Twelve years standing. Without sitting down. Without lying down. Without yielding for even a second to exhaustion. That is what Dulal Giri Ji Maharaj, the Hindu ascetic known in India as ‘Standing Baba,’ has been practicing as a vow of total devotion to the deity Shiva.
The practice has a name of its own: ‘Khadeshwar’ or ‘Khada Tapasya,’ considered one of the most extreme forms of asceticism within Hinduism. Those who embrace it believe that sustained physical suffering is not a cost, but the very path to enlightenment. Dulal abandoned his university studies to devote himself to it completely. His stated goal is to attain a direct vision of Shiva, a sign of divine presence that, for him, justifies every day of the last twelve years.
The documented physical consequences are severe and reveal what that amount of time does to a human body. The practice has existed in India for centuries, but it generates controversy even within Hinduism itself. The line between extreme devotion and self-destruction, in this case, is so thin that it is almost impossible to draw.
