Daily Beast
June 20, 2011
Ben Crair
June 20, 2011
Ben Crair
Prakashanand Saraswati led one of the top Hindu temples in the United States until a jury convicted him of molesting children and he took off for Mexico.
Before the guru, Prakashanand Saraswati, vanished in March-before a jury convicted him of sexual abuse; before he slipped across the border into Mexico overnight-he led the premier Hindu temple in Texas and, perhaps, the whole United States. Barsana Dham sat like the Taj Mahal in the hillsides south of Austin, a familiar sight to customers of the famous Salt Lick Bar-B-Que down the road. The Hindus there kept strictly vegetarian, but there was never any tension with the carnivores next door. "They were very gentle and nice people," says Salt Lick employee Tana Kent.
Religious compounds in rural Texas had a bad name after the Waco siege in 1993, but Barsana Dham opened itself to the outside world. The ashram offered yoga classes, concerts, and public tours; participated in interfaith circles; sheltered refugees after Hurricane Katrina; and hosted the mayor of Austin on special occasions. When PBS made its 2004 Many Voices documentary project about American congregations, producers chose Barsana Dham as their exemplar of the Hindu faith.
Barsana Dham was "very much an ecumenical mainstream Hindu organization," says Robert King, a former professor of Asian studies and dean at the University of Texas. And yet there was Saraswati, ordered to trade in the saffron robes for an orange jumpsuit. The charges were serious-20 counts of indecency with a child-but "Swami Ji," as Saraswati was known to his followers, seemed untroubled in the courtroom. Large and elderly, he parked himself in a recliner and kicked off his shoes, as though watching the afternoon soaps. (The judge had permitted him the chair due to his bad back.) Occasionally, he took a nap or picked his nose.
"He didn't really seem to be that concerned about the trial," says Hays County prosecutor Cathy Compton. It may have been because Saraswati was not used to answering to a higher authority. At Barsana Dham, Saraswati was the highest authority, a "Divine personality" by his own description. "On your own, you are helpless," Saraswati told his followers. "You need a Divine help, and only a Divine personality can give you a Divine help." He certainly looked the part, his long gray hair and beard like clouds around a mountaintop. As one follower explained the relationship to PBS: "He takes care of you when you surrender to him."
It is not difficult to imagine how such reverence might invite abuse. Still, Saraswati had been preaching in the U.S. for nearly 30 years when, in 2008, three women accused him of molesting them as children. Each alleged that Saraswati had kissed, groped, and locked them in his room. The statute of limitations had expired for one of the women, Kate Tonnessen, but her younger sister, Vesla, and a third woman named Shyama Rose pushed ahead with the charges. (All three women came forward publicly with their identities after the trial.)
Saraswati's lawyers successfully delayed the trial for three years, arguing that he was infirm and unfit to show up in court. In the meantime, however, several adult female devotees reflected on their own experiences and arrived at the conclusion Barsana Dham had worked so hard to avoid. Says Karen Jonson, a former devotee of 17 years: "I came to the conclusion that I was in a cult."
Saraswati called his central teaching "divine love-consciousness," a constant awareness of God maintained through chanting and meditation. Born in 1929, he had learned it in India after meeting his own spiritual guru, Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj-a man whose own allegedly checkered past would set in motion a process that ended in Saraswati's conviction.
"This divine-love-consciousness grows in the heart of the disciple on the basis of his dedication and service to his Spiritual Master," Saraswati preached. There was nothing inherently suspect about the "dedication" Saraswati demanded. Hinduism directs its followers to spiritual teachers, who, according to traditional belief, are a necessary connection to God. "Guru are worshiped in a manner barely distinguishable from divine worship," Arthur Koestler observed in The Lotus and the Robot. "It is therefore unimaginable to question the [guru's] character or to disobey his whims. … He represents the will of God and God himself."
Hinduism is, however, an enormous religion without any central authority to say who or what exactly a guru is. Consequently, the saffron robes-meant to signify, among other things, the guru's chastity-have sometimes made a fine disguise for scoundrels. "By holding gurus as perfect and thus beyond ordinary explanations, their presumed specialness can be used to justify anything," Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad write in The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power.
After traveling the world to spread his message, Saraswati established the International Society of Divine Love in the U.S. in 1981. "We believed that he descended from the divine abodes onto this earth," explains Joe Kelly, a cult-exit counselor who was an ISDL devotee from 1983 until 1988. Saraswati found an audience, in particular, with disgruntled Western practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, the '60s movement of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Religious compounds in rural Texas had a bad name after the Waco siege in 1993, but Barsana Dham opened itself to the outside world. The ashram offered yoga classes, concerts, and public tours; participated in interfaith circles; sheltered refugees after Hurricane Katrina; and hosted the mayor of Austin on special occasions. When PBS made its 2004 Many Voices documentary project about American congregations, producers chose Barsana Dham as their exemplar of the Hindu faith.
Barsana Dham was "very much an ecumenical mainstream Hindu organization," says Robert King, a former professor of Asian studies and dean at the University of Texas. And yet there was Saraswati, ordered to trade in the saffron robes for an orange jumpsuit. The charges were serious-20 counts of indecency with a child-but "Swami Ji," as Saraswati was known to his followers, seemed untroubled in the courtroom. Large and elderly, he parked himself in a recliner and kicked off his shoes, as though watching the afternoon soaps. (The judge had permitted him the chair due to his bad back.) Occasionally, he took a nap or picked his nose.
"He didn't really seem to be that concerned about the trial," says Hays County prosecutor Cathy Compton. It may have been because Saraswati was not used to answering to a higher authority. At Barsana Dham, Saraswati was the highest authority, a "Divine personality" by his own description. "On your own, you are helpless," Saraswati told his followers. "You need a Divine help, and only a Divine personality can give you a Divine help." He certainly looked the part, his long gray hair and beard like clouds around a mountaintop. As one follower explained the relationship to PBS: "He takes care of you when you surrender to him."
It is not difficult to imagine how such reverence might invite abuse. Still, Saraswati had been preaching in the U.S. for nearly 30 years when, in 2008, three women accused him of molesting them as children. Each alleged that Saraswati had kissed, groped, and locked them in his room. The statute of limitations had expired for one of the women, Kate Tonnessen, but her younger sister, Vesla, and a third woman named Shyama Rose pushed ahead with the charges. (All three women came forward publicly with their identities after the trial.)
Saraswati's lawyers successfully delayed the trial for three years, arguing that he was infirm and unfit to show up in court. In the meantime, however, several adult female devotees reflected on their own experiences and arrived at the conclusion Barsana Dham had worked so hard to avoid. Says Karen Jonson, a former devotee of 17 years: "I came to the conclusion that I was in a cult."
Saraswati called his central teaching "divine love-consciousness," a constant awareness of God maintained through chanting and meditation. Born in 1929, he had learned it in India after meeting his own spiritual guru, Jagadguru Shree Kripaluji Maharaj-a man whose own allegedly checkered past would set in motion a process that ended in Saraswati's conviction.
"This divine-love-consciousness grows in the heart of the disciple on the basis of his dedication and service to his Spiritual Master," Saraswati preached. There was nothing inherently suspect about the "dedication" Saraswati demanded. Hinduism directs its followers to spiritual teachers, who, according to traditional belief, are a necessary connection to God. "Guru are worshiped in a manner barely distinguishable from divine worship," Arthur Koestler observed in The Lotus and the Robot. "It is therefore unimaginable to question the [guru's] character or to disobey his whims. … He represents the will of God and God himself."
Hinduism is, however, an enormous religion without any central authority to say who or what exactly a guru is. Consequently, the saffron robes-meant to signify, among other things, the guru's chastity-have sometimes made a fine disguise for scoundrels. "By holding gurus as perfect and thus beyond ordinary explanations, their presumed specialness can be used to justify anything," Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad write in The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power.
After traveling the world to spread his message, Saraswati established the International Society of Divine Love in the U.S. in 1981. "We believed that he descended from the divine abodes onto this earth," explains Joe Kelly, a cult-exit counselor who was an ISDL devotee from 1983 until 1988. Saraswati found an audience, in particular, with disgruntled Western practitioners of Transcendental Meditation, the '60s movement of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
