Victimization by video

Victimization by video

by David Matas

The Adi Shaivite Minority Tradition is an ancient minority tradition of Hinduism. Its current spiritual leader is His Divine Holiness (HDH)Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam.

The Tradition has become increasingly popular in modern times, in part because, its stance on equality has appealed to a large swath of people. The Tradition today and their spiritual leader promote gender equality, oppose caste inequality and support equal rights for those with diverse sexual orientation. The Tradition has a particularly large following in South India.

The popularity has led to backlash from three directions - majoritarian Hinduism, elements of which feel threatened by the loss of adherents who have moved to the Tradition, atheist secularism - elements of which feel the loss of their monopoly claim to promotion of equality rights and caste supremacists. The result is a sequence of violent attacks in South India against followers of the Tradition and their spiritual leader against which there is no effective state protection. Those hostile to the Tradition have been victimizing both followers and the spiritual leader with impunity.

Although there are many instances of attacks against followers of the Tradition and their spritual leader, a particular focus of attacks has been a video of the spiritual leader supposedly engaged in erotic activity with a local actress. Forensic examinations have shown the video to be fabricated, super-imposing videos of the two individuals.1

1

http://www.nithyananda.org/sites/default/files/news/lenin-arrested/David-NCAVF-Report-f or-Life-Bliss.pdf http://www.nithyananda.org/sites/default/files/news/lenin-arrested/bryan-neumeister-rep ort.pdf http://www.nithyananda.org/sites/default/files/news/lenin-arrested/edward-joe-report.pdf

2

The video was subject to an extortion attempt which failed and the video became public. The video, once public, became the focus of attacks and official harassment directed against the spiritual leader and, by extension, the Tradition.

The official harassment was brutal. The spiritual leader was arbitrarily arrested and subjected to invasive medical examinations which caused him permanent damage. The attacks were even worse. After an alarming sequence of assassination attempts, he fled India to seek international protection.

For opponents of the Tradition, the video is useful, because it is directed against a major component of the appeal of the Tradition, its embrace of equality. Instead of appearing to support equality, the Tradition and the spiritual leader, by virtue of the propaganda around the video, are portrayed as exploitative.

Human nature remains constant, but technology evolves. Religious intolerance has existed since pre-historic times. Only today does it take the form of fabricated videos.

A comparison can be drawn to the practice in China of Falun Gong, a spiritually based set of exercises. Like the Adi Shaivite Minority Tradition, the practice is an updating of ancient traditions, in the case of Falun Gong, Buddhism, Taoism and the qi gong exercises.

Like the Tradition, the practice has a particular modern appeal, in the case of Falun Gong, benefits to health. Like the Tradition, the practice was targeted by those jealous of its success, in the case of Falun Gong, the Communist Party of China.

http://www.nithyananda.org/sites/default/files/news/lenin-arrested/joe-yonowitz-report.pd f

3 Like the Tradition, the targeting, in part, took the form of a fabricated video, in the case of Falun Gong, a video pretending to show practitioners of Falun Gong self-immolating, putting themselves on fire.2 Like the Tradition, the video was aimed at a major appeal of the practice, in the case of Falun Gong, its health benefits.

Those victimizing through video the Adi Shaivite Minority Tradition and its spiritual leader may well never have heard of Falun Gong and its victimizing video. What we are seeing is not so much copycatting as the almost infinite ingenuity of humanity to adapt technology developed for human betterment to oppression and destruction.

Ancient spiritual traditions develop in modern guises to combat modern scourges. But a dialectic generates with outsiders who envy the success of the development. In that dialectic, no means are out of bounds. Anything can be turned into a weapon, including videos.

It is pretty hard to do much inside China about oppression by the Communist Party of China. China is undemocratic, a one party state with pervasive censorship, a propagandistic government which values unthinking loyalty above all else, absence of the rule of law, an insistence on conformity and a long history of brutal human rights violations.

India is different, with a free media, a vibrant democracy, an independent judiciary, a diverse citizenry and a system of remedies for human rights violations. India does have history of political appeals to religious groups. Nonetheless, the oppression of the Adi Shaivite Minority Tradition and its spiritual leader goes far beyond that. It is not, in India, business as usual.

This is the way, in a democracy, respect for diversity ends, by allowing free rein to those

2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nKjGYoXqc4

4 who use any means to insist on conformity. India needs to target the incitement to hatred and religious intolerance directed against the Adi Shaivite Minority Tradition and its spiritual leader, not just to attempt to prevent further victimization of the already victimized spiritual leader and followers of the Minority Tradition, as important as that is. India needs to do all that to protect itself.

David Matas April 28, 2019