The backlash, when it came, arrived not from the government or rival corporations, but from a more ancient quarter: the gods, or rather, their earthly representatives.
Swami Suryananda's face was now on magazine covers. He was "The Living Oracle," "The Man Who Sees the Earth's Pain," "Kali's Messenger." His ashram's donation boxes overflowed. He was invited to bless new parliament buildings and corporate headquarters. The line between sage and celebrity had vaporized.
And in a sprawling, marble-clad ashram on the banks of the Ganges in Haridwar, another man watched this rise with bile in his throat. His name was Shri Shankaranand Saraswati, a heavyweight in the world of Hindu spiritual gurus. He had millions of devotees, a fleet of luxury cars, and the ear of several powerful cabinet ministers. He was a brand, a franchise, a spiritual conglomerate. And this "Storm Prophet" from Nashik was a threat—a disruptive startup in his well-established market.
Shri Shankaranand did not attack directly. He used a proxy: the Vasant Group, a sprawling, old-money Indian conglomerate with interests in shipping, construction, and, crucially, media. The Vasant Group's patriarch, Govind Vasant, was a devoted follower of Shri Shankaranand. The Group also happened to be bidding against a MANO subsidiary for a lucrative contract to build a series of grain silos near the new Nhava Sheva port. The land Suryananda had pacified was key to MANO's logistics plan.
The attack unfolded on two fronts.
First, the media. The Vasant Group owned The Indian Chronicle, a major English daily. A series of "investigative" articles began to appear, penned by a slick, cynical reporter named Rohan Mehta.
PART 1: THE MYTH OF THE MYSTIC – COINCIDENCE OR CON? questioned the statistical probability of Suryananda's predictions, interviewing skeptical scientists who (correctly) pointed out that predicting a monsoon landslide during the monsoon was not exactly divine revelation.
PART 2: THE BUSINESS OF BLESSINGS – FOLLOW THE MONEY subtly traced the funding of the Nashik ashram through a labyrinth of shell companies, hinting—but not stating—at a connection to MANO Industries. It asked why an industrialist would fund a holy man.
PART 3: THE DANGER OF DELUSION quoted "concerned religious scholars" (all affiliated with Shri Shankaranand's sect) warning about "fake sadhus" who dilute sacred traditions and mislead the vulnerable.
The articles were clever, dripping with insinuation. They didn't accuse; they wondered. They planted seeds of doubt in fertile ground.
The second front was physical. One night, a truckload of men armed with iron rods and bottles of kerosene arrived at the gates of the Nashik ashram. They weren't professionals; they were hired local goons, loud and brutal. They smashed the donation box, set fire to the newly planted gardens, and beat two young brahmacharis who tried to stop them. Their message was scrawled on the ashram wall in red paint: FRAUD. GO BACK TO YOUR VILLAGE.
Suryananda called Rajendra, his voice shaking with a different fear now—not of exposure, but of violent, mundane destruction. "They are destroying it! They say I am a fraud!"
"Are you?" Rajendra asked, his voice cold over the secure line.
"You know I am! They are right!"
"They have evidence of a financial link. They have thugs. They do not have the truth. Calm down. Let the gardens burn. They can be replanted. We do not respond to a knife with a knife. We respond with a scalpel. A sharper one."
Rajendra's retaliation was not martial. It was informational. He called Ganesh.
"I need everything on Shri Shankaranand Saraswati. Not the public image. The private reality. His finances, his relationships, his vices. And I need something specific, tangible, and ugly. Use all our channels. The Pune pundits, the Bombay gossip collectors, the disgruntled ex-devotees. Find a crack."
Ganesh's network, fueled by MAKA's shadow money and connections, went to work. It was a world of resentful former accountants, jilted lovers, and rival godmen's followers. Within seventy-two hours, a dossier landed on Rajendra's desk. It was sordid, predictable, and perfect. Shri Shankaranand had a mistress, a former Bollywood starlet, installed in a luxury flat in Mumbai's Breach Candy. He had siphoned crores of temple donations into a private trust that bought property in Dubai. And, most damningly, he had used his influence to help a certain politician from a northern state quash a land-grabbing case. The politician, Suresh Dalal, was now a junior minister in the Commerce Ministry—the same ministry overseeing the grain silo contract.
Rajendra didn't leak the dossier to the press. He gave it to Suryananda.
"Your next vision," he instructed. "You will speak not of storms or landslides, but of moral decay. You will be meditating, feeling a great sickness in the spiritual heart of the nation. You will see… a lotus, the symbol of purity, covered in black oil. You will see a serpent coiled in the sanctum. The details will come to you—a name, a place. You will not accuse. You will lament. You will weep for a fallen teacher."
Suryananda understood. He was to become the prophet of scandal.
At his next public discourse, before a packed hall and rolling TV cameras, Suryananda began normally. Then, mid-sentence, he faltered. He clutched his chest, his face contorted in genuine-looking pain. The crowd fell silent.
"I… I see a shadow," he gasped, his voice amplified. "A great shadow falling from a white palace on the holy river. A lotus… blackened. Oil on the Ganga's pure flow. There is a serpent… its name… it whispers… Shankara…" He trailed off, shaking his head as if to clear it. "No. Forgive me. The vision is too dark. The Mother shows me only to warn of the poison in the nectar. We must purify our hearts, or our guides will lead us into the swamp."
It was masterful. He had named no one directly, yet he had named everyone. The symbolism was unmistakable to anyone following the guru scene. The reaction was electric, then tectonic.
Two days later, an anonymous, meticulously detailed packet of documents—photographs, bank transfer records, property deeds—was delivered to the offices of The Indian Express, The Statesman, and a fiery new weekly called Crash. The editors, smelling the blood in the water and free from Vasant Group influence, pounced.
The scandal erupted like a sewer geyser. HOLY MAN'S SINS: MISTRESS, MONEY, AND MINISTER screamed the headlines. The evidence was irrefutable. The junior minister, Suresh Dalal, was forced to resign within a week. Shri Shankaranand Saraswati went into seclusion, his empire crumbling under police inquiries and the desertion of horrified devotees.
The Vasant Group's media attack ceased abruptly. Without their spiritual patron's clout and with their political ally disgraced, their position weakened. The grain silo contract quietly tilted in MANO's favor.
In the aftermath, Rajendra visited the Nashik ashram. The burnt gardens were already being cleared, new saplings waiting to be planted. Suryananda looked older, his eyes holding a dark knowledge.
"You destroyed him," Suryananda said quietly. They were in his private garden, away from microphones.
"He tried to destroy you," Rajendra replied. "He used lies and goons. We used truth and perception. Which is more pure?"
"You used me."
"I used the platform we built. You are the lighthouse. I just adjust the lens. Do you feel guilt for the fall of a corrupt man who sent thugs to burn your home?"
Suryananda was silent for a long time, watching a gardener work the scorched earth. "No," he said finally, the word surprising him. "I feel… power. A terrible power. I spoke, and a man who seemed like a mountain turned to dust."
"Exactly," Rajendra said. "Remember that feeling. It is not the power of a fraud. It is the power of narrative. You are no longer pretending to be a holy man, Suryananda. You are becoming one. A real one. A holy man for a new age—where the scripture is data, the ritual is strategy, and the blessing is survival."
He left Suryananda standing there, staring at his own hands as if they were foreign objects. The conman was gone, incinerated in the backlash. What remained was something more potent, more dangerous, and utterly loyal. He had been shown the abyss and pulled back from the edge by Rajendra's hand. He had seen his rival annihilated not by force, but by the very faith he peddled. The lesson was indelible.
Rajendra hadn't just won a skirmish. He had forged his prophet in the fire of a very public, very brutal war. And in the process, he had discovered that in the marketplace of influence, a redeemed heretic was the most valuable brand of all.