Brahma Kumaris - Controversies and Criticism

Controversies and Criticism

• The Times of India has reported that the Government of Haryana's financial commissioner, Shri R.R. Fuliya, IAS, is seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into the sect for 'criminal' activities involving cases of murders, rapes, scapegoating and police cover ups. At a press conference in Mount Abu, the commissioner gave the names of accused and deceased. He claimed a girl was sexually exploited in a Brahma Kumari centre situated in Panipat district and then her brother was killed when he raised voice against the exploitation. The commissioner noted that he had also received threat to life since raising the issues in public.
• The Brahma Kumaris were declared an "enemy of the state" by the government of Greece in 1993 and classified as dangerous by the government of France in 1996. The Brahma Kumaris were listed as a "cult movement" in the 1995 French government report on "Cults in France".

• In Poland conflicts arose between the Brahma Kumaris and a local Catholic priest who organized an anti-Brahma Kumaris campaign. Thereafter, local newspapers accused the organization of being a "dangerous sect".

• Dr. John Wallis wrote a book about the religion, focusing on recruitment methods, the issue of celibacy, reinterpretation of religious history. He reports about the re-writing of the revelatory messages (Murlis) by the BKWSU leaders and anger and aggression towards the Adhyatmik Ishwariya Vishwa Vidyalaya. (The Adhyatmik Ishwariya Vishwa Vidyalaya or Advance Party and the BKWSU form the two halves of the Brahmin family who will supposedly eventually re-unite to transform this hell into heaven).
• In a paper for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Howell wrote that teenage girls surrendering to the organisation were required to pay the equivalent of a dowry to the organization. The payment was meant to prevent parents from "dumping" their daughters at the BKWSU as a way to avoid the costs of ordinary marriages.
• The institution uses Hindu terminologies such as Raja Yoga and Bhagavad Gita to attract people, but what is taught in the organization is completely different from their original meanings in Hinduism.
• Followers are encouraged to undergo a ‘death-in-life’ and ‘die towards the outer world’ renouncing their families and thus be ‘divinely’ reborn in the ‘divine family consequently, the Brahma Kumaris have been accused of breaking up marriages and families since the 1930s.
• In 2007 Graham Baldwin, a former university chaplain and army officer who is president of the educational countercult organization Catalyst, was reported stating that the former members and the families of members had told him that BKWSU has driven a wedge between husband and wife and that there were complaints that it encourages single women and widows to donate property and savings and move to a community house. The BKWSU, a organisation being notable for its sex ban, was said to have "used pernicious methods to control its followers".
• Ian Howarth of the Cult Information Centre, was further quoted about complaints that people have gone undergone personality changes after joining BKWSU and become alienated from their families. A BKWSU spokeswoman replied, "this is very much a minority thing", declining to comment on allegations that BKWSU encourages followers to donate property and savings.
• Questioned how dinosaurs fit within a 5,000 year Cycle of Time BK Neville Hodgkinson, a former scientific correspondent for an English national newspaper, questioned the existence of dinosaurs on the basis of the lack of bones that have been found whilst another BK follower argued that dinosaurs exist in a parallel space-time dimension and because of a warp hole end up in this dimension.
• The Brahma Kumaris have featured in the 'Wissen schützt' reports of Austria (edited by then Austrian Minister for Family Affairs Mr. Martin Bartenstein), Russia (International Conference "Totalitarian Cults – Threat of Twenty-First Century", Nizhny Novgorod, 2001) and in a MIVILUDES report submitted to the French National Assembly as a "sectes dangereuses" (harmful cult) and "groupe d'enfermement" (group of confinement). This has leading to the presecution of followers in local media leading to job losses after it discovered that they belonged to a secte and denouncement for their influence on children under their care.
• Since 1978, the BKWSU is accused of falsifying claims internationally that its current leader and relative of the founder Dadi Janki Kripalani is "the most stable mind in the world". Journalists quoted archivists at the University in question and "found no mention of the experiments performed on Dadi Janki in 1978". Indeed, they could not even "find any University of Texas organization called the Medical and Science Research Institute."