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Mumbai: The BAPS Swaminarayan sect may have triggered global outcry over discriminatory practices, but they have one steadfast friend in India who has had nothing to say on the matter: Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

On September 5, a delegation of the BAPS Swaminarayan sect sparked off a controversy at Paris’s Eiffel Tower, asking that female workers at the monument be replaced by men.

Less than 24 hours later, as BAPS inaugurated its new temple in Paris, Modi appeared on a giant screen inside the new temple, calling the event “a new milestone in the cultural relations between India and France”. Rather than distance himself, Modi added that “in mind and spirit…I am experiencing myself right among you”. 

The show of intimacy wasn’t an aberration. They emerge from an intimate relationship that Modi has developed with the BAPS sect for over more than four decades, as The Wire found.

Digging through archives maintained by BAPS as well as the Prime Minister’s Office, The Wire found that Modi had met with BAPS representatives or attended BAPS events at least 18 times in the last 12 years alone. Apart from meeting BAPS delegations in India, Modi also met them in France, as well as in South Africa, during official visits.

The BAPS sect was founded in 1907 in a village in Gujarat. Nearly 120 years later, its legacy is contested. From fighting hard to stave off the entry of people from Dalit communities into their temples, to asking for women to be taken out of sight of their monks in public events to being accused of using forced labour to build their temple, the BAPS sect has had a tumultuous history.

Yet, despite this, BAPS has had a constant, steady friend in Modi, who has met with the sect’s monks frequently. Between July and August 2023, for instance, Modi met BAPS monks three times in two months in three different countries. In July 2023, Modi, on an official visit to France, met BAPS office bearers where he was shown 3D renditions of the upcoming Paris temple. In August, Modi hosted senior BAPS monk Swami Brahmaviharidas and “received updates” of the then under-construction BAPS temple in Abu Dhabi. Four days later, Modi met Brahmaviharidas again, this time in Johannesburg in South Africa, when he was on a state visit to attend the BRICS Summit. Again, he was presented with 3D models of an upcoming BAPS temple in the same city.

This increased access to the Indian prime minister has also coincided with material gains for the BAPS sect. The total assets held by BAPS non-profits in the US alone have grown five-fold from $10 million in 2014, when Modi came to power, to $52 million in 2024, according to a report ‘Behind BAPS’, compiled by civil society organisations in the US. 

Modi’s tenure has marked a windfall of gains for BAPS – between 2010 and 2014, BAPS assets more or less remained stable, hovering between $9million and $10 million. In the next five years,........

© The Wire