Chennai: Sometime in the early 1990s, a tall man with a flowing beard rode his motorcycle on an uneven path. It led him to a vacant parcel of land in the foothills of Velliangiri hills. The man in white pyjamas found a spot, rolled out a mat and got to work—teaching yoga to residents of Boluvampatti village panchayat in Coimbatore district.
This is how villagers remember the birth of Isha Yoga Centre, which has since operated under the aegis of its chief patron, Isha Foundation founder Jaggi Vasudev, or Sadhguru.
Nearly three decades later, the spot where Jaggi decided to set up base is surrounded by great rock walls on all sides; behind them a concrete jungle sprawling across 150 acres.
Isha Yoga Centre has been the subject of criticism and controversy since its inception in 1994. Last month, it came under scrutiny again after a retired professor approached the Madras HC alleging his two daughters were forced to take up monkhood at the ashram.
Appearing in person before the high court and later virtually before the Supreme Court, the man’s daughters denied that they were being held “captive” at the ashram in Coimbatore.
Isha Foundation issued a statement saying they “do not ask people to get married or take up monkhood as these are individual choices”.
The high court after it heard the retired professor’s plea Monday, had ordered the police to conduct an inquiry and file a detailed report on all criminal cases against the Isha Yoga Centre. The Coimbatore police visited the ashram and spoke to monks for two days.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court while hearing a plea by the Isha Foundation restrained the police from taking further action and transferred the retired professor’s habeas corpus petition to itself.
But the case has brought back focus to the many controversies involving the Isha Foundation and its founder Jaggi Vasudev who has not shied away from taking a stance on various issues. He has time and again advocated to ‘free temples from government control’.
In light of the latest controversy and those that preceded it, ThePrint spoke to villagers from Boluvampatti, activists who accuse the Isha Foundation of illegal construction and volunteers who say they were never pursued to take up brahmacharya (monkhood).
According to Isha Yoga Centre, there are about 217 brahmacharis (145 men and 72 women) at their Bangalore and Coimbatore centres.
The ashram in Coimbatore, which sees a footfall of at least 7,000 at any given time, is the most prominent along with the Sadhguru Sannidhi in Bengaluru and Isha Institute of Inner-Sciences in Tennessee and the Isha Yoga Center in Los Angeles.
The Isha Foundation says its more than 300 centres worldwide are supported by a vibrant network of over 17 million volunteers. The Isha Foundation also regularly takes up various initiatives, aimed at reviving rivers, planting trees and addressing the soil crisis.
Also Read: Sadhguru is bringing a bigger Adiyogi to Greater Noida. It’s the gateway to the North
Volunteers at Isha Yoga Centre
Sometime between 2004 and 2005, Manikandan (now 43) who was then a marketing professional, felt conflicted owing to the canyon between his moral values and the ‘tactics’ his job demanded. A friend advised him to attend a 13-day yoga session organised at the Isha Yoga Centre in Coimbatore, and he hasn’t looked back.
Manikandan has been volunteering part-time at the ashram since.
“I inquired about it but didn’t join since the timing was not suitable for me. My friend kept saying I would never attend the class. It triggered me and I decided to attend just to prove him wrong. That’s how I first joined the class. But, it was a life-changing decision,” he said.
Asked about the 13-day yoga camp he attended in 2005, Manikandan told ThePrint that he was taught “breathing exercises and a bit of body exercise”.
“I was not devotional, but I got logical answers for a lot of questions that were running in my mind,” he said, adding that becoming a monk is not as easy as it may sound. I did not have the thought, but I know the procedure. A minimum of five to six years, they have to do volunteering and only then, they can pursue it. Even then, the gurus might not accept them to take up monkhood as they might feel the person was still not ready,” he said.
For Manikandan, the Isha Foundation holds a special place also because he met Prithi, who would go on to become his wife, at one of the yoga sessions. The couple has a one-and-a-half-year-old child.
Asked what drew her to the Isha Foundation, Prithi said she was “very impressed” with Jaggi’s YouTube videos. “I was also looking out for Isha yoga classes nearby. I heard they were happening at local centres. I managed to join the 7-day programme. It transformed my life,” she told ThePrint. She too is a part-time volunteer at the Isha Yoga Centre.
But Dr S. Kamaraj, the retired professor who waged a legal battle against the Isha Yoga Centre, refused to believe these accounts.
“How would a woman working in London and earning a lump sum every month leave everything and take up monkhood all of a sudden,” he asked.
Kamaraj also claimed both his daughters, who are monks, invited him and his wife to join them at the Isha Yoga Centre in Coimbatore. “I petitioned a lot of government officials. In one of the inquiries by the district collector, I argued it was the duty of daughters to take care of their parents at their old age. They asked me to leave everything and join them at the yoga centre so they would take care of me,” he alleged.
Allegations of illegal construction
The Isha Foundation found itself fending off allegations of illegal construction as recently as last year when a bench of the Madras High Court while disposing of a 2017 PIL which accused Isha Foundation of putting up unauthorised constructions on 20 hectares of land at Boluvampatti village in Perur taluk, Coimbatore, ordered an inquiry. The petition was filed by Velliangiri Hills Tribals Protection Society and sought demolition of the alleged unauthorised construction citing damage purportedly caused to wetlands in the area.
In August 2023, the high court asked the town and country planning department to take appropriate action if illegalities are found.
And in 2018, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) alleged the Isha Foundation undertook construction in an elephant corridor in Booluvapatti reserve forest range, without prior necessary approval from the Hill Area Conservation Authority (HACA).
In response, the Jaggi-led non-profit accused the CAG of ‘ignoring facts’. It said neither the Tamil Nadu Forest Department nor the Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change in their respective counter affidavits said Isha Foundation “is in the elephant corridor”.
“Eminent scientists working in the field of elephant conservation clearly state that Isha Foundation is nowhere close to an elephant corridor,” it reiterated in multiple blog posts.
Asked for comment, an Isha Yoga Centre spokesperson told ThePrint there is no truth in any of the allegations of illegal construction, adding, “We have all the necessary approvals and clearances.”
The spokesperson also cited an RTI reply by the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) which “does not mention Isha or any area near Isha in the list of elephant corridors in Tamil Nadu”.
Isha Foundation’s green initiatives
On its part, Isha Foundation has undertaken several initiatives over the years to promote environmental awareness.
It launched its first such major initiative in 2004—Project GreenHands. The idea was to encourage agroforestry, and set up plant nurseries in schools and colleges across the state. Over 2 million volunteers had planted more than 17 million saplings under this initiative till 2017, according to a statement by the Isha Foundation.
Later, in 2017, Isha Foundation embarked on its ‘Rally for Rivers’ campaign to rejuvenate depleting rivers by planting saplings along riverbanks across the country. Isha Foundation also handed over a Draft Policy Recommendation (DPR) to the central government.
The Centre took note of the DPR and in April 2022 announced that it would undertake the rejuvenation of 13 major rivers at an estimated cost of Rs 19,342.62 crore. Then Union minister for Jal Shakti Gajendra Shekhawat had thanked Jaggi for the “recommendations”.
“Your vision, guidance and all-inclusive approach towards ecology are an inspiration,” Shekhawat wrote in a post on X.
In 2019, the Isha Foundation also launched another initiative under the banner of ‘Cauvery Calling’ with an aim to “support farmers to plant 242 crore trees in Cauvery basin by adopting agroforestry”. According to the Isha Foundation, more than 10 crore trees have been planted as part of this initiative to date, including 2 crore in 2023-24.
The ‘Cauvery Calling’ initiative courted controversy when in September 2019 the Karnataka High Court issued notices to the then-BJP government in the state for endorsing the initiative.
In his petition, advocate A.V. Amarnathan also sought directions to Isha Foundation to stop ‘collecting donations’ for plantation of trees, asking how a private organisation could be allowed to seek money for work to be carried out on government or state-owned land.
The high court, however, dismissed the petition.
Asked about what ties devotion and spirituality to the environment, the Isha Foundation spokesperson quoted earlier said, “We cannot go and ask a poor farmer to do yoga and meditation when there is no fresh air, water and food for him to survive. It is part of the process.”
Jaggi & politics
Jaggi, the face of the Isha Foundation, has on more occasions set off a political controversy with his remarks. Months before the 2021 Tamil Nadu assembly elections, he gave a call to ‘free the temples’.
“To protect the thousands of temples in Tamil Nadu that are gradually being ruined, the Tamil Nadu government should free temples from the clutches of the government and hand them to the devotees,” he wrote in a post on X in 2021, tagging the then CM Edappadi K. Palaniswami, then LoP M.K. Stalin and actor Rajinikanth.
This was in stark contrast to the stance of the DMK, which formed the government after the elections, and advocates for government control of temples. In May 2021, then state minister Dr P. Thiaga Rajan in an interview to The Hindu termed Jaggi a “publicity hound who is trying to find another angle to make more money”.
On the Dravidian parties’ difference of opinion with Jaggi on the issue, DMK spokesperson T.K.S. Elangovan told ThePrint, “Kalaignar (M. Karunanidhi) said temples shouldn’t become a shelter for the wicked. None of our leaders said there should not be any temple at all. Only if it is governed by the government, there would not be any corruption.”
However, Tamil Nadu BJP vice president Narayanan Thirupathy alleged the DMK targets the Isha Yoga Centre simply because the Jaggi-led non-profit promotes Hindu culture. “Government should never think of targeting religious heads or religious places related to Hindu culture. The government should desist from indulging in the kind of practices that threaten religious places,” he told ThePrint.
Referring to Jaggi’s appeal to ‘free the temples’, Thirupathy said the BJP has been saying the same thing for over 40 years. “Only if the government gets out of the temples will corruption stop.”
Elangovan, on the other hand, maintained that the DMK has nothing against the Isha Foundation as long as it operates per law.
Jaggi and the BJP have often found themselves on the same page. He publicly supported the 2019 ‘surgical strikes’, the implementation of GST and passing of the Citizenship Amendment Act. He has also appealed in the past for a complete nationwide ban on cow slaughter.
Asked about it, the Isha Foundation spokesperson denied any ideological alliance with the BJP.
“It (Isha Yoga Centre) is a place for all the people including the politicians from the BJP, Congress, DMK and all the political parties. But, only after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Adiyogi statue at the Isha Foundation, we have been given this colour.
“Since then, we are not inviting even the ministers for any programme as it is giving us a political colour. But, as a follower, everybody is welcome to the centre and to our ashram,” the spokesperson told ThePrint.
Also Read: ‘We think planet is a cake we can cut into pieces,’ Sadhguru warns of soil & climate crisis