Swami Nithyananda is on the run following the release of a video by a channel, showing him having sex with a Tamil actress.
Tempers flared in Tamil Nadu after a news channel on Wednesday broadcast clippings of a 32-year-old popular spiritual guru in a compromising position with an unidentified actress.
Protests rocked the state after the channel blew off the lid on Swami Paramahamsa Nithyananda’s alleged sex scandal with a Tamil actress whose face was blurred on television. The godman, accused of cheating people of money and drugging women in the garb of providing herbal medicines, has gone into hiding following the expose.
Protesters brought out processions with Nithyananda’s portraits adorned with shoes and slippers. They also burnt his effigies in Kumbakonam, Coimbatore, Vellore, Thiruvannamalai, Cuddalore, Chidambaram, Rajapalayam, Kanyakumari and Banrutti. Nearby Puducherry also witnessed such protests. There were also attempts to ransack the guru’s ashram in some places.
“Such anti-social elements, who corrupt society in the name of spiritualism, should be arrested and dealt with firmly. His properties must be confiscated,” shouted the angry protesters. “We will renounce Nithyananda the way Muslim countries have announced a fatwa against Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin,” some protesters said.
Nithyananda, a popular figure on television for his lucid philosophical talks, was born on January 1, 1978, as Rajasekaran in the temple town of Thiruvannamalai. He is reported to have come under the influence of yoga practitioner Raghupati Maharaj early in his life and experimented with yoga, tantra, vedanta and other metaphysical sciences from a very young age. He became a popular yoga and meditation guru, attracted a large number of devotees, and opened his main spiritual centres in Thiruvannamalai and Bidadi.
In 2007, Nityananda was elected chairperson of the Hindu University of America, also known as the International Vedic Hindu University, based in Florida.
Nithyananda established the Life Bliss Foundation as his worldwide movement for meditation and transformation in 2003. The foundation is reported to span over 1,000 centres in 33 countries. He also set up Nithyananda meditation academies.
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