Sadhguru & The Art Of Intellectual Diplomacy
Joe, a NALSAR student, was sitting in the audience for ‘Youth & Truth - discussion with Sadhguru’ when he got to ask the question and moved the conversation towards restriction on women’s entry to Shani Sabarimala Temple (a holy temple for Hindus). All he wanted to ask was, why would the intellectual guru support such discrimination.
Who are we [the common people] to question the verdict of the Supreme Court which stated that “if we make laws that tend to be discriminatory against women, it can not be a justification that we are doing it for their benefit.” Joe made this point to counter Sadhguru’s belief that there are planetary forces in the temple that tend to harm women.
Though, Joe was a bit hostile with his approach, especially towards the e-commerce website run by Sadhguru’s Isha Foundation. Despite that on this one, I would like to side with Sadhguru that in order to generate revenues for their societal and environmental programs they need capital. But other than that, I felt for poor Joe who was the victim of Sadhguru’s Abstract Diplomacy.
To make you familiar with the topic at hand, Shani Sabarimala Temple is a temple in Kerala State of South India, where women of age 10–50, or in other words menstruating women, were not allowed to enter. Here are two opposing opinions on the issue, both coming from the five-member bench of High Court:
Indu Malhotra (The lone women judge): What constitutes an essential religious practice is for the religious community to decide and notions of rationality cannot be invoked in matters of religion by courts and shouldn’t be a matter that should be decided by the courts.
Dipak Misra (The Chief Justice): The selective ban on women was not an essential part of Hinduism, and instead of a form of “religious patriarchy”.
A bench of judges ruled in favor of lifting the ban with a 4–1 majority vote. A petition was filed challenging the authority of the court to intervene in the belief of the people. In other words, deeming religious beliefs above law. And in a way, Sadhguru himself sided with the claims.
Now back to Joe and Sadhguru’s debate. Sadhguru starts off by clarifying the purpose of e-commerce websites and highlighting the number of followers he has around the world, which honestly didn’t make sense to me other than being bragging rights. [He states that if that many people are following him then it must be working for them. To me, numbers is not a validation of anything. Numbers chose Modi and Trump. Hellulujah]
Anyhow, in his defense he states that — Shani Temples are made for occult practices. Women in the state of pregnancy or during menstruation cycle shouldn’t go, it will seriously affect their life. These are prescriptions, not restrictions or discriminations.
Though, in most instances, female sexuality is imaged as threatening and impure, contaminating spiritual processes in radical Hinduism.
And as much dis-satisfied you felt in the above reasoning, imagine what a crowd filled with nurturing lawyers would feel about that. That’s why in a pure [politically] diplomatic fashion, he cross-questioned poor Joe “why you don’t fight for men’s right to enter certain temples, like Bhairavi temple.”
The best way to evade a question is cross-questioning. Nothing works better for an audience seeking some masala (spiced-up) content than counter-arguments, irrespective of how off-point they are. All of our politicians do it all the time.
Politician 1: Why didn’t you work on education?
Politician 2: Why didn’t you do it during your term?
Well answer to Sadhguru’s rhetorical cross-questioning could have been that, if men file a petition for that we all be standing by themselves as well. But Sabarimala has drawn a substantial amount of following which is not suitable for benign gender discrimination. Second, I hope you are not simply banning women to get back at them for banning men from all of those temples.
Personally, I don’t know much about temples, (simply because there are too many of them) or especially the spiritual mythology, which is being used to negate the ruling of a higher judiciary. Being an amateur atheist, I am good at respecting the beliefs and values of people around me. But it’s hard to keep up with thousands year old patriarchal rulings.
When speaking about equality he makes a point that this is a crude sense of knowledge coming from the west and our culture doesn’t discriminate. We have more female deities than male deities and that’s how he establishes equality in India. As if our brilliant [rape] culture is free from misogyny and there’s equality everywhere. He didn’t utter these last few words, but he sure as hell established that.
Joe tries to bring him back at the point, “Who should be deciding whether a certain place of worship should be accessible to females, if not for court?” He again used the cliched way of cross-questioning and temples where men can’t go.
Now, finally, he addresses the point of the supreme court:
The Supreme court is there to interpret the constitution, it can’t make a new constitution. Because every motivated group will push for their own laws. “If you create a new ruckus some new law will happen.” This shouldn’t be the way.
Everything should happen in the framework of the constitution. In the framework of the constitution, there are laws where there are public places and private temples are left to themselves to operate whatever way they want.
They have to consider other aspects of it, and if you think you can’t consider anything else. It becomes ridiculous. It’s like saying, don’t I have the right to enter the ladies' toilet. You don’t need a lawyer, you just need sense to not go there.
#Crowd Applauds#
At first glance, he is bound to steal your heart. But there are a number of things which are fundamentally wrong in these statements:
First, the Supreme Court is capable of making amendments to the law, which itself is capable of addressing issues outside of its own framework. For instance, scraping section 377 and establishing LGBTQ rights. Though, I am still confused about what are the things outside of the Supreme Court’s “Framework”.
Second, Motivated groups ARE supposed to push for their opinions and ask for reforms in the constitution since what was applicable 70 years ago might not be applicable now. For instance, the example mentioned above or the people’s movement of Lokpal Bill.
Though, I get what he meant when he said, “..it will lead to chaos.”
[I mean if a motivated group can push enough to prove that a particular land belongs to a particular God — without any certified proof, then anything can happen.]
Third, I agree with the rights of Private Temples to operate as they wish. In other words, allowing them to do discrimination in their own geographical limits.
[Obviously, they have to follow what their “God” says.]
Lastly, Now to the most important point he made, while he made an analogy between [rights of] the situation of entering a Temple and Ladies Toilet. Asking for the right to enter ladies' toilets is indeed a stupid thing.
I mean, if I am standing in the Sabarimala Temple and I won’t ask for a right to go in the female toilet, but I would ask if my female friend standing outside the temple can enter. The public toilet usage is “common sense.” The prohibition of entry to a sacred place isn’t.
Though, I would understand that despite enough cry for equality and eradicating taboos around menstruating women, we still have to follow the religious beliefs written hundreds of years ago.
Religious belief has been known to trump logic in India.
In its totality, this is how Sadhguru (and most of the diplomats, as a matter fact) answer to the questions:
- He looks for an opening to start off his answer. (Or uses cross-questioning as a tactic. Never directly answering the question in name of establishing the context)
- Once he finds the opening, he latches on to it and talks about the concept itself, instead of answering the question.
- He takes words from the question and talks about them at length by using (I) his knowledge of the concept,
(II) excessive use of jargon,
(III) moral philosophy,
(IV) ways for the betterment of society.
This makes it sounds like he is answering the question. - He goes on and on about the concept, without even addressing the question, even sometimes negating what he earlier said, in order to make a point for the current situation. Moreover, he trusts his interviewer to move on.
This raises a fundamental problem of debate and understanding the issue better. Because he only utters things that he has already practiced and he used them to take control of the conversation. There are only gradations of what he wants to say. Yet he is so successful because his universalistic philosophy seduces people who see him as a true spiritual leader with a spirit-like appearance and westernized accent.
On a Nationalist Front:
I do agree with him when he says that we are trying to put common culture under one identity and for that, we need a common tool to express our patriotic emotions, and that way it explains ‘why standing for the national anthem should be mandatory?’
Yet two different people approached this question with two different approaches:
- Yet he also agrees that there are people who have suffered and thus feels that the nation has failed them. In that light, can it be pardonable to allow people not to stand for the National Anthem?
- People should have the right to decide for themselves how they wanna express their patriotism like donating for toilets or doing investigative journalism, and hence not ‘standing for the national anthem’ shouldn’t mean that person doesn’t subscribe to patriotism.
Make a guess, how Sadhguru answers these questions? He explains the importance of nationalism, how the United States capitalized it, and hence the need for standing for the national anthem. But never reaches to the point of whether ‘not standing’ should be permissible or not.
Now apart from his nationalist ideologies and his heightened version of spirituality, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is actually devoted to some larger than life programs like Clean Cauvery [River(s)], Isha Vidhya (Education), Project Green Hand (Environment), etc. And even if siding with the government and being diplomatic is solely for the purpose of giving a boost to these initiatives, I am backing Sadhguru.
But diplomacy knows no bounds. In one statement given to the unofficial spokesperson of the Hindu Nationalist Government, Sadhguru suggested strict actions to be taken against the militants residing in North India. This short-sighted statement just to please what the concerned audience (of that channel) wants to listen, contradicts his “humanitarian” concerns.
The peaceful demeanor of the spiritual leader coupled with finesse in the dialogue delivery has garnered a shit-load of fan following which is programmed to like, share and subscribe to whatever he says — however radical that is. People have still to understand that believing in someone is like an investment and shouldn’t be done on an exponential scale. It should be filtered and moderated, otherwise, this could easily become another legacy of blind-faith in a brand.
