Richa Goswami
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YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS
As in 2023 May
Anand Mohan J, June 1, 2023: The Indian Express
“My job is not to ask people for votes. It is to bring the Raas Leela and Bhagavad Katha to every area in the state,” says the 32-year-old dressed in white, with rudraksha beads flowing down her neck, and giving audience to visitors at the Madhya Pradesh Congress office.
But, the Congress sure hopes differently. As it mounts a campaign to win the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections due later this year, Richa Goswami, a katha vachak with several “records” in her chosen field under her belt, is one of its most potent weapons.
Soon after his government was toppled due to defections from the Congress, Kamal Nath, also the party state chief, had formed a ‘Dharmik and Utsav Prakosth’ wing, and named Goswami as its head. Never shy of taking on the BJP over claim to the “Hindu” space, Kamal Nath is now going one step further. And Goswami is clearly an integral part of this.
Today, the 32-year-old is fielding requests by Congress leaders several years her senior to visit their constituencies as elections approach, promising to make time in her schedule, which includes touring the state for the party and holding “108” religious events at various places in the coming months. The Congress has lined up plans for religious festivals across all the 230 Assembly constituencies of the state.
Recently, when Kamal Nath promised to provide monthly aid of Rs 1,500 to women as well as LPG cylinders, as part of the Nari Samman Yojana, it was Goswami who kickstarted the event with a recital of the Sundar Kaand from the Ramayana. “People say the Congress does not believe in religion. I know the party’s leaders personally, they believe in religion but they have never believed in displaying this,” Goswami tells The Indian Express. But, she adds, now “there is a religious awakening in the Congress, and my job is to convince the people about this and to expose those who claim to be proponents of Hindutva”.
A native of Indore, Goswami grew up in an ashram managed by her family at Amarkantak. Her father is a Sanskrit grammar teacher and her mother a lawyer. She says that from an early age, she was exposed to katha vachaks who were trained by her father giving sermons at the Amreshwar Mahadev temple, which is known for an 11-ft Shivling statue made of rocks from the nearby Narmada river.
By age 5, Goswami says, she had begun learning katha recital, and by 10, was an expert in at least a hundred of them. Showing a YouTube video of her reciting kathas as a child, Goswami says that despite being a science student till Class 12 with ambitions of becoming an engineer, she finally decided to pursue this field as per her family’s wishes.
What followed was graduation from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Vedic Vishwavidyalaya, and now Goswami claims to have held over 650 sermons, and set a record for reciting “Shrimad Devi Bhagwat mahapuran ka mool paath” for 108 hours straight last year.
These are pretty impressive credentials for the Congress to counter the BJP’s “anti-Hindu” allegations against it.
Goswami now uses her YouTube channel, which she started in 2014, to take on the BJP, calling them “andh bhakt” who blindly follow rituals without being aware of their significance, and “goons who spread hatred in the name of religion”. She questions what the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government has done for cow protection.
“Hinduism doesn’t mean that you pick a stick and start beating up people just because they don’t agree with you. Before Hinduism, there was Vedic Sanatan Dharma. We accept all religions. We don’t discriminate between Hindus and Muslims. I believe in the ideology of Mahatma Gandhi and want to send the message to the people that this is the ideology of the Congress,” Goswami tells The Indian Express.
On more prosaic, political notes, Goswami attacks the BJP for causing the Congress government’s fall in 2020, expresses outrage over Chinese aggression on the border, questions the disinvestment of public sector units, and brings up the suffering of migrant workers during the Covid lockdown.
Lately, sitting at the party office, she has been one of the most aggressive Congress voices against the damage caused to Saptarishi statues on the Mahakal temple premises, within eight months of their inauguration, following strong winds. Blaming “corruption”, she has called the BJP government “sinners”.
Congress leaders say their main brief to her is to expose “the hypocrites in the BJP and R S S”. Goswami has clearly warmed up to the task, saying: “Those claiming to be supporters of Hindutva don’t know about our religion. They don’t know the basics… not even the names of the four Vedas. This has to be challenged.”
At the party office, a leader greets her as she emerges from a huddle with senior office-bearers, telling her: “You have the responsibility to root out these pakhandis (frauds).” Congress state vice-president J P Dhanopia insists that this is their only purpose in turning to Goswami, and not votes. “Hindu religion doesn’t put down people, it takes everyone along. We are all Hindus and believe in God. We don’t leave our homes without offering prayers. The BJP has given the wrong perception about us,” he tells The Indian Express.
Still, in Madhya Pradesh, the Congress has been flirting with a mix of religion and politics, emulating the BJP, for some time now. During the 2018 Assembly elections, the Congress had turned to the controversial Namdeo Das Tyagi aka ‘Computer Baba’ in the last leg. Once granted the status of minister of state in the outgoing BJP government, he had fallen out with the BJP later. One of Kamal Nath’s promises in the polls was a gaushala in every district.
Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, another controversial “godman”, Mahamandleshwar Swami Vairagyanand Giri, popularly known as Mirchi Baba, performed a havan in Bhopal using over one quintal red chillies for victory of Digvijaya Singh. He lost to the BJP’s Pragya Singh Thakur.
Later, Giri was arrested by the Madhya Pradesh Police on charges of rape and is currently in judicial custody.
Since losing power, Kamal Nath has portrayed himself as a Hanuman Bhakt, organising several religious events, holding a Hanuman path at his home in Bhopal, setting up a massive Hanuman idol on his political turf Chhindwara, and even courting controversy when he cut a temple-shaped cake with a portrait of Hanuman on his birthday in November last year. In March, Kamal Nath took on the BJP after a party event saw women bodybuilders posing in front of an image of Lord Hanuman.
Kamal Nath also routinely meets religious leaders, organised a “dharam samvad” of Hindu priests at the Congress state office, has promised to send 11 silver bricks for the under-construction Ayodhya Ram temple, and recently met the chief priest of Bageshwar Dham, Dhirender Shastri, who is the BJP’s new Hindutva idol.
The BJP dismisses these measures by the Congress as a desperate bid to cover its “mistake” in Karnataka of equating the Bajrang Dal with the radical Popular Front of India. BJP spokesperson Hitesh Bajpai says: “Since their Karnataka manifesto row, they are on the back foot. But this doesn’t always work. The Congress has been a party of Muslim appeasement.”
On her part, Goswami says, all she expects from the Congress is that if it comes to power, it would develop the Narmada Parikrama path, with facilities for devotees making the pilgrimage. “I have myself done the walk and people face many difficulties, even facing injuries,” she says.
As for elections and bringing religion into the same, Goswami says: “Religion and politics have always mixed in India. That is the reality… People need to be educated and they need to question their lawmakers. There is nothing wrong with questioning the government.”
