Nithyananda – Hinduism goes on and on

The video showing Nithyananda and Ranjitha together (allegedly I might add), is indeed graphic, but I cannot say whether it was generated through graphics. With whizkids everywhere, how am I to be sure that some graphics guru has not been able to put sex into a sanya-sin (sic).

The Swami, speaking on camera from an undisclosed place, has denied that it was his own august person in the video, and claimed to be collecting evidence to disprove his traducers. Considering that the dhoti version of being caught with pants down has been visited on his persona, he appeared jaded, tired and unconvincing.

Ranjitha has not denied that the female in the video is herself. Of course, everybody knows that she was a film star who had to do a dare-bare scene or two as part of her profession. But figuring in an explicit bedroom scene which is the talk of the town is not a very respectable thing to happen even to a former heroine. Even then there is no sign of any denial from her end. There was a report in a Tamil eveninger suggesting that she was against acting against the swami. Perhaps in her case it is a case of operation accomplished. Menaka come and gone. Viswamitra devastated. There is nothing more to say on her behalf.

The video shows two willing participants. As such one does not see what the charge against a swami in such a case could be. That it is an act unbecoming of a swami? Under what dispensation?

The swami seems to have been drawn to Rajneesh’s style of thinking, and even visited Osho’s ashram before launching his own. How does anybody know that he was not engaged in some tantra stuff? Of course our modern know-alls may not believe in it, but who gave them the right to judge somebody who does, as long as he does not break the law? If mindless hopping on a disco floor is therapy for a call centre girl, who says some tantalizing tantra is bad for a continent hopping swami peddling sedatives to a zany world high on TV, booze, drugs, and godmen, one may add.

There have been also laughable attempts by the cops at making more substantial charges than having sex in ochre robes. The alleged kingpin of the controversial video, a man who goes by quaint name of Lenin Karuppan (apart of course from the ashram name ending in some ananda), comes in handy in this regard. Considering that Nithyananda can be anything but happy about this man who has shattered his carefully constructed world of hundreds of meditative ashrams all over the world, a mineload of charges can be brought against the disgraced godman.

The expose of Nithyananda, seen in tandem with the alleged nefarious activities of Ichchadhari Baba in the country’s capital, has sets tongues wagging all around about the Hindu’s ‘godforsaken’ fatal instinct for godmen. Hinduism does believe in great gurus. Hinduism does not believe that man is so evil that great things and visions and great sacrifices and great values are alien to him. Hinduism does not believe in just one book, one saviour, one prophet, one fraternity of uniform(ed) believers. It is this extraordinary zest for plurality that makes Hinduism one of the most exciting religions of the world…a religion like no other, because it believes in no other dogma except that man can evolve and grow into a greater spiritual height, which in fact is his real nature, his real destiny, his real Self. The only category in Hinduism that is One.

Hinduism is an ever present witness to the eternal tussle between the lower self and the higher self (the two birds of the Upanishads in the tree of life), between the flesh and its sublimated energy, between the clouded understanding and the luminous glow of the soul.

Hinduism considers every living creature an experiment at achieving a greater consciousness…not through some mandatory belief, but as one’s birthright, as the realisaton of one’s essential nature.

With every failed effort it seems to falter….but gathers greater strength for a flight into a greater horizon.

‘Out of a thousand men’, said the Gitacharya, ‘one strives for the goal. Of those who strive thus, only a few reach me’. But that does not make any effort a wasted one.

‘Even a little of this dharma’, he says, ‘frees one from great fear’.

Withered flowers are not a failure of the spring…they are the invitation to the more fragrant flowers of the next dawn.

Hinduism has not been afraid of its external traducers. Hinduism is not afraid of its failed saints and fakes. Fakes proliferate everywhere, in politics, in the media, in the bureauracy, and even among sportsmen.