The Mad Monk

India's eight million sadhus are mostly a wild and wacky bunch of fanatics who go about naked, claim divine powers, and live on alms. "Many of them simply exploit you and extort money from you," Prime Minister Nehru recently warned his people. "I want you not to have faith in such sadhus."

Last week the people of Cuttack, 220 miles southwest of Calcutta, got a chance to test the truth of Nehru's warning. For a long time there had been talk of strange goings-on at the Kaliaboda math near by. A math is a holy place, but the one at Kaliaboda looked more Uke a fortress. Its walls were guarded by archers, and out of its portals from time to time issued a number of besotted sadhus who beat up the local inhabitants. When women began disappearing, people of the surrounding villages demanded that the police look into the Kaliaboda math.

Busmanship. The chief sadhu and founder of the Kaliaboda math was an octogenarian, self-styled Pagala Baba (mad monk), who had achieved fame when he told a gathering that he was, at the moment of addressing them, also making a divinely simultaneous appearance in a bus traveling from Cuttack to Calcutta. On the basis of this success he claimed to be a personal incarnation of the Hindu god Brahma, and frequently threatened to destroy the universe. His worshipful believers included many rich people from Cuttack and a maharaja or two. Even the police, before breaking into the Kaliaboda math, respectfully obeyed the mad monk's injunction against bringing leather into a holy place: they removed their shoes, belts, holsters, and carried their pistols and ammo loose in their pockets.

Horn bugles sounded shrilly as the police battered at the main gate, and from the walls archers and men with slingshots attacked them with arrows and stones. Bursting into the courtyard of the math, they found Pagala Baba, dressed in animal skins, sitting on a lotus-shaped throne, waving a piece of red cloth and shouting, "Let blood flow!" Sadhus armed with spears, tridents and heavy two-handed swords forced the police back, leaving one cop and two sadhns dead.

The Last Stand. When military police reached the scene, many of the sadhus had fled, but a sturdy minority, including Pagala Baba, had retired to a maze of underground cells within the tunnel-honeycombed fortress, and had to be flushed out one by one with tear gas. In the courtyard the police found a huge chariot in which the mad monk's disciples were wont to haul him about. Statues of Pagala Baba were displayed in the gardens and orchards of the math. His bedroom was adorned with tiger skins and statuettes of nude women. Underground, behind steel doors, the police found an armory in which were stacked scores of bows and arrows, swords, spears, piles of slings and sacks full of stones ready for use as slingshot. Near by was an archery practice range with a wooden target in the shape of a human figure, shot full of holes. Quantities of gold and boxes of jewels, gifts of the sadhu's wealthy admirers, were seized. In an underground dungeon they found eight recently abducted women, including an 18-year-old girl kidnaped on her wedding night.

Hauled off to jail, Pagala Baba demanded meat instead of the customary vegetarian prison diet. Said he: "I am indifferent to punishment by men because God's justice is supreme." Last week, given a "lenient" sentence of two years "because of his age," he was no longer so indifferent to man's justice. A number of wealthy Cuttack admirers, trustees of the Kaliaboda math, had persuaded him to appeal the sentence. He gave in, on the ground that the "high court is a little nearer God's justice than the lower court." But the people of Cuttack wanted no more of the mad monk. Said one: "Any sadhu who comes through here runs the risk of being stoned to death."

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