Paramahamsa Nithyananda set up his first ashram in Tamil Nadu in 2000 when he was still in his early 20s. Thanks to his claim to miraculous powers like levitation and televised sermons, his empire spread fast and had ashrams, gurukuls (students’ residences) and other institutions across south India, apart from the US and Europe, by 2009.

All hell should have broken loose on him in 2010 when a series of scandals hit him —two videotapes showing him in a compromising position with women, an allegation of repeated rape brought in by a US citizen devotee, and the recovery of bunches of condoms and ‘non-disclosure agreements’ from Nithyananda’s ashram in Karnataka during a police raid.

The text of the non-disclosure agreement shocked many, especially the ‘Learning from the Master’ programme. The agreement says that the volunteer acknowledges and understands that the programme may involve the “learning and practice of ancient tantric secrets associated with male and female ecstasy, including the use of sexual energy for increased intimacy/spiritual connection, pleasure, harmony and freedom.” These activities may involve nudity, sexual activity, “verbal and written descriptions and audio sounds of a sexually oriented, and erotic nature.” The volunteer will never make anything about it public and does not find these as offensive.

Making sexual acts a part of spiritual pursuit is not new. Tantric practices are centuries old. In the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, better known as Osho, publicly spoke of the role of sex in spiritual awakening. Rajneesh did not belong to any religious or spiritual school and was an iconoclast. But Nithyananda’s organisations run educational and residential facilities for students. He spoke of celibacy. Understandably, the scandal made many parents worried.

But bringing Ashram or gurukul residents back is not easy. In 2012, even as Nithyananda got accused in another rape case, this time by an Indian devotee, two women in their 20s went to Bengaluru’s top cop to allege that their parents were forcefully keeping them away from Nithyananda’s ashram. They gave the police a letter stating that the police should not entertain any complaint from their parents accusing Nithyananda or his association of abduction. They had unshakable faith in the guru.

More parents have since then taken the legal route to bring their children back from Nithyananda’s institutions. Some succeeded but some faced stiff resistance and legal challenge from the children.

In February 2024—four years since the guru fled the country and declared founding a new island nation styled as United States of Kailasa—a Gujarat high court division bench ruled against a father’s plea to get his daughters back from Nithyananda’s ashram abroad. The court observed that the women were happily pursuing their spiritual path.

“It’s a dangerous cult,” said a US resident Sarah Stephanie Landry in a video in September 2019, about a year after she had quit Nithyananda’s organisation. She alleged that Nithyananda “fits all the characteristics of a narcissistic sociopath” but ashramites take everything he says as the ultimate truth. “We did not look beyond what he said. I was brainwashed.”

Nithyananda’s followers, on the other hand, accused her of attempting to poison the guru.

Cults rob followers of free will and family ties, says a 2023 research paper from Walden University. “Their leaders’ manipulation of followers can be dangerous, resulting in emotional and physical abuse,” it says.

In 1981, the Rajneesh followers set up a whole new township, Rajneeshpuram, in Oregon in the US. His radical, iconoclastic and scandalous ideas were the cult’s driving force.

Sex, including orgies, was an integral part of their spiritual practice, both in the Ashram in Pune during the 1960s-’70s and in the US in the 1980s. Most of those who joined the ashram had left their friends and families, making the ashram their only world.

Despite his commune getting embroiled in a series of scandals involving fraud, drugs and sexual abuse in 1985, he commanded great authority over the vast majority of his followers till his death in 1990. When he was arrested before an alleged attempt to flee the US, his followers staged protests in India, Germany and the US.

Cognitive Dissonance

Cults can be called a space without reason, a magic land governed by the devotees’ “willing suspension of disbelief,” borrowing from ST Coleridge. They are closely-knit, closely guarded, overprotective, guru-centric groups that usually face controversies only when insiders—ardent devotees or ashram inmates—fall out and become whistleblowers.

Most of the time, whistleblowers allege facing intimidation from the guru’s ardent followers. Devotees tried to violently defend gurus like Asharam Bapu from legal actions for as serious charges as rape.

According to American social psychologist Leon Festinger, cult members suffer from ‘Cognitive Dissonance.’ Festinger’s theory says the most devoted members of a cult refuse to believe they are wrong, even when shown new information in the form of evidence. Instead, they come up with different ways to rationalise their beliefs.

Scandals rarely harm the fortunes of gurus. In the mid-1970s, the famous magician PC Sorcar Junior entered the highly popular Sathya Sai Baba’s Puttaparthi Ashram under a false identity. When the baba performed one of his ‘supernatural acts’—producing a sandesh (dry sweet) out of thin air—Sorcar returned the gesture by pulling a rosogolla (syrupy sweet) out of nothing. The Baba, furious, threw Sorcar out. Sorcar later wrote and publicly demonstrated how Sathya Sai’s skills were in magic tricks, not miracles.

In November 1992, Sathya Sai produced a gold chain out of nowhere at a function that Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao graced. The next day, the Deccan Chronicle splashed on their frontpage screengrabs showing one of the Baba’s assistants secretly passing the chain to him. It was captured in a Doordarshan camera. The cassette was officially suppressed but somehow got leaked.

Did these exposures damage his devotee base? Perhaps not. Not even the many allegations of sexual abuse of young boys. Sathya Sai continued to enjoy devotional popularity across India and beyond till his death in 2011.

Devotees throng to guru’s lectures and ashrams because they believe the guru can initiate them to or awaken in them a spiritual superpower. For example, Brahma Kumaris believe positive or negative vibes influence matter. This is also what Jaggi Vasudev aka Sadhguru says.

“There is substantial evidence today about how the molecular structure of the water can be rearranged without changing the chemical structure even with simple or a touch,” Sadhguru said in one talk. “If I take a glass of water in my hand and just look at it in a certain way and give it to you, well-being will come to you,” he said in another.

As the guru becomes the undisputed central point of their devotees’ lives, all that they say sound the final truth.

In recent years, a man in his mid-20s shot to prominence through his televised sessions performing miracles like magic healing mind-reading. Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, the head priest of Bageshwar Dham in Madhya Pradesh, has become popular as Baba Bageshwar.

In February 2023, after his followers announced he would be performing miracles at an event in Maharashtra’s Nagpur, local rationalists threw him a challenge, asking him to perform his miracles using information that they would provide. If he succeeds, they will pay him Rs 30 lakh. Shashtri did not take up the challenge. The event was cancelled. Yet, Shashtri’s subsequent public appearances saw thousands in attendance.

“The problem with cults is that one always tries to reach closer to the guru and the closer they reach the deeper they sink,” says a Kolkata-based retired IT professional. He tells Outlook that he is trying to bring his wife “out of the clutches of” her new friend circle made of Brahma Kumaris devotees.

“Brahma Kumaris devotees have brainwashed my wife and she has changed. But it is not easy to get one out of such groups,” he says, adding that the guru becomes the anchor in the devotee’s life. “Most people fear emptiness and uncertainty, which are the biggest capitals of such gurus and their organisations,” he says.

A recent example of devotee madness is the tragedy at Hathras in Uttar Pradesh. Over a hundred died in a stampede at the end of cop-turned-guru Bhole Baba’s satsang event. Various accounts suggest that while the venue was already overcrowded, the devotees’ mad rush to lay their hands on the dust from the guru’s car caused the stampede. Even the dust from his car’s tyres represents him. The devotees bit the dust. The guru got away.

(This appeared in the print as 'Cult Culture')