A clip from a 2017 video of Jaggi Vasudev a.k.a Sadhguru, the ‘spiritual baba’ of the WhatsApp-taught wonderkids, has resurfaced on social media as a reminder for Indians: choose your public figures wisely. Varnishing his superstitions under the garb of good vocabulary and Western accent, Jaggi Vasudev has been able to create a mirage — of being any different from other ‘dhongi babas’ on TV.
Be it science, Citizenship Amendment Act, or feminism, Sadhguru has no knowledge of any topic but he absolutely loves to talk about all of them.
In the clip shared on Twitter, Sadhguru is applauding the female body for its ‘intelligence’, presenting his ground-breaking theory on the consistency of breast milk. “If a woman… delivers twins – one male and one female – one breast will ooze certain type of milk, another breast will ooze another kind of milk.” By now it’s sufficiently clear that if it’s Sadhguru’s words, then there are going to be little signs of intelligent life in it.
Earlier this year, he lambasted people protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) – after having declared at the start of his lecture that he hadn’t read the Act. But even if he hadn’t acknowledged that, his half-baked arguments were enough to make it evident.
Also read: Jaggi Vasudev is the Ducati-riding guru for the Modi Age
Misogynist baba
To put it lightly, Sadhguru isn’t big on feminism. Much like typical men’s rights activists, Sadhguru’s take on feminism is, “Women should have rights, I don’t like that. Everyone should’ve rights.” He explained to young women students of Mount Carmel College in Bengaluru: “Most of the feminists, they didn’t live well, it’s because they talked and talked and talked.” He went on to add that “it isn’t the lack of men that made their lives empty, it’s their choice of living in constant ‘reactionary’ mode.” Whatever that means.
At the same event, he told three young girls that it is actually the greed for money that has led to the rise of patriarchy and ended up giving men a higher position in society. Because, of course, it’s the men who earn money so they’ll obviously have an upper hand.
Also read: Off The Cuff with Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Taking science for a ride
It isn’t only through his comments on ‘intelligence of body’ that Sadhguru has made a complete fool of… science. He often confuses poetry with science and claims that water has memory. Speaking at a conference at IIT Madras (of all places), Sadhguru claimed that without changing the chemical composition of water, one can rearrange its molecules. “So much so that if I take a glass of water in my hands, and look at it in a certain way for a while, well-being will come to you,” Sadhguru observed while adding that the scientific community is in agreement with him, and that it’s not a superstition anymore.
Even Isha Foundation’s ‘Rally For River’ project has invited a lot of flak from the scientific community. The project, close to Sadhguru’s heart because of the relationship he shares with the rivers, aims to solve all the problems that the rivers’ face by planting trees along their stretches. Don’t get me wrong, his heart seems to be in the right place with this one. But his project doesn’t consider things like damming up, removing pollutants and diversion.
The issues associated with Rally For River project forced environmental experts to write a letter to actor Leonardo Di Caprio, urging him to withdraw his support to Isha Foundation. One of the major concerns raised in the letter was the Isha Foundation’s myopic view of the problem that seeks to oversimplify a complicated issue.
Instead of writing the letter, perhaps all that Environment Support Group needed to do was send a link of Jaggi Vasudev’s YouTube page to Di Caprio. That would have done the job.