Suggestion of an Indian ashram safety accreditation/grading body
Yesterday a Facebook friend put up an interesting public post, https://www.facebook.com/MJHimanshu/posts/1605313082841856, having a small list of five famous living spiritual teachers in India whom he considered as "cool to go to".
This post is based on the comments I made on the above mentioned Facebook post.
Interesting initiative. I applaud your courage in putting it up even though it is your individual list (and not an organizational list).
My view is that there should be an ashram safety accreditation organization/body focusing only on grading Indian ashrams on safety of people who visit there and who stay there. This grading should not get into spiritual aspects at all as that is very difficult to grade by anybody except those are very highly spiritually evolved and get intuitive knowledge about people who come in front of them (or perhaps anybody they want to know about even if they are not in front of them).
Indian ashram safety criteria should include aspects like (all criteria below are negative aspects which should contribute to poor safety grading):
1) Eve-teasing (cat-calling) of women
2) Sexual harassment of women, and of minor boys (and girls)
3) Acts of physical violence on ashram inmates and visitors
4) Ashram management (including management/administration team of ashram owned/run educational, medical and other institutions) indulging in white-collar crime like record tampering (a criminal offence under the Indian Penal Code) to exploit and mentally harass and dominate ashram staff including free service staff.
5) Suicide committed by ashram inmates/staff (including ex-inmates/ex-staff who were inmates/staff a few months before they committed suicide, and wrote suicide notes blaming other ashram inmates/staff as the cause of their suicide). I exclude visitors here as that is something ashram management cannot really prevent.
6) Pressure put on inmates and visitors to donate money to ashram. Voluntary contributions are perfectly OK. I am talking about psychological and other pressure to force people to donate money.
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Very unfortunately, eve-teasing, especially of young women wearing non-traditional Indian or some Western dresses (Western dresses like knee-length skirts, and any tight-fitting outfits, for example) by young boys and men is not uncommon in many towns and cities in India.
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[In response to a comment that such eve-teasing is not uncommon in the USA and that it is called "cat-calling" there, I responded:]
I guess human society has lot more similarities in both good and bad, across all parts of the world, than it has dissimilarities. ... Learned a new USA English word - cat-calling!
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This post is based on the comments I made on the above mentioned Facebook post.
Interesting initiative. I applaud your courage in putting it up even though it is your individual list (and not an organizational list).
My view is that there should be an ashram safety accreditation organization/body focusing only on grading Indian ashrams on safety of people who visit there and who stay there. This grading should not get into spiritual aspects at all as that is very difficult to grade by anybody except those are very highly spiritually evolved and get intuitive knowledge about people who come in front of them (or perhaps anybody they want to know about even if they are not in front of them).
Indian ashram safety criteria should include aspects like (all criteria below are negative aspects which should contribute to poor safety grading):
1) Eve-teasing (cat-calling) of women
2) Sexual harassment of women, and of minor boys (and girls)
3) Acts of physical violence on ashram inmates and visitors
4) Ashram management (including management/administration team of ashram owned/run educational, medical and other institutions) indulging in white-collar crime like record tampering (a criminal offence under the Indian Penal Code) to exploit and mentally harass and dominate ashram staff including free service staff.
5) Suicide committed by ashram inmates/staff (including ex-inmates/ex-staff who were inmates/staff a few months before they committed suicide, and wrote suicide notes blaming other ashram inmates/staff as the cause of their suicide). I exclude visitors here as that is something ashram management cannot really prevent.
6) Pressure put on inmates and visitors to donate money to ashram. Voluntary contributions are perfectly OK. I am talking about psychological and other pressure to force people to donate money.
----
Very unfortunately, eve-teasing, especially of young women wearing non-traditional Indian or some Western dresses (Western dresses like knee-length skirts, and any tight-fitting outfits, for example) by young boys and men is not uncommon in many towns and cities in India.
----
[In response to a comment that such eve-teasing is not uncommon in the USA and that it is called "cat-calling" there, I responded:]
I guess human society has lot more similarities in both good and bad, across all parts of the world, than it has dissimilarities. ... Learned a new USA English word - cat-calling!
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