Adam Parsons is the first foreign journalist to visit Swami Premananda since his imprisonment in India in 1994. We include two segements from this vivid article in which he describes conditions at the prison and the impact the Avatar is having on those around him. For the complete article see Share International July/August 2006.
In a remote village on the edge of southern India, far off the tourist maps, a cheery holy man continues his fixed routine. Between six in the morning and six in the evening, Swami Premananda gives a daily spiritual discourse to an audience of hundreds, writes personal replies giving advice and support to an unending stream of letters, holds open interviews every day for the poor people around him, while constantly overseeing the management of a fruit plantation, a flower nursery, an orphanage, a school, and an ashram more than 250km away. It may sound like the life of a particularly conscientious sage, except that Swami Premananda has languished behind bars for more than 11 years, and the people who seek his daily counsel are fellow prisoners in Cuddalore jail . The jail where Premananda has lived since 1998 is a five-hour train ride from the ashram in a dusty coastal town called Cuddalore that was ravaged by the tsunami of late 2004. No tourist would have a reason to come here, especially not at the muddy end of the rainy season, but I had been warned not to let slip the purpose of my visit considering the damning opinion most Indians hold against Premananda. It added to a slight sense of being on a furtive assignment the Swami had never met with a foreign reporter since his arrest, so if anyone asked, I was told, then I should pretend to be on my way to the seaside French colony at Pondicherry. A small gathering of us assembled at a nearby village in the early morning before herding into a couple of 1950s-style Ambassador taxis. The prison stood two km away in a silent and gloomy woodland, enclosed by a barren forecourt and a towering wall guarded by sentries with old-fashioned rifles. It became more surreal as our entourage gathered around Premananda, who was quietly sitting on a stool in the corner of a bare and windowless cell. Many people who first meet Swamiji, as he is normally referred to, say how differently he comes across from the usual notions of the sombre holy man, but with a full round beard, ever-smiling white teeth, and wearing a wrap-around cloth called a lungi, he almost seems like the stereotypical wise and jubilant guru. He speaks to foreigners in a charismatic, self-taught English that requires some translation from those more experienced in his enjoyable style of jumbling up clauses and missing out verbs, and it can be difficult not to laugh along with his animated explanations. The PR officer who translated explained that Premananda is going blind from untreated eye cataracts and diabetes, as well as suffering from high blood pressure, ear problems and chronic asthma. In the monsoon summers, I was told, rains could flood each prison cell to knee height. "There are barely any facilities no roof, no fan, no light, no bed. I have to sleep on the floor!" Premananda explained, squinting and chuckling through the bars. He described these conditions with such jollity and mirth that it was easy to overlook how terrible it must be. In a previous discourse given in the prison, he explained that at night it was "so hot you can hardly breathe", forcing him to use "a hand fan made from coconut palm" which "my hand goes on fanning automatically even when I am asleep". Asked how things were for the other prisoners, the Swami began to describe the injustices rife inside Indian jails. Of the 3,000 prisoners in Cuddalore prison a huge proportion were innocent, he said, as it was common practice for a rich person to commit a murder or serious crime and then bribe the police so that an `ordinary' man is blamed. "But how can we help these people? The only way is by appointing a lawyer," he said. "The government appoints each prisoner a free lawyer, but he does nothing. Now I have freed roughly 200 people by paying for a lawyer and overseeing the case. If somebody gives pocket money to me, that money goes directly to their lawyer! I don't want money for myself." Other prisoners who live alongside Premananda spoke of the quiet good works that he continuously undertakes inside the prison. Mr Parvallal, who spends hours in Premananda's cell each day handwriting replies to letters that the Swami endlessly dictates owing to his loss of sight, gave information that was not even known to residents in the ashram. Every morning at around eight o'clock, said Parvallel, several hundred people gather in the courtyard, with special permission from the guards, to listen to Premananda discuss an aspect of Sanathana Dharma (the philosophy of India's ancient sages). "I have taken lessons from Swami for four years, and they have definitely changed me," he said. "When we listen to Swami's satsangs (discourses), for that hour we forget that we are in prison." Mr Kumaran, a quiet and sincere young man who helps Premananda with chores in his cell, spoke with such praise for the Swami that his eyes widened and his face seemed to glow. Describing the material and spiritual help that Premananda gives to the hundreds of prisoners who visit him, including medicines and essential supplies, books and school fees for their children, jobs for their destitute wives, even small shops to help inmates re-establish themselves after prison, he said: "Although Swamiji is in human form, I feel that he is really a living god." One ex-inmate of Cuddalore jail, Mr Shankara, spoke of becoming so attached to Premananda that he refused to leave prison upon his release. As Swami Premananda faces the prospect of 18 more years in prison without further appeal, the counter-allegations in his lawsuit are so serious that many supporters believe the details warrant scrutiny in an international court. Ram Jethmalani, despite being retired from practising law at the age of 83, has vowed to personally champion the case until a presidential pardon or reprieve is issued. "One has to hang one's head in shame," he said after the Supreme Court judgement, claiming that the verdict has caused international embarrassment in the Law Schools of India by effectively sanctioning the beating up of witnesses to "extract what the police regard as truth". The implications are so forbidding, he warned, that legislation should be urgently introduced to reverse the law as currently laid down in India . To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
