Just to keep the pressure on the cult apologists trying to "spin" the recent pandit riots in Fairfield in a positive light, I'd like to expand upon two recent statements I've made today, and then continue with a little less favorably "spun" version of facts presented in media articles over the last few months:
> > Whereas women in their 7th decade [Judy Stein] seem to spend their time > > pretending that well-to-do white people *aren't* paying to have young brown-skinned guys chant for them to cure them of their ills and supposedly create world peace...when they're not busy rioting. :-) > In other words, the systematized racism here is on the part of the TM > organization, which seems to think it's OK to take advantage of poverty and > desperation of poor Indian parents to persuade them to sell their children into indentured servitude. And who then take advantage of gullible TMers by suckering them into paying *huge* prices for so-called "yagyas" from these indentured servants, while paying the poor Indian boys $50 a month and locking them in barbed-wire compounds. Everything said above is from the articles surrounding the pandit program, either the earlier articles about a number of pandits trying to escape from their compound, or the more recent articles about their riot. What Judy and some of the others here are trying to obscure and keep from being said is a...uh...less favorable view of these facts. The TM movement in India -- led by a person currently out on bail after having been charged with rape, Girish Varma -- has for many years approached poor parents in India unable to provide for their children and talked them into having them become "pandits." The parents are promised a monthly income *in excess of the average monthly salary in India*, and they've been told that their kids will receive an education and be taught a useful trade. What Girish Varma fails to mention in his sales spiel to these parents is that -- according to at least two of the articles -- he is *not* providing the promised education to these kids, and that the only "market" for their supposed new "trade" is the "pandit programs" he arranges through the TM movement to have these kids "chant for peace" or chant yagyas (prayers to Hindu gods) for paying customers. Another tidbit from these articles, most recently stated by the TM movement's main lawyer Goldstein, is that this *entire program* is being paid for by the "donors," meaning the overly-privileged TMers around the world who have been suckered into either 1) paying all the bills for the program, including finding warm clothing for the pandits themselves, or 2) paying *enormous* fees for supposed "yagyas" in which these pandits chant to Hindu gods to cure them of their ills, insure their business successes, or otherwise achieve their personal goals. And remember -- according to the TM movement's own lawyer, *ALL* of this is being paid for by these either well-meaning (the ones who believe without any evidence that chanting a bunch of mumbo-jumbo will bring about world peace) or selfish (wanting only to cure their diseases or make money). The TM movement -- which according to many reports in the press is sitting on assets of OVER A BILLION DOLLARS -- is not paying a *penny* for any of this. Instead, what they are doing is taking these children (some of whom were sold into the program by their parents at age eight) and using them as a "cash cow" to sucker even more money from "donors" into the TM movement's already bulging coffers. At the same time, the TM movement is carefully taking any of the pandits who *might* have grievances of any kind and putting them on a plane to India, where they can't be interviewed by the press to get another side of the story. Some *may* be actually happy with their lives as pandits -- after all, they've been kept in compounds and indoctrinated by Girish and Co. since they were eight -- but the TMO is making sure that no one can talk to the ones who aren't. All that I'm doing is interpreting the facts presented either in press reports or by the TMO's main lawyer in a way that suggests that what is really going on is an ill-disguised form of slavery. The pandit's "contracts" with the TMO definitely fit the legal definition of "indentured servitude," because the supposed payment to their parents is completely dependent on them "serving their sentence" and working for the full three years of their "assignment," and is not made until *after* that "term of service" is over. Indentured servitude is illegal in the US and worldwide, having been condemned by the United Nations. Meanwhile theboys -- now young men -- are stuck behind barbed wire in Buttfuck, Iowa, and according to the TM lawyer, not even paid their $50 a month in cash -- all they get is "credits" that they can "spend" at the "company store." As I've said before, I think the whole program is a cynical scam to take advantage of gullible, overprivileged, mainly white folks by getting them to pay big bucks to have a bunch of poor young brown-skinned Indians chant for them. These are the FACTS of the situation, not a racial slur. The racism in this scenario is being practiced in my opinion by the TMO, which seems to have NO PROBLEMS with spiriting these kids away from their parents and then making megabucks from their labor while paying them diddley-squat. The cult apologists here are now free to present *their* view of the "Maharishi pandit program." Let's see if they can find a way to pretend that everything said in this post is not factual. Let's also see how closely their responses fit the description of "cult apologetics," and how much time they spend "shooting the messenger" (me) and trying to demonize me, rather than dealing with the issues I bring up in this post.
