A friend is writing the "bible" for a proposed web-streaming series on Baba Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Insaan, erstwhile head of the Dera Sacha Sauda and one of India's so-called "godmen" who was arrested in August 2017 for rape. (A TV series bible is the pitch or treatment that outlines a proposed series, its characters, its first season, and the script for an episode.) Ram Rahim is the fellow who produced and wrote a film starring himself. He's also been charged with the alleged castration of about 400 followers, though several of these charges have since been dropped as no evidence of the castration was found.

My late granduncle, with whom I lived for three years after I returned to India and joined journalism in the late 1980s, used to joke that India's biggest export was of "godmen". He was particularly disgusted by Dhirendra Brahmachari, a close advisor of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Other former PMs who had dubious "godmen" as advisors include P V Narasimha Rao, whose chum Chandraswami moved in the 1980s jet-set. The Beatles recorded a double-album of songs that were written while they stayed at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in Rishikesh but quit the ashram after Mahesh Yogi tried to allegedly rape American actress Mia Farrow (John Lennon's song "Sexy Sadie" was originally titled "Maha Rishi").