A Mauritian Writer's Encounter With a Fearless Holy Man in Varanasi

On the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi, one of the oldest living cities on earth, a Mauritian writer sat down beside a Naga Baba, a wandering Hindu ascetic who owns nothing except the certificate of his guru's blessing. No clothes, no possessions, no fear. For an hour they shared silence and a few words, and that encounter set the tone for what followed.

Robin Leo Hoffmann, writing for the Mauritius Times, had come to Varanasi as a guest of the Aghor Foundation ashram. The Aghor tradition is a branch of Shaivite Hinduism, rooted in the belief that all things, life and death, the sacred and the profane, are equally divine. Its practitioners, often called Aghoris, are known for their radical rejection of social taboo and their unflinching meditations on mortality.

The following day, Hoffmann met Sadhu Ji, a spiritual figure resident at the ashram. The piece does not recount a dramatic revelation or a philosophical debate. It describes, quietly, what it feels like to sit with someone who has genuinely ceased to fear death, and what that quality communicates to a person who still does.

For many Mauritians, particularly those of Hindu heritage, Varanasi holds deep spiritual significance. It is the city where, according to Hindu belief, dying grants liberation from the cycle of rebirth. Pilgrims travel there from Mauritius every year for religious ceremonies, to scatter ashes, or simply to witness the ghats, the stone steps leading down to the river, where cremations burn day and night in full public view.

The Aghor Foundation itself runs social and medical programmes alongside its spiritual work, including care for leprosy patients and disaster relief, grounding its philosophy in service as much as in renunciation.

What Hoffmann captures in this personal essay is not doctrine but atmosphere. The Naga Baba sits naked by a river. Sadhu Ji receives a visitor in an ashram. Both men project, by the writer's account, a stillness that is not indifference but something harder to name, an ease with impermanence that most people spend a lifetime avoiding.

The piece is a reminder that the Mauritius Times has long published writing that reaches beyond the island's shores, reflecting the cultural and spiritual ties that bind the Mauritian diaspora and its Hindu majority to the Indian subcontinent. For readers who have never visited Varanasi, or who have only seen it described as chaotic and overwhelming, Hoffmann offers a quieter entry point, one conversation at a time.

What this means: This is a personal encounter essay rather than a news report. It carries no policy implications but speaks to a tradition of contemplative writing in Mauritian journalism, one that treats spiritual and philosophical experience as worthy of the same attention as politics or economics. For readers of Indian heritage in Mauritius, the references to Aghor practice and the Varanasi ghats will carry immediate cultural weight.

Source: Mauritius Times