stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

76 STRIPPING THE GURUS
prohibitions; and died an alcoholic wreck, after having been publicly
attacked by Gandhi for his involvement in a business scandal.
Why then are the stories of the Mahatma’s “experiments with
teenage girls” not more widely known?
The Gandhians were so thorough in effacing every trace of
the scandal that Bose’s book is unobtainable not only in India,
but also at the British Museum (Koestler, 1960).
* * *
Swami Rama passed away in 1996, being survived by, it has been
suggested, at least one child (Webster, 1990).
In the autumn of 1997, Pennsylvania jurors awarded $1.875
million in damages to a former female resident of the Himalayan
Institute in Honesdale, PA. The woman in question claimed to
have been sexually assaulted by Rama a full thirty times over a
Yogic Summer of Love in the early ’90s. At the time, she was a
nineteen-year-old virgin, just out of high school. Yet, as reported by
Phelps (1997), the Institute allegedly “did nothing to stop” that
claimed abuse, even though having reportedly been informed not
only of those alleged assaults but of similar complaints registered
by other female disciples.
Pandit Tigunait, who accepted Rama as his guru when just a
child in India, is now the “spiritual head of the Himalayan Institute,”
and the acknowledged “spiritual successor” to Swami Rama
there.
“Even if it happened....”