8. Rousing the masses

Writers like Martin E. Marty have pointed out the importance of mass movements in the propagation of fundamentalist doctrines. The leaders of the anti-Heehs movement have been aware from the first of the power of the uninformed or misinformed masses, and have done all they could to mobilize them (and at the same time, ensuring through legal maneuvers that few could have access to the book itself, or make up their own minds). Ananda Reddy’s rabble-rousing email quoted in the previous section is a good example of this approach. Another comes in Reddy’s email of September 18: “That is the work that has come upon all of us [members of the SAICE forum] for otherwise the disastrous book by Peter will become the gospel of the scholars and the critics and the Life of Sri Aurobindo would be permanently misrepresnted [sic] by a pervert [sic] man” (AR3).

Note that Reddy’s emails were written after the Ashram trust had rebuffed attempts by him, Kittu Reddy, Vijay Poddar, and others to throw Heehs out of the Ashram. Failing in this, the leaders turned from the legally constituted administration to the unorganized public. They justified this move by claiming that the rank-and-file constitute a sort of citizens’ assembly with decision-making power. Ranade writes in this connection: “PH is an inmate of the Ashram answerable to the community and to the Trust” (SR2). (At no time in the eighty-year history of the ashram has anyone or anything been answerable “to the community”.) In the same email Ranade attempts to justify the role of “collective action”, in particular discussions on “the SAICE forum” (a Yahoo group for ex-students of the Ashram school) in the Heehs matter: “I agree that collective action can prevent or at least minimise the dangers of the situation” (SR2). When Ranade’s attempts to use the masses to gain leverage against the trust did not work out as he wished, he vowed to proceed with the help of his allies: “Rest assured that our efforts to expose PH’s book will continue with or without your [the Trust’s] support” (SR3). Ranade’s demagoguery is one of the most troubling and potentially dangerous aspects of the entire movement.