposed some faith in Ram Rahim. Kashiram Shreshtha, an auto mechanic said, “Baba told us he would build us each houses with four rooms and was going to fix 433 schools, but I don’t know why he was suddenly called away. This is very sad, he could have actually done good things for us.” Ram Rahim and his volunteers had left Nuwakot for Kathmandu on 7 May, two days before the school was allegedly handed over by the organisation according to the press release. They left for India on 9 May. When I asked Pushpa, during our conversation, about why they had left so abruptly, she insisted they had “permission” for only those days. She did not specify who this permission came from. In either case, the district authorities in Nuwakot I had spoken to, were definitely under the impression that the DSS was going to stay longer.

On 3 May, Jagdishwar Narsingh KC, member of the Constituent Assembly and elected member (through proportional representation) of the Nepali Congress, the leading party in the current coalition government, had accompanied the DSS volunteers to Peepaltar village and overseen the distribution of 200 tents. I met Narsingh at a hotel in Lazimpat in Kathmandu on 27 May, where he told me that the DSS had first made contact with the Nepali Congress, and that the principal work was coordinated with this party. He said, “The people of Nuwakot welcomed him, but it was the Communist and Maoist parties that did not want him to do any work here. It is because they don’t want to see relief being channeled through the Nepali Congress.” He seemed to think that this might have been the source of the CDO’s irritation and the belligerence of other parties who allegedly tried to obstruct the work Ram Rahim was doing by stoning his trucks in Duipeepal village. But even Narsingh could not say why Ram Rahim, along with his massive contingent, left without warning anyone. When I spoke to the CDO again on 28 May, he told me that he did not want to involve himself in questions of party politics and that he had lost patience with accounting for the DSS’s abrupt disappearance. He said, “All I know is I will never give those fatahas(thugs) permission to work here again, they should never come back.”

Meanwhile, on 7 May, when the DSS contingent left Nuwakot for Kathmandu, a case was filed against Ram Rahim in Rajasthan for the abduction of a woman who attended a satsang in his Sirsa ashram in March this year. Insan refused to comment on the case and told me that the DSS would issue a statement regarding the matter only after the court proceedings had been completed. Although Ram Rahim had sought permission to go to Nepal for a second time, his application was denied due to a court hearing on the rape cases on 30 May.