From a distance, the godmen of India are darkly comic: a Victorian caricature of the superstitious Orient. Consider Guru Ashutosh Maharaj, whose followers have stored his body in a freezer since a fatal heart attack three years ago, claiming he is meditating. While his family wishes to cremate him, Punjab and Haryana High Court sided with his devotees, emphasising the “freedom of conscience”.

The deaths of more than 30 individuals following the Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s conviction of rape should shutter such illusions of benignity. The decision against the spiritual leader, actor and director prompted rioting from his religious group, the Dera Sacha Sauda. This zealotry exposes fundamental flaws in how India’s politicians treat “godmen”. Rather than addressing societal issues which allow demagogues to amass fortunes and defy laws, India’s elite have treated them as useful intermediaries to vote banks of devotees.

At its heart, the problem of godmen is about politics more than religion, although some are empowered by Hindutva nationalism. The most prominent of these is Yogi Adityanath, the BJP chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, who decried Mother Teresa’s work as a plan to Christianise India, and who ordered followers to convert 100 Muslim women for every Hindu woman converted. This sort of rhetoric costs lives: Gauri Lankesh, a journalist and critic of the Indian far-right, was murdered outside her home in Bangalore a few days ago.