[www.google.com]

Hardlook: The cult of self-styled godman Virender Dev Dikshit

Behind the dozens of ashrams under scanner for forcibly confining women and minors is 75-year-old Virender Dev Dixit, who grew up obsessed with religious texts, resented his father, and shared a fraught relationship with women.


Written by Anand Mohan J , Alok Singh | New Delhi | Published: January 8, 2018 2:54 am

[indianexpress.com]

Quote

.The eight sisters had died for reasons which could not be explained. Some said the Brahmin household was cursed, others called it destiny. The story of the eight deaths in infancy in the Dixit household, in the sleepy hamlet of Ahmadganj in Farrukhabad, is now over 80 years old.

Around 12 years later, in the winter of 1942, some old villagers still remember how a heavily pregnant Leelavati Dixit read the entire Ramayana every day for nine days, asking the gods to spare her unborn child the fate of those eight dead girls of the family. In February, she gave birth to a boy who, unlike his cousins, survived. His parents named him Virender Dev Dixit.

The straw and mud house where Dixit was born has long collapsed, but everything else in Ahmadganj seems stuck in time — it has no street lights, no mobile phones, not even a television set. Yet, among the 150-odd Brahmin and Teli families here, the news has spread. That Dixit — the purohit’s son who used to read the Ramayana and race his buffaloes in the fields — is wanted as an alleged rapist, a fake godman who built ashrams across India where he kept women confined, and a land grabber who duped devotees to build the Adhyatmik Vishwavidyalaya.

For the rest of this feature story, go here.

[indianexpress.com]

Corboy opinion: I think there is something suspicious in the news story given above concerning Virendra Dixit's family of origin.

The future guru's previous eight baby sisters all died in infancy. His only surviving sibling, another sister, was born 12 years after he was.

Eight baby girls all dying as infants.

This death pattern in one family is far beyond what can be accounted for by ordinary pediatric illnesses.

The context: a poor family in rural India.

Corboy surmises that deaths were most likely not caused by a family curse.

Corboy further surmises that the boy Virendra Dixt survived infancy not because his mummy read the Ramayana each day.

Corboy's guess is that Verendra Dixit survived infancy because he was a male.

In Hindu families, daughters must marry and require weddings and dowries.

Too many girls can impoverish a family. Yet, such families are desperate to have at least one son - the son earns wealth for the family and only the son can conduct the funeral rituals for his father. So a woman endures repeated pregnancies so long as there is no son.

Girls are economic liabilities. Boys are economic assets.

The traditional solution: female infanticide.

Google female infanticide "brahmins"

[www.google.com]

What would it have done to Verendra Dixit's mother to go through all this?

What did it do to Verendra Dixit himself growing up in such a ghastly context?

This does not excuse his ghastly use and abuse of females.

But we must face that Verendra Dixit was not a monster created from nothing.

He was created by India's ancient tradition that the male has worth and the female
is not merely worthless but a liability.

Someone once summed it up.

"India worships goddesses and degrades women."

Corboy opines that raditional Hindu values created the ghastly family that produced Verendra Dixit.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2018 06:14AM by corboy.