SUDHANSHU MAHARAJ: Rich Marwaris and urban professionals flock to him, he’s in sync with their notion of ‘trad-mod’ IndiaAs you read this, Anandmurti Gurumaa is perhaps napping between her meditations in New Jersey. The goodlooking, sassy ‘gurumaa’ of the 24-hour Aastha Channel has to address the faithful today for two hours at the Scottish Rite Building, Lincoln Park, as part of her ongoing UK-USA tour. Gurumaa’s faithful at her spanking new ashram at Village Barli, Ganaur, in Sonepat, Haryana, will have to wait until mid-September to see their spiritual leader again.

Meanwhile, in the library of Berkeley University, a student of South Asian studies lifts down a treatise on Hindu philosophy from the bookshelves: Bhagwat Sindhu (New Delhi Tulsi Seva Trust, 1999). It is written by Kirit Bhai, the young, dynamic (and goodlooking) televangelist who hosts Bhakti Bhav on Zee Television every day, Monday to Friday, between 6.00 am and 6.50 am.All over the Indian diaspora and in the lush ashrams and spiritual camps across the country, assorted gurus, gurumaas and preachers play the spin-offs of their praxis. Web-sites are uploaded, vipassana camps waken and stretch in silence, ground water missions set forth in jeeps while aides at medical camps for the poor count their supplies. And always, a manager keeps an alert eye on the growing bands of followers, while messages bleep on their mobiles from channel programmers, these keepers of the wide acres where souls are harvested by smiling televangelists.

THE PACKAGERS

The performers maybe many but the packagers are few. The oldest player is Zee, whose Jaagran show (Monday to Friday, 6.50 am) is a decade old — as old as the channel itself. It has featured several gurus over the years and has a loyal following among the elders and fervent bhaktis. Zee also offers three series based on mythologies on its morning band on Sundays, Ramayan and Mahabharata (back-to-back at 9.00 am and 10.00 am) and Jai Santoshi Maa on Friday nights at 10.00 pm, thus creating the perfect package for its televangelists to leap from, into your drawing room.

Sony, Star and DD2 also telecast religious discourses at breakfast time while the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi channel (an elusive presence on the cable) also reportedly packages breakfast bhakti.

ANANDMURTI GURUMAA: The attractive Punjabi commands a worldwide following in the North Indian diaspora. Is considered a ‘‘rebellious seeker’’ ASARAM BAPU: He has 44 ashrams across India alone, and ashram products range from books, video- tapes to ayurvedic health foodsKIRIT BHAI:The boyish breakfast preacher on Zee was born in Porbandar. He was won over to spiritual activity by an inner voice at the age of seven and enrolled with a local sant, Shri Govindramji

The US-based Christian Broadcasting Network India set up shop in Hyderabad in 1997, and has since placed six programmes on several South Indian television channels. Nireekshana (in Telugu on Gemini), Thiruppumunai (Tamil, Star Vijay, Saturday, 7 am), Drishtanth, on the life and teachings of Jesus and two, ‘youth’ hosted programmes on DD2 on Saturday and Sunday evenings (Reach for a Rainbow and One-Cubed, both hosted by pretty young women).

Popular, by common report is Solutions on SS Music Channel, a Sunday, 7.30 am breakfast show, in which real people share their personal crises and faith solutions. But the best known are the two 24-hour Hindi spiritual channels run out of Mumbai and Indore respectively - Aastha and Sanskar. Aastha, owned by Kirit Mehta, is already a home staple, especially with senior citizens. It offers pravachan by an assortment of 12 babajis and three ‘ladiss’, layered with bhajan videos showing millions of miles of yatris at the Char Dham (four-site pilgrimage of Gangotri-Yamunotri-Badrinath-Kedarnath), and other circuits of sacred geography.

Sanskar is a kissing cousin. Health programmes on ayurveda, puja montages, spiritual Q&A, notes on cultural practices (why we wear bindis, why our honour is at stake in the matter of cow-killing, why the pipal is a sacred tree and so on), are the fluff stuff between the real thing: religious discourses. And it is here where the galaxies get crowded. Neither the channels themselves nor TAM-Nielsen ratings shed light on TRPs and how well or badly these programmes are doing. All channels remain secretive about advertisement revenues. But word-of-mouth ratings reckon the following players as reigning champions of the tele God Squad:

ASARAM BAPU

Top of the pops. Catch him on four channels on both sides of the International Dateline: Sony, Sanskar Channel, TV Asia and Asian-American Broadcasting Company. Asaram Bapu has 44 ashrams across India alone, mostly in the north, and his ashram products range from books and video-cassettes of his discourses to ayurvedic health foods. His face is familiar to most of the citizenry in North India through the decals that commonly adorn taxis and cars. In his sixties now, he was born Asumal Sirumalani in Berat Nawabshah, a village in Sindh, in unpartitioned India.

Folklore has it that a merchant stopped by Sirumalani’s house on the day of his birth and foretold the baby’s spiritual destiny. He ran away from mundane ties like marriage, went to Vrindavan and finally began intense sadhana on the banks of the Narmada. Evolving to spiritual leadership, he has a huge following running into thousands. His television style is natural and unaffected as he expounds Upanishadic tenets in homespun Hindi and his million-dollar smile is held to reflect his inner luminosity.

Anandamurti Gurumaa

Priscilla: Hosts the music programme One Cubed (one world, one music, one hope) on DD2. She likes Shania Twain and Amy Grant, country music and rock and rollThe star of Aastha Channel, this attractive young Punjabi commands a worldwide following in the North Indian diaspora. She is considered a ‘‘rebellious seeker’’ in that, as a woman, she questions the patriarchy on some of its most cherished fetishes like caste and women’s status, but she does it with calm and dignity. Her discourses (and books, audio and video cassettes) are testimony to her strong Sufi inspiration. Meera Bai, Kabir and Baba Bulle Shah are quoted and sung a lot. Gurumaa was born to a middle class Punjabi business family in Amritsar and reportedly had a life-changing spiritual experience 14 years ago. However, she and her followers are reticent about personal details. Her ashram magazine, Rishivani, is rated a useful follow-up read to her pravachans on the screen.

Kirti bhai

This boyish breakfast preacher on Zee was born in Porbander in July, 1962. He was apparently won over to spiritual activity by an inner voice at the age of seven and immediately enrolled with a local sant, Shri Govindramji. Like the other famous son of Porbander, Kirit Bhai also went west for professional betterment: but his heart was not in being a chartered accountant in London. The turning point came with a spiritual speech to Londoners on Hanuman Jayanthi in 1987, after which he struck out on his life’s mission: spreading awareness of the Vedanta. He has a huge fan-following amidst Gujaratis and in the Hindi belt, from top technocrats

in Mumbai to namkeenwalas in Ratlam.

Sudhanshu Maharaj

Dr Roy Verghese: Director of CBNIndia, the doctor from CMC Vellore hosts Solutions on Sunday morning about real-life problems. He likes Richard Clayderman, Jim Reeves and Nat King Cole, cricket and footballFor about a year now, Sudhanshu Maharaj has hosted the decade-old Zee Jaagran, the channel’s oldest show. At 45, he has been on the pravachan track for 25 years. A follower of Swami Sadanand and Swami Muktananda, he holds an MA in Sanskrit and nine years back, established the Vishwa Jagriti Mission in 14 acres on the outskirts of Pune. Eye camps, blood camps and creches are some of the schemes reportedly afoot. His satsangs draw hundreds of dedicated followers at two temples in Delhi and one in Moradabad. Sudhanshu Maharaj is clued into techie jargon and blends it with spiritualese, in the manner patented by the Chinmaya Mission. Rich Marwaris and young urban professionals flock to him in droves: he’s right in sync with their notion of ‘trad-mod’ India.

Christian Channel