The world-renowned Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry has
come under a cloud with inmates making serious allegations against the
trustees. Imran Khan reports:
All is not well with the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a
well-known institution for the spiritually inclined, with the state government
considering a proposal to take over its administration from the hands of the
trustees. With several allegations of inmates facing sexual and other forms of
harassment coming to light, the ashram’s image of piety is under threat.
Last year, more than 50 inmates submitted written
complaints to the district collector as part of a probe into what goes on
inside the ashram. The Puducherry
government had ordered the probe after the Union Minister for Women and Child
Welfare Krishna Tirath wrote to Chief Minister N Rangaswamy, following several
complaints from the inmates. The probe, though, could not be carried forward as
the ashram management moved the court questioning the jurisdiction of the Puducherry
administration over matters concerning the ashram. Currently, the case is
pending with the Madras High Court.
TEHELKA is in possession of the testimonies submitted
by the 50-odd inmates to District Collector SB Deepak Kumar in September last
year. The testimonies lay bare a long list of sexual harassment and cruel
treatment of the ashram’s residents. “We had been receiving several complaints
even before the inquiry started,” says Kumar. “Most of it related to financial
irregularities, which is not our concern, and so we did not pay attention.
However, serious complaints of sexual harassment and physical torture surfaced
after we started the probe.”
Take the case of Jayashree Prasad, 52, an inmate since
1983, who says she was beaten up by a close associate of a trustee in July
1996. While she was working in the dining hall, Nonigopal, who she calls a
crony of the then trustee Albert Patel, tried to sexually assault her. She
claims she was beaten up when she resisted. Her ordeal was repeated in January
2001 when she resisted the sexual advances made by Krishna Chander, considered
close to trustee Ved Prakash Johar. This time she was attacked with metal rods.
Her appeal to the trustees for help and protection, she says, went unheeded.
Four of her sisters, too, are ashram inmates. When the
youngest of them, Hemlatha, 37, tried to raise the issue with the trustees, not
only was she reprimanded but all five sisters were barred from the dining hall
and issued a show cause notice threatening eviction from the ashram. Even the
police told her that according to the ashram rules, inmates are not allowed to
approach them and file cases.
“Until 2009, Rule No. 11 of the ashram forbade
residents from reporting internal matters to the media or seeking legal
recourse except with the consent of the trustees,” says Raman Reddy, in-charge
of the ashram’s archives.
After the rule was revoked, the Prasad sisters managed
to file a complaint with the police in 2010. Following this, they allege, they
were again asked to move out of the ashram. The case went to the high court,
which ruled that the sisters should find accommodation outside the ashram, at
Jenny Hostel (an ashram-run establishment outside the ashram premises), until
the matter was settled. But as the warden of Jenny Hostel refused to
accommodate them, they continued to stay in the ashram.
When the Prasad sisters tried to enter the dining
hall, the trustees called the police to stop them. Then, the sisters moved the
district court for restoration of their right to food and shelter in the ashram
premises. The court ruled in their favour, but the ashram management appealed
the verdict in the high court, which said the district court cannot review its
order. Following this, the sisters moved a special leave petition in the
Supreme Court. On 11 July this year, the Supreme Court ordered status quo to be
maintained for three weeks, allowing them to stay in the ashram hostel and have
food at the dining hall.
When asked why she and her sisters insist on staying
in the ashram despite the harassment, Hemlatha says, “The ashram belongs to
inmates like us and not to the trustees who have been misusing their
authority.”
In another case, Radha Krishna Das’ wife Shobha Rani
allegedly committed suicide in 2003 after facing sexual harassment several
times. Das lodged an FIR accusing Nirmal Swain, then the ashram’s legal
adviser, of abetment to suicide. The case was dismissed in 2012 by the Puducherry sessions court due to lack
of evidence. Two of his daughters, who were ashram inmates, left the ashram
after this.
In 2004, Kamal Dora, 60, reported the alleged suicides
of residents Kavitha and Meenakshi to the police, and also testified in the
Shoba Rani case. He was thrown out of the ashram the next year. Since then,
Dora has found shelter in a nearby home for the aged.
SM Annapurna, a former inmate, claims she was thrown
out of the ashram for repeatedly raising her voice against sexual harassment of
women inmates.
Not just women residents, but also children in the
schools run by the ashram have allegedly faced sexual harassment. Lipi Das, who
served as a teacher in the ashram school for the past 30 years, says she had
faced sexual harassment during her school days. Das says she has been raising
this issue periodically in the teachers’ meetings, but “instead of addressing
this issue, Managing Trustee Manoj Das Gupta reprimanded me”.
Sunil Sachraj, who grew up in an ashram school, claims
he was sexually assaulted by a teacher a number of times. Yet the ashram
retained the teacher.
The ashram’s media coordinator Matri Prasad claims
that Sachraj never complained about his alleged abuse to the ashram
authorities. Radhikaranjan Das, an inmate of the ashram since 1980 and a
teacher of Sanskrit and Biology at the ashram school, wrote a blog post in 2008
questioning the “policies and negative stance of the trustees”. He was issued a
show cause notice threatening eviction from the ashram and dismissed from his
teaching job. Matri Prasad says the ashram had to take disciplinary action
because the blog post used “derogatory language”.
The ashram is a tightly knit organisation with five
trustees who have absolute control over the 1,400 residents. There are no
internal elections for the post of trustees. When a trustee dies, the post is
filled purely on the discretion of the remaining trustees. Most of the trustees
are also in charge of various departments in the ashram.
An inmate has to submit everything belonging to him or
her (including property and academic certificates) to the ashram. The ashram,
in turn, takes care of their basic needs like food, shelter and clothing, and
allots them work in various departments.
Many residents allege that if they raise their voice
against the trustees, they are threatened with denial of basic necessities. Dr
Gayatri Satapathy, who joined the ashram’s medical services as a general
practitioner in September 1999, says that when she noticed serious embezzlement
in the nursing home accounts, she was shunted out of the department by its head
Dilip Kumar Dutta, who is also a trustee.
Most police and state government officials refused to
comment on matters concerning the ashram. A senior bureaucrat told Tehelka,
“These things keep happening. One should not give much air to it. Spirituality
is what matters.” Both SSP (Crime) and SP (Law and Order) of Puducherry refused to comment.
Inmates say that all efforts to report abuses in the
ashram in the mainstream media have come to naught. Those who have allegedly
suffered at the hands of the trustees are demanding that the government should
take over the administration of the ashram. They cite the example of Auroville,
an “international township” that was earlier under the Aurobindo Ashram but is
now managed by a government- appointed administrator. The ruling NR Congress
has come out in support of this demand. CM Rangaswamy recently told the Puducherry Assembly that the government
is mulling over appointing an administrator to oversee the management of the
ashram.
Matri Prasad says that most of the allegations have
been levelled by those who are “working against the ashram’s interests” or are
not its inmates. “They are miffed because the trustees defended a controversial
book written by an American historian living in Puducherry, Peter Heehs (The Lives of
Sri Aurobindo),” he says. The book is alleged to hint at a romantic
relationship between Aurobindo and his spiritual collaborator, Mira Alfassa,
better known as “the Mother”. He claims that the Prasad sisters have been
carrying out relentless propaganda against the ashram and were asked to leave
the ashram premises as an internal disciplinary measure.
While most of the 50-odd residents who deposed before
the district collector last year have been issued show cause notices
threatening eviction from the ashram, their allegations will continue to haunt
the institution for a long time.
(Published in Tehelka Magazine, Volume 10 Issue 32,
Dated 10 August 2013
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