“Jahan apne aap sar jhuk jaate hain, uss patthar ko bhi bhagwan ka roop maan liya jaata hai

Jis jagah ko dekhkar parmaatma ki yaad aaye, wo teerth kehlata hai

Aur jis aadmi ke darshan se parmaatma mein bhakti jaage, wo mahaatma kehlaata hai”

(The rock, before which the heads bow on their own, is considered god

The place which reminds one of god, becomes a site of piligrimage

And the man whose sight invokes devotion in god, is considered a godman)

Filled with a deep understanding of people’s devotion in the face of hopelessness, these lines shape Raju’s unexpected spiritual journey after a life driven by materialistic greed. In the film, the most sought-after tour guide in Udaipur, a polyglot, who shows tourists the sights of the city with a restless passion, transforms into a calm, dispassionate guide for the spiritually lost.

Guide was a rare film that not only interacted with matters of faith and religiosity gently, but also extended its kindness to the portrayal of the godman in the Indian context. However, over the last couple of decades, the lens through which the culture of godmen and their devout following has been seen in Indian cinema, has been far less empathetic.

Indian films, cutting across regions and languages, have had a contentious relationship with religion. The culture of godmen, which is deeply rooted in Indian society, has often been a way for these films to mediate the concept of religion and its outreach. What is intriguing about this engagement is how Indian cinema, which began with films based on devotional and mythological themes, has reached a point today, where the depiction of godmen as conmen has become the most common trope through which this culture is perceived. It is striking that this continues to be the case even as the market for real-life godmen and godwomen, babas, sants and miracle workers continues to abound. The conundrum, then, is how does such a contradiction between the reel and the real continue to coexist?

There appears to be a common thread in films featuring godmen over the past couple of decades. Films like Maharaj (2024), Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai (2023), Trance (2020), Mookuthi Amman (2020), PK (2014), Singham Returns (2014), Swami Public Ltd (2014), OMG-Oh My God! (2012), Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006) and web series like Sacred Games (2018-2019) and Aashram (2020-2024) invariably depict godmen conning devotees, amassing wealth in the process. These characters, cloaked in the guise of babas, engage in business scams, sexual abuse rackets and political manipulation, exposing the dark side of the baba culture.

Films like Swami Public Ltd and Trance specifically portray the guru/preacher culture as a business proposition, with the potential to facilitate a journey from ‘robes to riches’.

Swami Public Ltd, a Marathi film directed by Gajendra Ahire, even features a scene involving a coldly precise PowerPoint presentation that categorises various types of gurus, much like the classification done by scholars such as Pavan Kumar Malreddy from Goethe University Frankfurt. In the film, this presentation, given to the swami aspirant, Siddharth (Chinmay Mandlekar) by businessman Nachiket (Subodh Bhave), highlights the business opportunities associated with being a guru.

In the Fahadh Faasil-starring Malayalam film, Trance, directed by Anwar Rasheed, fraudsters Solomon (Gautham Vasudev Menon) and Isaac Thomas (Chemban Vinod Jose), offer the position of ‘pastor’ to Viju Prasad (Faasil) as part of a business model to sell the ‘powerful drug’ of religion by posing as a miracle worker. Viju Prasad, dressed in expensive suits and driven in luxury cars while posing as Pastor Joshua Carlton, resembles more of an industrialist, emphasising the commercial nature of the role.

The godman-as-conman trope in these films relies on the theatricality of devotion that convinces devotees to join their cults. The factor that determines their participation and eventually pushes them into the cauldron of faith is not just fear, but also a sense of awe. Trance illustrates elaborate stage-setting techniques, complete with a 3-D animated backdrop, light effects, smoke and a choir that inundates the sessions with well-timed musical pieces and interjections of lightning and thunder. Planted ‘devotees’ who are to be ‘cured’ by Pastor JC (Joshua Carlton) are trained separately beforehand, to put on a convincing act before the audience. JC’s embodiment of a miracle worker is enhanced by psychotropic drugs, so he appears insanely impassioned while delivering his performance before the crowds.

In Swami Public Ltd, an entire sequence is dedicated to deciding the most effective appearance of the Swami, with teams of artists and designers selecting the appropriate robe colour, hairstyle and the overall getup of the godman. Eminent figures such as film stars and cricketers are paid to appear as the Swami’s devotees, along with press coverage of his activities.

These films not only take inspiration for their characters from real-life babas and miracle workers, but they also show the reel characters studying photos and videos of these real figures to learn and imbibe their body language. This creates a constant loop of mediatic exchange between the dramatic videos of real-life babas and their cinematic counterparts.

Media technology becomes a vehicle for miracle diffusion within this genre of cinema. In Trance, Pastor JC instructs his devotees to touch their television screens for personalised miracles within their homes. In PK, a Bollywood blockbuster directed by Rajkumar Hirani, Jayprakash (Parikshit Sahni), father of the female protagonist Jaggu (Anushka Sharma), runs with his laptop in panic to Tapasvi-ji’s (Saurabh Shukla) abode, after his daughter tells him over an internet call about falling in love with a Pakistani Muslim man. Jaggu is instructed to take Tapasvi-ji’s blessings over the call, as her father places the laptop before his guru’s feet. In response, Tapasvi-ji communicates a personalised bhavishyavani for her across continents.

Even older classics like Kapurush O Mahapurush (1965) and Joi Baba Felunath (1979) by Satyajit Ray depict babas as fraudsters. However, there has been a shift in the universe of these films from the era of Joi Baba Felunath to the age of PK. A clear distinction between ‘rational’ faith and ‘irrational’ religiosity has emerged in many of these films.

In his research paper, ‘Postsecular Longings? Religious Dissent, Faith, and Gurus in Indian Cinema’ (2022), Malreddy, drawing on scholars like Gregor McLennan, Saba Mahmood, and Talal Asad, explains this distinction through the concept of “intra-secularist post-secularism”. This concept suggests that while secularism should maintain its focus on reason and rationality, it should also accommodate matters of faith. But why is this distinction necessary in contemporary times, and why is it used to villainise the godman in recent films? Is this a reflection of a reconfigured engagement with secularism and faith, as scholars like Malreddy have explained? Perhaps. Or it may also be a reflection of the times in which such cinema has emerged.

Traditional religion has become a tricky terrain to question, given the controversies surrounding productions that try to do so in an environment where religious majoritarianism is on the rise. In such a scenario, highlighting a distinction between faith and religiosity becomes a safety valve for filmmakers to navigate criticism.

By reaffirming faith in a higher power while critiquing the ‘managers’ of religion like the godmen, instead of rejecting religion altogether, filmmakers can avoid risking ‘hurt sentiments’, which could potentially derail their projects. For example, PK begins with broad questions about how religions and their rituals operate but ends by narrowing its focus to criticise the ‘protectors’ of religion. Real-life revelations of godmen running scams or sex rackets add further fuel to this cinematic approach. Ultimately, this approach’s casualty is the spectator, who receives one-dimensional, cardboard cut-out villains in the form of godmen.

However, some hope persists with intriguing films like Trance, which imbues a certain agency in devotees, to express their rage when they are failed by their guru and humanises the guru himself, as he confronts his errors and mends his ways eventually.

(This appeared in the print as 'A Guide To Godmen')