Gandhi's second coming

I bumped into Ram Ballam by mistake. I had gone to the protest street for another story when someone joked about Gandhi ji sitting across the road. I spent an hour with Ballam, had chai with him and then left promising to come back to know more. But I didn't go back. This was culled out from the conversations we had that afternoon. An edited version of this appeared in the Indian Express on Feb. 25.

Chinki Sinha
Feb. 24, 2009

Call it Gandhi’s second coming or dismiss it as a delusional man’s
ramblings but you have to give Raj Ballam a patient hearing. He demands it.
Sitting against a wall from the across the Jantar Mantar observatory,
Ballam, who hails from Chapra in Bihar, is a far cry from what Gandhi
ever looked like. He has thick, cropped hair, he is healthy and
dresses in trousers and a shirt, albeit soiled and stained. But
Ballam, 41, will tell you that he is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s
reincarnation and the Mahatama didn’t shave his head when he was a
young lawyer in South Africa or take to wearing the loin cloth in his
early days. So, give him time, and give him his right to sit on
Gandhi’s Samadhi on Rajghat and everything else will fall in place,
Ballam says.
For now, the man who ran away from home at a young age because he
thought his parents wouldn’t believe his claims of being the Mahatma’s
second birth, is sitting on a dharna at the protest street asking for
an enquiry into his alleged reincarnation. He also wants the
government to investigate the cases of torture when he was in jail for
several years, allegedly after he tried to sit on Gadhi’s Samadhi. He
says he was injected with morphine and then pronounced “delusional.”
A high court order from 2003 says he is “under delusion.”
But after he was out on the streets again, he lingered around the
Samadhi because it was there that he felt inspired, it was there that
he could see his previous life in flashes, and it was there that he
found peace.
“It is mine. And remember Gandhi said that ‘I will come again’,”
Ballam says. “I want to show them what he said was true.”
But he was kicked out. And then, he came to the protest street, armed
with papers, petitions and a resolve. And he won’t budge until they
declare him the owner of the samadhi.
“I am the king. I will think about everyone,” he says.
Ask him what he wants eventually and he would tell you “peace” for all.
For a laborer who dropped out of school at a young age, he argues that
his knowledge about Gandhi is not from textbooks. It’s through the
visions, the recurrent dreams, and the voices in his head that told
him he was the chosen one and he is here to finish what the Mahtama
couldn’t because Nathuram Godse killed him. But then, Ballam has
forgiven Godse too, he says.
“He was just misguided,” he says, with a smile. “I know I was killed
in my last birth. But I am here now.”
A poster with red type proclaiming Ballam as the king of the Indian
subcontinent hangs on the wall. He made it himself.
On the protest street, he is known as “Gandhi ji”. Fellow protestors
joke around, tease him and take chai breaks with
him. Ballam doesn’t mind. Only when they ask about Kasturba Gandhi,
does he turn red.
“I will find her in due time,” he says.
He was married once and had a child too. But he separated from his
wife because he had a mission and she wouldn’t have understood
anyways, he says.
For now, he is among the fraternity of the protesters. At least here
on this street, they call him Gandhi. And even though they might not
mean it, Ballam is happy.
“They see it,” he says. “And everyone else will see it too.”