The Rise of Baba Culture: Its Political Power and Impact on India’s Education System

Across India today, one cannot escape the growing presence of spiritual leaders in your Insta reels / youtube shorts. These are popularly known as Baba. They have massive followings, appear regularly on television, livestream on YouTube, own luxurious ashrams, and influencing electoral politics. It was once a personal search for spiritual guidance has now transformed into a multi-billion-rupee ecosystem of faith, commerce, and soft power.

 

The modern ‘baba’ is a 21st-century creation part time preacher, part entrepreneur, and part influencer. It’s an intersection of faith, media, politics, and modern consumerism. Once confined to the limits of traditional spirituality, contemporary godmen and godwomen now command mass followings across continents. In a country where access to mental health care, employment opportunities, and justice can be scarce, baba’s often step in as informal counsellors, philanthropists, and community leaders. For many people, faith serves not just as a source of spiritual comfort, but as a lifeline offering of emotional and social support in a society.

 

The worst part is these Spiritual leaders also wield immense political power. Their followers, often numbering in the millions, form a reliable vote bank that no political party can afford to ignore. As a result, many baba’s maintain close relationships with political elites offering public endorsements, sharing stages at rallies, and helping electoral campaigns. In turn, politicians extend support through land grants, legal protection, and policy favours. This symbiotic relationship blurs the line between spiritual authority and political influence, turning religion into a powerful instrument of governance and legitimacy.

 

Another striking feature of the modern baba movement is its ability to repackage ancient Hindu philosophy in the idiom of contemporary life. By fusing yoga, meditation, and moral discipline with the language of self-help and national pride. This cultural rebranding of faith transforms religion from a purely ritualistic practice into a holistic philosophy of success, wellness, and identity.

“When politics, media, and spirituality intersect, the result is not faith, it’s vote influence.”

However, this rise has not been without controversy. Several high-profile godmen have faced charges ranging from fraud to sexual assault to murder. Yet despite scandals, public trust in such figures persists suggesting a deeper societal need that institutions have failed to fulfil.

 

 

 

Adding faith in the classroom

 

Classrooms has never been just places of learning they are spaces where the future moral compass of a nation is shaped. Recent revisions to school curriculum reveal how education has become a tool for cultural assertion and ideological influence. While policymakers justify these changes as efforts to preserve heritage and generate values. Critics warn that such reforms may blur the line between education and propaganda.

 

In the year 2020 India’s National Education Policy (NEP) was introduced with the promise of modernizing the education system encouraging critical thinking, reducing memorising learning, and promoting holistic development. Its key goals are to combine “Indian Knowledge Systems” and “ethics-based learning” into the curriculum. Aiming to reconnect students with indigenous traditions and moral foundations.

 

This implementation has stirred controversy. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) India’s apex textbook authority has made a series of content deletions and revisions in history and social science textbooks. Topics such as Mughal history, caste-based social struggles (Varnas), and instances of communal violence have been shortened, rephrased, or entirely omitted. This selective editing distorts historical understanding.

 

Cultural and Moral Reorientation

 

Parallel to these historical revisions, subjects like yoga, Sanskrit, Vedic mathematics (don’t know who got that term), and ancient Indian sciences have gained greater space in syllabus.

What is promoted today as Vedic mathematics or ancient Indian science lacks the methodology that defines true science. The supporters of these ideas often display only selective acceptance endorsing what modern science seems to validate but dismissing any critique as blasphemy.

 

Science is a method for understanding how things work and why they happen, based on evidence, and it organizes this knowledge into testable explanations and predictions, but there is no scope to correct or update religious texts.

 

 

Further the inclusion of faith-based elements in curriculum raises important questions. Should schools reflect the beliefs of a nation’s dominant religion, or preserve neutrality as spaces for open and critical inquiry?

Supporter of cultural education argue that ignoring native traditions leads to moral drift among youth. However, I feel that faith-driven curriculum risk narrowing the intellectual horizon as it lacks scientific temperaments, this will encourage reverence over reasoning.

 

Independent history

 

Our freedom fighters had a vision deeply to shape India as a secular nation, one guided not by religious dogma, but by the light of rational and scientific temper. Their struggle was not merely for political independence, but for the liberation of thought and spirit. They dreamed of a nation where faith would remain a personal matter, not a tool of governance or social division.

 The freedom of a nation lies not only in its borders but in the minds of its children,

what they are taught about their past determines what they dare to imagine for the future

 

The Impact on the Young Generation

 

What children learn about their past shapes how they dream of their future. The battles over curriculum are not merely about teaching methods but also struggles over identity.

Whose history gets told? Whose faith gets glorified? And who decides what is ‘moral’ knowledge?

 

One of the most immediate effects of religious authority influencing education is the reshaping of identity. When textbooks are written to emphasize religious pride, students may develop a strong sense of belonging to their community but not nation.

 

This same pride can easily turn into exclusion. When history is retold through a single lens be it Hindu, Muslim, Christian, or nationalist. Students begin to internalize divisions like us versus them, believer versus non-believer, patriot versus traitor. The celebration of one identity can become the criticising of another. Thus, while religion in education can nurture cultural rootedness, it can also sow the seeds of intolerance when diversity is misrepresented as division. The very goal of education to broaden minds gets reversed, narrowing the imagination to a single story of self and society.

 

Education is meant to awaken the mind critical thinking & inquiry, not silence it. However, when religious authority infiltrates the classroom, questioning can be viewed as rebellion rather than intellectual curiosity. If textbooks present one-sided narratives and spiritual figures discourage inquiry under the cover of protecting “faith,” young minds lose the essential skill of critical engagement. Instead of learning how to think, they are taught what to think. This subtle shift from inquiry to brainwashing is dangerous. A generation that cannot question is a generation that cannot innovate. The scientific temper relies on doubt, debate, and discovery. Yet, in classrooms where myths are presented as historical truths or where factual reasoning is dismissed as “western,” young learners are robbed of their intellectual independence. Faith may offer comfort, but education must offer clarity.

 

Television & social media fails to distinguish between genuine insight and manipulated propaganda. The fake news in spiritual or patriotic language spreads rapidly, deepening existing biases. The platforms once meant to democratise knowledge have turned into echo chambers of belief, where noise overpowers nuance.

 The real danger isn’t faith but blind faith, magnified by the social media algorithms.

 

The question is not whether religion should be excluded from education altogether, but how it can coexist with rational inquiry and plural values creating a balance. Faith can inspire morality, compassion, and service qualities that every society needs. But when faith dictates what can or cannot be questioned, it undermines the very spirit of learning.

 

The goal should be an education system that respects belief but upholds evidence, that honours heritage but celebrates diversity, that invites debate rather than silence dissent. When world increasingly divided by ideology, the youth must be equipped not just with degrees, but with judgment. They should be taught how to navigate multiple truths, how to respect faith. Only then can they become citizens of conscience, capable of bridging the divide between tradition & modernity, spirituality & science, nation & humanity.

 

Possible Solutions

 

Even the best-designed curriculum will fail without empowered teachers. The success depends on educators who can navigate complex topics with sensitivity and critical understanding. Teachers must be equipped with continuous professional development, exposure to diverse worldviews, and training methods that encourage dialogue rather than dogma.

 

An empowered teacher is not merely an instructor, but a cultivator of thought's 

 

Faith can inspire moral action, it is vital that religious institutions operate within the framework of transparency and legality. Laws must ensure public accountability for the financial dealings and social activities of religious organizations. A society must hold its spiritual authorities accountable.

 

Education must move beyond classrooms into society. Interfaith exchanges, youth forums, and civic projects can do what textbooks can’t humanize differences. When students meet across faiths, they replace stereotypes with shared values of compassion, justice, and coexistence, building empathy essential for a plural democracy.

 

In the end, the rise of baba culture getting leak into education reflects a larger struggle over India’s soul. Spirituality when guided by conscience, can uplift society, but when fused with politics and teaching, it risks distorting truth and silencing inquiry. The purpose of education has never been to create believers, but thinkers minds that question, empathize, and evolve. India’s strength has always been in its diversity of ideas. To preserve that, our classrooms must remain spaces of curiosity, not conformity where children learn not what to think, but how to think, freely and fearlessly.