The respected Indian raja yoga organization won the right to receive copies of the reports used to accuse it of “cultic deviances.”
by Massimo Introvigne
On February 7, 2024, the Administrative Court of Paris rendered a decision, whose grounds have been recently published, against the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the MIVILUDES, the controversial Inter-ministerial Mission for Monitoring and Combating Cultic Deviances.
The case had been filed by the Shri Ram Chandra Mission France and an association connected with the Mission called Heartfulness Institute. By a petition and two briefs, registered on November 2, 2022, and September 20 and October 9, 2023, the plaintiffs had requested from the Ministry and the MIVILUDES the communication of the “saisines” concerning them, including these originating from the private anti-cult associations UNADFI and CCMM and others received via the Internet. They also requested copies of the notes compiled by the police, the MIVILUDES, and the Ministry on the basis of these “saisines” during different years from 2003 to 2020.
“Bitter Winter” has repeatedly denounced the system of the “saisines” as the key of the discriminatory and non-scientific activities of the MIVILUDES. In a case before the CADA (Commission for the Access to Administrative Documents) decided on May 12, 2022, the MIVILUDES admitted that the “saisines” “are not reports” of actual incidents and include simple “questions and institutional exchanges,” which thus are not “testimonies.” In other words, everybody can send to the MIVILUDES or upload on its website through a form a “saisine” in the shape of a question, a comment, a criticism of a religious movement. The MIVILUDES then uses the number of “saisines” it has received as evidence that the movement is controversial and engages in “cultic deviances.”
It is thus understandable that a religious organization that finds itself accused of “dérives sectaires” wants to know on what “saisines” is the accusation based. After the request of the Shri Ram Chandra Mission was denied by the MIVILUDES, on May 25, 2022, it filed a complaint with the CADA. Based on the information it had received from the Ministry and the MIVILUDES, on June 23, 2022, the CADA stated that the “saisines” about the Shri Ram Chandra Mission “did not exist,” while other documents mentioning the movement should be communicated to it.
The Shri Ram Chandra Mission, however, did not believe that the “saisines” did not exist, and filed a lawsuit against the Ministry and the MIVILUDES with the Administrative Court of Paris. Since the 2003 report of the MIVILUDES referred to “saisines” provided by the UNADFI and the CCMM, it was difficult to deny that they existed. However, the Ministry told the Court that they had been misplaced or lost between 2003 and 2022. In its 2016-2017 and 2018-2020 annual activity reports, the MIVILUDES also mentioned 16 and 17 “saisines” respectively concerning the Shri Ram Chandra Mission. The Court concluded that these more recent documents, as well as some police reports, should still exist, and the request by the Shri Ram Chandra Mission to receive a copy of them was legitimate and not abusive.
The identity of the persons who submitted the “saisines” should remain confidential, but according to the Court “it does not appear that the removal of this information would render them unintelligible or deprive their communication of interest” for the Shri Ram Chandra Mission. The Court thus ordered that the MIVILUDES should supply the Shri Ram Chandra Mission France and the Heartfulness Institute with copies of the “saisines,” minus the personal information of the persons who submitted them, and the police reports, within two months, with the exception of those of 2003 that had been lost. The government should also pay a Euro 1,500 contribution towards the plaintiff’s expenses.
That the Shri Ram Chandra Mission, a highly respected organization in India, has been at all included among the groups accused of “cultic deviances” (and in the infamous French “list of cults” of 1995) is in itself evidence of the arbitrariness of the system of “saisines.” The Sahaj Marg, or Natural Way, is a system derived from raja yoga with a long tradition in India. It was rediscovered and simplified by Shri Ram Chandra of Fatehgarh (“Lalaji,” 1873–1931), born in Fatehgarh, Uttar Pradesh. From 1914 he established the first regular Satsang, or group meditation, and after 1929, the date of his retirement from his job as a court clerk, he devoted himself totally to spiritual teaching.
Lalaji is remembered as a humble and strict man who disdained all forms of personality worship. He was particularly averse to the use of miracles, and therefore recommended that aspiring disciples keep away from seeking such “powers.” He asserted that true spiritual practice should lead to a balanced mind and the transformation of the human being from a mere “animal” to a deified human being. Lalaji was succeeded by his favorite disciple, Shri Ram Chandra of Shahjahanpur (1899–1983), who coincidentally had the same name. He was called Babuji (from “babu,” clerk) by his disciples because he had worked at the Shahjahanpur court registry from 1924 to 1954, the date of his retirement. He founded the Shri Ram Chandra Mission in 1945, in honor of his master to give an organized form to the growing movement of Lalaji’s disciples.
From 1954, Babuji devoted himself full-time to the Mission and spread it throughout the world. As his health deteriorated, he appointed as his successor Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari (1927–2014) from Vayalur, near Tiruchirappalli, in the Federated State of Tamil Nadu, his closest disciple, who had accompanied him on his travels across the world. Chariji, as he was affectionately called, succeeded Babuji in 1983, after leading a normal family life and a busy work career with various positions at the top of a major Indian chemical group. Upon his death on December 20, 2014, he was succeeded by Kamlesh D. Patel, born in 1956 in Gujarat, a federated state in west-central India, known among his disciples by the name Daaji, who is the current fourth Raja Yoga master in the Sahaj Marg lineage.
The Sahaj Marg system taught by the Shri Ram Chandra Mission presents itself as the ancient method of raja yoga, modified to suit the needs and conditions of contemporary life. While other schools traditionally offer meditation after a preliminary itinerary that teaches yoga postures, breath control, and moral and ethical aspects, Sahaj Marg is intended to be simple, without rituals, difficult postures, specific clothing, name changes, or secret mantras. With the help of a “preceptor” (a person trained by the teacher in order to provide spiritual assistance) one can begin meditating for thirty minutes (later, up to an hour), sitting comfortably and with eyes closed, focusing attention on the presence of the “divine light” in the heart. At the end of the working day, one sits again, for thirty minutes, for “purification” work, to eliminate, with the support of the will, the impressions accumulated during the day. It concludes, before going to sleep, with a short prayer-meditation.
Thus begins an inner journey (yatra), through the different spiritual regions moving closer and closer to the center. The spiritual aspirant is helped along the way by “transmission,” an energy that is directed from the center of the Master’s existence, the heart, to the center of the practitioner’s life. This spiritual energy, “force without force,” to which no quality is to be attributed, is called “pranahuti,” the gift of life (prana means life, breath; huti means gift, transmission, introduction). The disciple will be able to reach, at the end of the spiritual path the “state of union” with the Divine or Absolute, the true meaning of yoga.
The Shri Ram Chandra Mission operates quietly and peacefully in 160 countries. In France, however, a few “saisines” made it into a “cult” whose “cultic deviances” should be controlled in secret.