Aashram

Aashram is a Hindi-language social drama directed by Prakash Jha for MX Player, set in the fictional north Indian town of Kashipur. At its center is Baba Nirala, a self-styled godman who has built an enormous, devoted following among the poor and the marginalized. To the crowds who throng his ashram he is a healer, a protector, and a messiah; behind the saintly public image, however, lies a careful operation of influence, money, and control that the series gradually peels back.

The story follows the cult of personality that grows around Nirala and the machinery that sustains it, including his shrewd right-hand man Bhopa, who manages the ashram's secrets and silences inconvenient voices. Against this backdrop is Pammi, a spirited young woman from a wrestling family whose admiration for the Baba draws her deeper into his world, and a handful of officials and seekers who begin to sense that the devotion masks something darker. The show treats its mature, troubling material in restrained, non-graphic terms, keeping its focus on power and hypocrisy rather than spectacle.

As a dogged police investigation and a few clear-eyed insiders start pulling at threads, the gap between the godman's holy reputation and the corruption beneath it widens toward a reckoning. Across its seasons Aashram became one of India's most-discussed streaming dramas, both for Bobby Deol's against-type turn as Baba Nirala and for the pointed questions it raises about blind faith, manufactured charisma, and the institutions that let powerful men hide in plain sight.