Chandigarh: Come election time and the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) dera headquarters, located about 200 km north of Chandigarh on the banks of the river Beas, is teeming again with high-profile visitors seeking dera chief Gurinder Singh Dhillon’s blessings.
From Charanjit Singh Channi and Manish Tewari of the Congress to Hans Raj Hans and Ravneet Bittu of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Virsa Singh Valtoha of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Laljit Bhullar of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) — Lok Sabha candidates have been lining up at the sprawling RSSB headquarters in the past few weeks.
On Sunday, however, less than two weeks before the 1 June polls in Punjab, Dhillon declared his dera “apolitical” while addressing a satsang (prayer gathering) at the headquarters.
Dhillon announced that all candidates and political parties were the same for him, highly placed sources in the RSSB told ThePrint.
“All candidates are dear to us and we all should actively participate in the voting process,” he said.
Dhillon further explained that he does not have any special affection for any party, nor does he have any inclination towards anyone, and said that the doors of Dera Beas are open to all, the sources said.
The Beas dera has always claimed to be apolitical, unlike the Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa headed by Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, which has a political committee to guide followers about whom to vote for during elections.
The RSSB is the most prominent among the deras in Punjab. It owns huge pieces of land across Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan and claims to have lakhs of followers. These include both Hindus and Sikhs, and mostly Dalits, who take spiritual guidance from the dera while continuing to be identified by their respective religions.
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Rush of politicians
Politicians commonly flock to the RSSB during election time, and its apolitical outlook has not stopped prominent candidates in the fray this time from visiting Dhillon and ensuring that they get a picture with him to post on social media.
Politicians who have flocked to the dera in the past month have included several Congress candidates: former CM Channi (contesting from Jalandhar), party state chief Amrinder Singh Raja Warring (Ludhiana), Gurjit Singh Aujla (Amritsar), Manish Tewari (Chandigarh) and Kulbir Singh Zira (Khadoor Sahib).
From the BJP, visitors have included Hans Raj Hans (Faridkot), Bittu (Ludhiana) and Sushil Rinku (Jalandhar), while the SAD’s Valtoha (Khadoor Sahib) has also paid a visit.
The AAP candidates who’ve visited include Punjab cabinet minister Bhullar (Khadoor Sahib), Raj Kumar Chabbewal (Hoshiarpur) and Ashok Parashar Pappi (Ludhiana).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited the dera in November 2022, ahead of the Himachal Pradesh assembly elections. Dhillon had met the PM in Delhi in February 2022 as well. Home minister Amit Shah visited the dera that year, too.
The clout of the dera can be judged from the fact that several prominent persons are among its devout followers. These include former Delhi lieutenant governor Tejendra Khanna, whose father, K.L. Khanna, was the secretary of the dera at one time.
Former Punjab chief secretaries Ishwar Puri and Rajan Kashyap and 1984-batch IPS officer from Punjab and former RAW head Samant Goel are also followers.
Unlike Baba Charan Singh (Dhillon’s maternal uncle and former dera chief) who would rarely agree to be seen with political leaders, Dhillon is more accommodating.
The dera has been visited by politicians such as Sonia Gandhi, Lal Krishna Advani, Rahul Gandhi, Nitin Gadkari, former Punjab CMs Parkash Singh Badal and Captain Amarinder Singh, and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has visited the dera as well.
Former Punjab revenue minister Bikram Singh Majithia’s (Sukhbir Singh’s brother-in-law) wife, Ganieve Grewal, is a close relative of Dhillon.
A look at the dera
The dera draws its legacy from the Radha Soami spiritual tradition, started by Baba Shiv Dayal Singh in Agra in 1861. His disciple, Baba Jaimal Singh, started the Beas dera in 1891, which is why it is also known as Dera Baba Jaimal Singh. The Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa is a breakaway faction of the Radha Soami tradition.
Dhillon took over as the head of the dera in 1990 from his maternal uncle, Baba Charan Singh, who was its chief from 1951 till 1990.
When Dhillon was announced as successor, he was in Spain and returned to India to take over the reins of the dera. In 2013, Dhillon was diagnosed with cancer, which he survived.
In 2020, Dhillon found himself embroiled in the high-profile fraud case involving former Ranbaxy owners Shivinder Singh and Malvinder Singh. Their mother Nimmi Singh was Baba Charan Singh’s daughter. At one point, when Dhillon was battling cancer, Shivinder was being looked upon as his successor.
However, ties between the two brothers and Dhillon turned sour after Malvinder dragged Dhillon and his family into the Ranbaxy case. He told the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court that Dhillon owed his companies crores of rupees.
According to the RSSB website, the dera has almost 5,000 branches in India and 90 abroad. Its headquarters at Beas is spread across 3,000 acres and is a mini township in itself, complete with a massive satsang complex, residential areas, a school and a hospital.
The satsang complex can hold a gathering of up to 5 lakh people and the langar (community meal) hall can feed 50,000 people at a time. Apart from holding spiritual congregations and massive langars, the dera’s followers are involved in community and social work.
The railway station at the dera Beas, which is maintained by dera volunteers, was declared the cleanest railway station in India in 2017. In 2016, then Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal had inaugurated the world’s largest single-roof-top solar facility at the dera.
Although the dera encourages its followers to remain non-controversial, it ran into a major controversy in 2012, when it was alleged that its followers had demolished a historic gurudwara. The matter was resolved after the dera apologised and offered to reconstruct the gurudwara.
In the first week of September 2022, Nihang Sikhs (an order of Sikh warriors) clashed with the dera’s followers, leaving a dozen people injured. The Nihang Sikhs had let their cattle loose to graze on dera land, which led to the clash.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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