Brahma Kumaris - Expansion

Expansion

Beginning in the 1950s, the Brahma Kumaris began an internationalization expansion program, establishing centers across India with female teachers. From 1964 to 1969 methods of outreach began involving exhibitions, seminars and conferences in different parts of India.

The leadership of the BK movement remains primarily female. For example, in the UK, only one-third of the 42 centers are run by males. According to the BKWSU website, there are currently 825,000 students and over 8,500 Raja Yoga centres in 100 countries and territories. According to sources quoted in the Adherents website, worldwide membership ranges from 35,000 (in 1993) to 400,000 (in 1998).

A number of Brahma Kumari splinter groups exist, the most notable documented by Dr. John Walliss as the Advance Party, Shankar Party or AIVV to the BKWSU. Elsewhere they are referred to as the Prajapita Brahma Kumaris or PBKs. Walliss states that as Lekhraj Kripalani's original message of separation, spiritual introversion and violent Destruction becomes repackaged as the emergence of a New Age through self-understanding and self-development, this direction has caused discontent within certain segments of the Brahma Kumari movement, likening them to the "Protestant Reformers to the BKWSU's mediaeval Catholic Church".

The "Advance Party" offer a radicalised rendition of the BKWSU's original millenarian message. In particular, they are exceptionally hostile to the University's New Age and UN involvement claim that Shiva is now manifesting Himself through a different medium to correctly interpret the original teachings and that Lekhraj Kirpalani's business partner Sevak Ram was the original medium. PBKs report hostile resistance from the BKWSU and Walliss met with a wall of silence and irate phone call from the University threatening him that the BKWSU would "block every step of the way if persisted along this line of investigation". The University restricting its member's "knowledge and access to the group so as to prevent any further defections." Founder Baba Dev Dixit was debarred from the BKWSU.

According to the Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements, in 2000, about 450,000 people were affiliated with the Brahma Kumaris, but many were probably not committed to the group's worldview. The Encyclopedia stated:

Since the University spread to Western societies it has increasingly accommodated people with little interest in its theodicy but attracted to the practical applications of BK spiritual practices. The community service programmes of the 1980s and 1990s stimulated creative renderings of BK meditation as a tool for psychological healing and eclectic spiritual exploration. The casual participants whom the BKs have attracted in this way probably made up the vast majority of the 450,000 people on the University's records at the turn of the 20th to 21st century.