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, they rose by 84% – from $10 million in 2014 to $18.4 million in 2020, the report found.The Wire has reached out to BAPS for a comment.No one from Dalit communities, no women at BAPS temples and eventsThe BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, which describes itself as a “spiritual, volunteer-driven fellowship” engaged in using “Hindu values of faith, service and global harmony” to drive individual growth and improvement in society, was founded in 1907. The sect claims to have more than a million followers across the world who have taken five lifetime vows: “No Alcohol, No Addictions, No Adultery, No Meat, No Impurity of body and mind.The sect had refused to allow people from Dalit communities to enter their temples, forcing even Sardar Patel to remark about it, in April 1947, according to a piece by Urvish Kothari in The Print. “I came from Bochasan yesterday. The Maharaj invited me to the temple, citing old family ties, but admitted he had no courage to allow Dalits inside,” the piece quoted Patel saying.The sect went on to file a suit against the Bombay Harijan Temple Entry Act, 1947, which effectively ended untouchability and exclusion in Hindu and Jain temples by ensuring equal worshipping opportunities to people from Dalit communities. The sect protested the Act.“The present suit began its career in 1948 and it was the result of the appellants’ apprehension that the proclaimed and publicised entry of the non-Satsangi Harijans would constitute a violent trespass on the religious tenets and beliefs of the Swaminarayan sect,” said the Supreme Court order of 1966, hearing the same plea.The sect argued that it was “distinct and different” from Hindu religion, and hence, the act did not apply to it. The court rejected its appeal and reminded the sect that “social justice is the main foundation of the democratic way of life enshrined in the provisions of the Indian Constitution.”In 2015, the sect courted controversy after the publisher of the Malayalam edition of the former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s last book asked its female translator to not be present on the dais at the insistence of the BAPS monk Swami Brahmavihari Das. Das has been spotted with Modi numerous times in recent times.In 2024, women attendees at a Kolkata conference were asked to leave from the front rows and the backstage before the start of a session to be addressed by BAPS monk Swami Gyanvatsal The conference was organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), and Gyanvatsal, according to a report in The Federal, “threatened to leave if his condition was not met”. In 2021, the construction of a new BAPS temple in the state of New Jersey brought forth damaging allegations when the Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) raided its construction site and removed about 90 workers from the site. This came after a class action lawsuit had alleged that nearly 200 workers from Dalit and Adivasi backgrounds had been brought from India, their passports confiscated and made to work “twelve and a half hours per day, seven days a week” for $1.20 an hour, well below the minimum wage. The lawsuit also alleged that one worker had died during construction “while he was subjected to forced labour at the temple”. In September last year, the Department of Justice under President Donald Trump closed the investigation against BAPS.Yet, none of this has affected the group’s proximity to power.Despite the allegations, Modi sent a message on the New Jersey temple’s inauguration in 2023, calling it “an occasion of profound spiritual significance.”High-profile visitsApart from the multiple meetings and interactions with Modi, the group has also seen regular visits by other high-profile visitors.For instance, in 2017, Modi took Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull, on a three-day state visit to India, to the Swaminarayan Akshardham Temple in New Delhi. Responding to the visit, Turnbull said the temple offered him “an insight into India’s history”.Apart from Turnbull, since Modi came to power, at least 10 serving world leaders, including US Vice President JD Vance, then Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, then Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, British PM Boris Johnson have visited BAPS temples in India as part of their official state visits.Such visits help BAPS build a “regulated but influential image of Hinduism” and this helps further the vision of the Sangh Parivar, said Chetan Bhatt, professor in the Department of Sociology at the London School Of Economics. “When BAPS’ vision of civilizational Hinduism is accompanied by Narendra Modi as Indian prime minister who is consecrating temples, speaking about the glories of Hinduism or extolling Hinduism’s unique role in the world, or when monumental temples such as those of BAPS are made to represent the glories of the Indian nation, then the distinction between ‘India’ and ‘Hindu’ disappears, which is of course what the sangh wants.”Bhatt, however, added that BAPS should not be considered a part of the Sangh parivar, while adding that “BAPS is part of the larger Hindu religious environment within which Hindu nationalism has developed and which the VHP and RSS have learned to use to the benefit of both,” he said. “Even in the 1990s, BAPS in the UK was disseminating ideas about India’s past or the Vedic period that could have come directly out of RSS versions of Indian ‘history’. And both of course have the same political patron, Narendra Modi,” Bhatt added.Author and scholar Aakar Patel, who was based in Gujarat for over a decade, agreed but added that BAPS would not “lend itself” to the Sangh’s agenda. “They are strong enough, powerful enough and credible enough to do their own thing. But there isn’t much that is different between the BAPS faith-based nationalism and the RSS’ culture-based nationalism.”According to ‘Seeing The Sangh’, a dataset that maps the Sangh and its affiliates globally, housed by the CERI-Sciences Po in Paris and published and hosted by The Caravan magazine, BAPS is “conclusively” linked to the Sangh. The dataset cites three reasons for it: BAPS receives funds from Sangh outfits; it has in the past hosted talks by Sangh and RSS officials at its events; and it has co-hosted many events with Sangh outfits.Helping Modi outOften, the BAPS helps Modi out in return.In 2017, BAPS invited Modi to attend the silver jubilee celebrations of the Gandhinagar Akshardham Temple. The timing was crucial – just weeks were left before the 2017 Gujarat assembly polls. The BJP, having dominated the state’s politics for decades, was reeling under the prospect of the likely fallout of anger in the Patidar community, which had for two years been demanding Other Backward Class (OBC) status.With the Patidar anger threatening to deliver an electoral setback to the BJP, the BAPS group hosted Modi.In his speech, Modi sought to endear himself to the sect’s followers, and claimed he was one of their own. “You asked me if I would come for the silver jubilee celebrations of Akshardham. Have I become a guest?” he said. Modi also reminded the Patidars present in the audience of his old ties with Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the longest serving BAPS president in the history of the sect, who had passed away just a year ago.Pramukh Swami, Modi told the audience, had made half a dozen calls to him when Modi was in the midst of the BJP’s Ekta Yatra in 1991 from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. “Bappa (Pramukh Swami) was worried if his son was safe or not,” Modi said.Patel said Modi’s proximity to the BAPS sect has roots in such political calculations.“The Swaminarayan sect is primarily a Patel sect,” he said. “The BJP’s vote base in Gujarat has been the Patel community, and that is closely linked to this sect. A large proportion of the BJP’s cabinet ministers have traditionally hailed from the Patel community,” he said.Similarly, after the GenZ protests across the country sent the BJP and the Modi government into a tizzy , BAPS stepped in and hosted the government’s youth outreach programme, ‘Nasha-Mukt Yuva for Viksit Bharat’, and organised events in at least two BAPS temples, in New Delhi and Gandhinagar, where they mobilised young Indians and broadcast Modi’s speech to them. The BAPS New Delhi event even saw Union minister for tourism and culture Gajendra Shekhawat attending it.This, Bhatt said, fits into a pattern . “You also have to consider what BAPS is vocal about and where it is deliberately silent,” Bhatt said. “It regularly hosts, celebrates and praises Modi,” he said. “But it has nothing to say about violence against Indian Muslims, BJP policies such as the Citizens Amendment Act, or the failures of Modi or the BJP government.”