Sambhal: Acharya Pramod Krishnam is not your ordinary politician. The 59-year-old looks, talks and acts like a ‘spiritual guru’ — which is how his X (formerly Twitter) bio describes him. A lifelong Congressman who many saw as a confidant of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Krishnam was expelled by the party earlier this month for indulging in ‘anti-party activities’.
On 19 February, he shared a stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath who were in Sambhal to lay the foundation stone for the ‘Shri Kalki Dham’ temple, which Krishnam had been trying to build for close to two decades.
Sitting on one corner of the stage with folded hands, Krishnam blushed as Modi heaped praises on him. “I knew of Acharya Krishnam as a politician…but it’s only now I have come to know what a religious man he is and the hard work he does for Sanatana Dharma,” said the Prime Minister.
Modi, who was in Sambhal at Krishnam’s invite, said previous governments “did not give him (Krishnam) permission to build a temple citing communal tensions in the area, but under our (BJP) government, Acharya ji has been able to build a temple without worrying about such things”.
Incidentally, Modi’s visit to Sambhal earlier this week was his first in 15 years, The Times of India quoted BJP’s district president as saying.
“It is no coincidence that all works of Ram are being carried out by PM Modi. This is the beginning of Ram Rajya,” said Krishnam, who went from being seen as a key adviser to Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to an expelled Congress leader sharing a stage with Modi, all in a week’s time.
But this crossover did not happen overnight. Over the past few months, Krishnam had been unusually critical of the Congress’ approach to key political issues, from the abrogation of Article 370 to the ‘pran pratishtha’ (consecration) of an idol of the Hindu deity Ram at the temple in Ayodhya.
According to him, the Congress leadership took an ‘anti-Hindu’ stand by declining the invite for the consecration. Krishnam added that the construction of a grand temple in Ayodhya brought him great relief.
Asked about his association with the Congress, he told ThePrint, “I joined the Congress in the 80s after meeting Rajiv Gandhi, who came to my college. Back then, I had made him a promise that I would never leave the Congress. And I stood by that promise. I didn’t leave, I was expelled!”
“If it’s a crime to accept an invitation to the Ram Mandir ceremony, or if it’s a crime to meet the Prime Minister, then yes, I am a criminal,” he added.
Secular ‘spiritual guru’ from Sambhal
Acharya Pramod Krishnam (born Pramod Tyagi) comes from a family of Zamindars (landowners) from Sambhal and secured his post graduate degree in Political Science from Rana Degree College in 2002.
“My family believes that I was born with the blessing of Baba Gursharan Das. He had asked for me to be given up to him, but at the insistence of my mother, he allowed me to stay with my family. My birth is considered a divine intervention,” he told ThePrint.
According to him, he embraced the life of an ascetic at the insistence of his mother, who wanted him to build a ‘Kalki’ temple in the family village, the same way Ahilyabai Holkar — the 18th-century ruler of Indore — commissioned several temples across the country. But his final transition into a priestly avatar came after his first disappointment in politics.
“He was vying for a ticket in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, but it was given to Ashok Yadav. He was really disappointed by that and went on a political sanyas… for four-five years, he was hardly seen. When he re-emerged, he was in white saintly clothes, and that’s the get-up he has kept ever since,” Krishnam’s childhood friend Itrat Hussain Babur told ThePrint.
Krishnam did not go to a gurukul to study during his ‘sanyas’. Instead, he became a disciple of Swami Muktanand in Gangotri, Uttarakhand, in May 2004.
“My Pattabhisheka happened on 2 November 2007, and leaders of various akhadas were present there. During this time I also served as the secretary of Akhil Bharatiya Sangh Samiti,” said Krishnam who later acquired a small Kalki temple in a village near Sambhal, and has been taking care of it for over two decades. For the last 18 years he has been organising an annual festival for lord Kalki, which brings lakhs of devotees from around the country to Sambhal and is organised with the support of local Muslims.
“Shaheed Qasim from Sambhal provides free diesel for the generator every year for the ‘Kalki Dham’ celebration. That’s just one example… Hindus and Muslims live peacefully in Sambhal, and Acharya Pramod is an example of Hindu-Muslim unity,” said Babur.
“If he (Krishnam) is seen in Kalki juloos, he also joins the Muharram procession. His message is one of love,” Babur added.
Babur also said Krishnam enjoys a huge following among local Muslims, thanks to his interest in poetry. He is regularly seen attending mushairas and garnered praise for getting cases of rioting against 422 residents of Sambhal disposed of. “He went and spoke to the governor and got the cases disposed of. Muslims are always thankful to him,” said Babur.
Kalki Dham
The Kalki Dhaam, Krishnam says is one of a kind, the first such ‘dhaam’ dedicated to lord Kalki– the 10th avatar of Vishnu that is yet to take birth on Earth. “Ours will be the first temple with not one but 10 sanctum sanctorum, all dedicated to each and every avatar of lord Vishnu,” Krishnam says. The main pyramidal tower of the temple will be 108 ft tall.
The then district magistrate had in an order in October 2017, when the Samajwadi Party was in power in the state, put a stop to Krishnam’s ambition of building a Kalki Dham temple citing the threat of communal tension if such a structure were to come up in a Muslim-dominated area.
Krishnam challenged this decision in the Allahabad High Court, which ruled in his favour last August.
Family members of Krishnam said that the Congress didn’t interfere or try to help him out during this ‘difficult’ time.
People close to him, on the condition of anonymity, even alleged that senior members of the Congress were also invited for the ceremony held Monday, but never responded to invitations, which upset Krishnam even more. At the same time, the Prime Minister readily accepted his invitation.
Prior to this, Modi had never campaigned in Sambhal as Prime Minister. His visit is important for the BJP, which lost Sambhal and two of the four Lok Sabha constituencies that border it, in 2019. In the 2022 assembly elections, BJP lost four of the five seats in Sambhal district to the SP.
However, Krishnam himself has never won an election. He unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls from Lucknow in 2019 and Sambhal in 2014 on a Congress ticket.
Acharya Pramod Krishnam on BJP & Congress
For the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Krishnam’s expulsion from the Congress barely weeks before the declaration of the general election could prove to be an opportunity to shore up its own electoral prospects in Sambhal — the western UP district where Muslims made up more than 30 percent of the population, according to the 2011 Census.
Sambhal is known as a stronghold of the Samajwadi Party (SP).
“The BJP is not against Muslims. The Opposition wants to defame PM Modi and used security laws like the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to defame him as an anti-Muslim leader. All Muslims born in India are our brothers, and this is their country as well,” Krishnam told ThePrint.
Krishnam, said Congress sources, was eyeing a ticket to contest the Lok Sabha polls either from either Sambhal or Lucknow but the SP’s declaration of candidates from these seats, as part of the seat-sharing arrangement between the SP and the Congress, came as the proverbial last straw for him.
He, however, maintained: “My concern is not Lok Sabha or Vidhan Sabha. My concern is greater. My concern is about the nation, about sanatan.”
Krishnam added that his disgruntlement with Congress high command began in 2019. “I was ready to leave the Congress party right when they opposed the abrogation of Article 370,” he told ThePrint.
He added that he had been miffed with the Congress for long and that he had put forth his opinions at various meetings including the Chintan Shivir held in Udaipur in May 2022. “I told them that we shouldn’t protest the opening of the new Parliament. The Parliament belongs to the entire country, not just the BJP. We shouldn’t have opposed it,” he said.
On the other hand, local Congress workers said they don’t think Krishnam’s apparent crossover could dent their prospects in any way. “An individual will not be able to influence voters’ decisions now. Voters have already made their decisions here in Sambhal, and Acharya ji contesting from BJP will not affect us,” said Vijay Sharma, Congress’ Sambhal district president.
The Congress has even dismissed Krishnam’s perceived proximity to Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. “He (Krishnam) was part of one advisory committee some years ago; so many committees are formed on a daily basis, it does not indicate that a person is close to a tall leader,” said Akhilesh Pratap Singh, national spokesperson of the Congress.
“Acharya Krishnam has never won an election. Sambhal is a SP stronghold and we’ll win it,” SP Sambhal District President Asgar Ansari said.
He added, “We’re all very happy that the Prime Minister came to Sambhal. But he didn’t meet us. We were in fact not even allowed to leave our houses; we wanted to tell the PM about the problems of the people of Sambhal.”
Krishnam’s childhood friend Babur, who is also Congress’ district vice-president in Sambhal, remarked: “He (Krishnam) is a secular man. He won’t be able to survive in the BJP for longer than a minute.”
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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