'Miracles' and hope: Hathras stampede spotlights India's craze for godmen
Bhole Baba" and Ramkumari said a stone in her kidney vanished. The 85-year-old gave no proof but this story and countless others of similar "miracles" led to Baba's following rocketing in India's northern states.
A gathering addressed by the former police head constable in a crowded field last week drew a quarter of a million people and caused one of the deadliest stampedes in the country.
Bhole Baba, or Innocent Elder, was born Suraj Pal Singh Jatav. He quit the police in 2000 to join a series of Hindu preachers and gurus in India who are sought by millions for miracle cures and spiritual advice. They are often called godmen, and many have been wooed by politicians for the influence they wield.
Their patrons have included international celebrities like the Beatles, who spent days in the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the late 1960s. Some of these gurus expanded beyond India, most famously Osho, who lived and preached in the United States in the early 1980s.
Almost all of them are credited by their followers with miraculous powers.
Controversial preacher Bhole Baba equated himself to God, has biggest ashram in Mainpuri
«I had gone to one of his early gatherings and told him I had chronic pain from a kidney stone for many months,» said Ramkumari, Baba's former neighbour in Bahadurnagar village in India's Uttar Pradesh state, where he was born and still has a home.
The village has only about 50 homes in all and is set amid fields which grow corn, wheat and rice. On the periphery is a
