(Ayodhya, the city which rather defined the contours of polity in recent times, has achieved an uncanny ability of remaining in news for different reasons. And the recent meeting of Sadhus from different akharas, who shared same platform, despite innumerable differences among them is a case in point. Despite being in an adverserial relation with each other many of them had joined together supposedly to fight their common enemy namely the scourge of terrorism. Many of these saffron robed sadhus made fiery speeches, but one could easily see that there was no attempt at engaging in introspection, nor any attempt to comprehend the growing metamorphosis of many mutts as centers of crime and the conflation of the criminal and the communal.)

The personnel of the Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh police recently had a tough time in Ayodhya when they visited different mutts. Gone was the bonhomie witnessed earlier when they were greeted in a royal fashion on their earlier visits. Of course looking at the job at hand they had to endure the cold reception.

In fact they were on lookout for some persons, including some sadhus who were allegedly involved in a bank robbery. A team of robbers had looted ten lakh Rs from the The Grammen Bank in Gonda and the police had discovered that members of the Mahant Arun Sadhu gang were allegedly involved in the operation. Police also had definite leads which revealed that the same gang was also involved in many other cases of kidnapping and extortion. The modus operandi of the particular gang was simple: commit a crime and take refuge in temples to escape themselves from the clutches of police. (Police Search Temples Looking for Bank Robbers, The Hindu, May 11, 2008 ).

The depradations of the Mahant Arun Sadhu gang reminded one of an earlier flareup when rival groups of Mahants had tried to slug it out in public for control over temple trusts. A write-up in prominent daily (The Telegraph, Thursday, February 03, 2005) had provided graphic details of the fight.

On Monday night, rival groups of Deoram Das Vedanti and Nrityagopal Das opened fire near Ramballabh Kunj temple, injuring the former, police said. Deoram is in hospital.

Tension was simmering between the authorities of the temples Janki Jivan Trust, believed to be cash-rich, and Nrityagopals Mani Ram Das Chavni Akhara over the trusts control.

The rivalry spilled over after a meeting on January 31, when the two rival chief priests came to blows, prompting their associates to draw out double-barrel guns and fire. Deoram, an accused in an old criminal case, was hit in the shoulder.

Earlier, in 2001, Nrityagopal had survived a bomb attack in the ongoing dispute over the trust.

It was the same time when police in Lucknow had said that they were looking for another Mahant, Shyam Shukla alias Shyam Maharaj who had played the role of a kingpin in the abduction of a Kanpur industrialist Ravinder Kedia and two of his associates. Kedia was released only when he paid a ransom of Rs 18 lakh.

For close watchers of the Ayodhya situation, the disputes over temple trusts can be construed as a routine affair. It was not for nothing that the Faizabad police had been directed by its higherups to remain ever vigilant over such increasing cases of rivalries between temple managements, infiltration of such establishments by criminal elements and the free flow of arms among Mahants and their associates. It does not appear surprising that there is clamour for gun licences among different temple trusts. A three year old figure tells us that at least 350 Ayodhya residents, most of them are temple-trust heads, have acquired licensed arms.

Rivalries between rival temple trusts have even witnessed killings also. In 1994, mahants Ram Pratap Das and Prem Narayan Das were killed following a clash over land. The year before, a temple priest was murdered at Janki Ghat. In 1995, another priest, Ram Arghya Das, was murdered, followed by that of Ramkirpal Das in 1996.

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