Asaram Wiki, Age, Wife, Children, Family, Biography & More – WikiBio
Asumal Sirumalani Harpalani, commonly known by his followers as Asaram Bapu, is the religious and spiritual leader of Hinduism in India. He was known as God Man in the late 1960s. Assalam is serving a life sentence in Jodhpur prison until 2021 after he was convicted of raping an underage girl in 2018.
Wiki/Biography
Asaram was born on Thursday 17 April 1941 as Asumal Sirumalani (80 years old; as of 2021) in Berani village, Shaheed Benazir Abad district (Nawabshah), Sindh province, British India (now Berani town is located in Jam Nawaz Ali Tehsil, Sanghar district, Sindh province, Pakistan). His zodiac sign is Aries.
After the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, Assalam and his family moved to Maninagar, Ahmedabad (then part of the former Indian state of Mumbai). His family left all real estate in Sindh. Asaram attended Jai Hind High School in Ahmedabad. In Ahmedabad, Assalam’s father started a coal and timber sales company. When Assalam was 10 years old, his father died. After his father’s death, Asaram left his school (reading to class 3) to run his father’s business. He worked there for a while before moving to Vijapur, a city in the Mehsana district of Gujarat. When Asaram was 15, to escape his marriage to Laxmi Devi, he ran away from home and went to a ashram in Bharuch, Gujarat. However, his family convinced him to go home and tie the knot with Laxmi. A few years later, he ran away from home again and moved to Nainital in Uttarakhand. There, he met a local religious spiritual figure named Lilashah at a ashram.
Lirasha ordered him to go home. Thirteen days after returning, he went to Lirasha again to practice and became her disciple. On October 7, 1964, she renamed him “Sant Shri Asaramji Maharaj”. Before establishing himself as a god-man, Assalam worked in many occupations, such as:
- In 1958-59, he sold tea in front of the magistrate’s office in Ahmedabad. The tea shop is reportedly owned by one of his relatives, Sevak Ram, and is still open.
- In the 1960s, he started selling alcohol with his four partners, Jamarmal, Nathumal, Kishammal and Lachrani. He made huge profits from his business.
- After that, he worked for a while in a dairy factory and used to earn 300 rupees a month.
- Asaram has also been involved in bicycle repairing and sugar trading for a while.
appearance
hair color: salt and pepper
eye color: Black
family and caste
Asaram was born into a Hindu Banya family.
parents and siblings
Asaram’s father Thaumal Sirumalani was a businessman. He runs a coal and lumber sales business. His mother’s name was Mehangirba.
wife and children
Asaram is married to Laxmi Devi (spiritual leader). The couple have a son named Narayan Prem Sai (religious leader) and a daughter named Bharati Devi (religious preacher). His son Narayan was also convicted in a rape case and is currently serving his sentence in Jodhpur prison. Assalam was never ordained as a monk. He has been living the life of a housewife.
Spiritual Journey
Asaram returned to Ahmedabad in the early 1970s and lived in Sadashiv Ashram in Motera for two years. Later, in January 1972, he built his own cabin next to it.
He soon began his spiritual preaching and became a popular Katha-Vachak (a religious storyteller). Often a mix of humor, music and dance, his speeches attracted a wide following of the Dalit community from other backward classes. In 1973, he converted his cottage into a small monastery.
Slowly, he also began to attract followers of the upper castes. Asaram provides free food at his ashram. He even, with the help of his disciples, started to hold banquets in the tribal areas and distribute utensils and clothes to the poor. Soon, he began to receive financial assistance from the local government and began to expand his business. By the end of 2013, Asaram had more than 400 monasteries large and small in India and abroad, with more than 40 million followers.
his teaching
Asaram’s core teaching emphasizes Brahmcharya (celibacy) and the Guru-Shishya relationship. His followers are required to trust him completely and blindly follow his teachings. His Satsangs combine quotes and life tips on everything from marital happiness to the treatment of diseases like cancer. In his speech, he criticized society’s increasing sexual liberation and opposed the adoption of Western culture in Indian society.
On February 14, 2013, his Shri Yogi Vedanta Seva Samiti organized Matru Pitru Poojan Divas (Mother Worship Day) to eradicate the invasion of Western culture. Following Assalam’s teaching, the Chhattisgarh government instructed all schools in the region to hold Matru-Pitru Diwas on February 14 every year.
Asaram was against conversion to Christianity, and to combat the celebration of Christmas, Asaram started Tulsi Poojan Diwas (Day of Worship of Tulsi – the sacred plant of Hinduism) on December 25, 2014. Apart from Satsangs, his teachings are also available in pre-recorded form and they are also disseminated through mass media. In his speech, he gave “Diksha” (the initiation of a master) to his devotees.
In addition to his teachings, Assalam also distributes medicines “made in practice” to his ardent followers.
extraordinary miracle
Before his arrest in 2013, Assalam’s cult claimed he was capable of performing amazing miracles. Even after his arrest in 2013, dubious stories of miracles performed by Assalam were touted to keep his supporters in the faith. Some of them are:
- A devotee once recalled that one day he was going home after a Satsang when it was raining heavily. He asked Assalam how he could get home, and Assalam looked up at the sky and said, “Stop now!” The rain stopped immediately.
- Another devotee of Asaram recalled how his young son was cured of aphasia (the inability to express language) after giving him a piece of butter as advised by his guru.
dispute
- In 1959, Assalam and his relatives were accused of murder. They reportedly murdered a man while drunk in Vijapur. However, he was released on bail due to lack of evidence.
- In 2000, people from Bhairavi village, Navsari district, filed a complaint against Asaram for encroaching on 6 acres of land out of the 10 acres allocated by the Gujarat government.
- The following year, he was charged with encroaching on 100 acres of land (worth over Rs 700 crore) at the Mangalya Temple in Madhya Pradesh. He reportedly rented the place to practice, but his ashram’s Yoga Vedanta samity didn’t vacate the space.
- In 2002, Asaram and his followers forged all the property of Rajokri devotee Bhagwani Devi. His followers first persuaded her to donate a portion of her land to Assalam’s trust and later deceived her.
- In 2008, Assalam was accused of practicing black magic after the disappearance of two boys at a gurukul boarding school (gurukul) in Motra (Gujarat). Their parents also claimed that Assalam prevented them from filing a police complaint. In late July 2013, the boys’ bodies were found on the Sabarmati river bed next to the ashram. The corpse was dismembered and some vital organs were lost. The incident caused a public uproar.
- In Bhilwara (Mewar, Rajasthan), Nashik Municipal Corporation destroyed part of his ashram for illegally occupying government land.
- Patna’s Bihar Religious Trust has filed a lawsuit against his monastery for illegally looting a piece of land.
- On January 8, 2010, the state government took over 67,059 square meters of land from his Ahmedabad ashram, claiming it was illegal property.
- His followers, Satya Narayan Dhoot and Bhanwar Lal Soni, filed a lawsuit against Asaram in the Rajasthan High Court, accusing them of encroaching on their land in Rajasthan.
- In September 2012, Asaram made headlines for beating a video journalist during Satsang in Ghaziabad.
- In 2013, his illegally built monastery in Cuttack was demolished by the Cuttack Municipal Corporation.
- In September 2013, he was arrested by Jodhpur police for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl. He was also accused of making death threats to the victim’s father. Her father even filed audio clips of Asaram and his followers in court.
- The Nasik Municipal Corporation eliminated the illegal encroachment of Assalam Monastery in September 2013.
- In 2014, the Asaram Ashram in Chowkitaal, Bhedhaghat was demolished by the local government for illegal construction.
- In January 2015, the main witness in the Surat rape case, Akhil Gupta, was murdered. There are suspicions that the murder was carried out by followers of Assalam.
- On April 25, 2018, Asaram was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Jodhpur Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribal Court for raping a 16-year-old girl in Shahajahanpur, Uttar Pradesh. The verdict was handed down by Judge Madhu Sultan Sharma inside Jodhpur Central Prison. Two of Asaram’s associates were sentenced to 20 years in prison.
- In 2020, Asaram’s illegally built ashram on government land in Raie village, Ghagwal district, Samba district, was demolished by the district government. The monastery was built on 65 government lands.
address
Before his arrest in 2013, Asaram lived in Motera, Sabarmati, Sant Shri Asharamji Bapu Ashram in Ahmedabad
net worth
Asaram’s net worth is estimated at Rs. 10,000 million (as of 2014).
Facts/trivia
- Asaram often wears spotless white dhoti and kurta with a snow-white beard to match the look of his Satsangs.
- His followers affectionately call him Bapuji.
- In 2018, Asaram’s former disciple and former personal assistant Rahul K Sachan testified that Asaram followed a non-vegetarian diet.
- His hobbies include dancing and makeup.
- In 1992, Asaram acquired 14,515 square meters of land in Ahmedabad to expand his ashram. In 1999, he acquired another 25,000 square meters of land for his ashram in Ahmedabad.
- Assalam reportedly wore eyeshadow made from charred bats in his eyes before he was arrested in 2013.
- In August 2012, while Asaram was on his way to Satsang, his helicopter fell nearly 100 feet to the ground in Godhra, Gujarat. Surprisingly, Assalam, the pilot and two others survived the accident because the helicopter did not…
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