Faith and sin: Putting together a never-ending saga from Karnataka

"Since August when news of allegedly murky activities involving the Ramachandrapura Mutt, a Brahmin religious centre in Shimoga, Karnataka, emerged, the story of its seer and a singer has unravelled like a potboiler. The saga began on August 27 this year when a former lead singer in Ramakatha programmes organised by the Ramachandrapura Mutt was arrested by the police along with her husband for allegedly demanding Rs 3 crore from chief pontiff Raghaveshwara Bharati to “suppress” her charges of sexual exploitation against him. A disciple of Bharati filed the complaint, accusing the couple of blackmail. Accordingly, the couple were jailed for 21 days. On August 28, the singer’s daughter filed a police complaint saying Bharati had sexually assaulted her mother in Jodhpur, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and 36 other places between October 2011 and June 2014.

In a statement to the police, the 47-year-old singer herself said Bharati, 38, had told her that she needed to “sacrifice her body” to prove her devotion to him and god. She claimed she was given a substance that made her lose control of herself, and that she was forced into silence. “The seer used to do all things in the name of Shri Ram. He used to depict himself as god. We too treated him like god,” the singer said. In an interview to a Kannada TV channel days after her release on bail, the singer said that it was only on June 30 this year that she managed to report her situation to her husband, who was an administrator at the mutt. The couple also alleged receiving a threat call from an “underworld operative” called Yogish... The mutt is the main religious centre of Havayika Brahmins, a small but influential community in Karnataka, and has followers among 17 other communities in the state, besides devotees from Goa and Kerala. Before Bharati became its head in 1999, the mutt had a low profile. During the BJP’s rule in Karnataka in 2008-13 though, it rose to prominence on account of its close association with the RSS..."