Recently someone left a comment on one of my blog posts that had a link to a story, "Shivinder Singh's ties with low-profile sect go beyond spirituality."
Download Shivinder Singh’s ties with low-profile sect go beyond spirituality - Livemint
The commenter said:
Looks like Shivinder is on his way to become the next Guru ..... What do you think Brian and Dr. Lane?
Well, I don't have an answer to that question, because I have no idea what is behind Shivinder's decision to give up being a billionaire Indian businessman and do volunteer work at the headquarters of a spiritual organization.
What I do know, having written numerous posts on this subject, is that Shivinder Singh is the nephew of the guru, Gurinder Singh, who heads Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a group I belonged to for many years. The story talks about their financial ties.
In the 1990s, there was speculation that Shivinder’s father Parvinder Singh, the late chairman and managing director of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd, would succeed Charan Singh as the guru of RSSB.
Shivinder and his older brother Malvinder Singh’s messy ascendancy to the top at Ranbaxy after a battle for control of the drug maker following Parvinder’s death in 1999 was facilitated by Gurinder Singh, who acted as a peacemaker.
When asked about the family’s relationship with RSSB, a Fortis official said that the association goes back six generations.
“There are no strings attached to this decision except for service,” the official said.
However, there are significant business links between Fortis and Religare Enterprises Ltd (both promoted by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh) and RSSB. The family of Gurinder Singh owns a significant stake in Religare Enterprises, according to the latest shareholding pattern of the company available in the public domain.
Very significant, actually. About five years ago I calculated that the guru's family owned shares worth about a quarter of a billion dollars.
But it was the idea of seva (or sewa), selfless service, that grabbed my attention in the story. While this is similar to volunteer work, some passages in the story show that it has a rather different meaning in an Indian religious context.
In a statement, Shivinder said, “A short while ago, I requested sewa at Radha Soami Beas, headquartered near Amritsar, and I am fortunate to have been accepted. I will move to dera, Beas, post transitioning my executive responsibilities at Fortis.”
...Sewa is the concept of selfless service pioneered by gurudwaras wherein devotees perform all tasks, from managing kitchen to cleanliness to administrative duties on their own accord.
Sure, often volunteer positions require certain skills, and not everybody is accepted for them. But Shivinder's mention of requesting sewa points to something different: seva in the Indian context is frequently viewed as being service to God or the Guru (who are often considered to be the same being).
So seva isn't exactly "selfless" in my extensive experience with RSSB sevadars/volunteers. They usually feel special in some way -- even if the feeling is "I'm nothing special; everything I'm doing is being done by God/guru."
I wrote about this in a 2005 post.
I’ve been to RSSB gatherings where I’ve thanked someone for giving me a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Instead of the volunteer simply saying, “You’re welcome,” I hear: “Oh no, brother. Please don’t thank me. I’m doing everything on behalf of the guru. He is the real doer, not me. I am just an instrument in his hands.”
I think to myself, “Hmmmm. This humble selfless instrument standing before me sure sounds like a self-willed someone, given the lengthy response I got to my pithy ‘thank you.’” Why can’t religious people act as naturally as non-religious people?
I did a lot of volunteer work for RSSB, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, during the thirty-plus years I was an active member of the organization. Sometimes (often? always?) I fell prey to the same self-centeredness masquerading as humility that bothered me in the anecdote above.
Now that my volunteering is thoroughly secular, undertaken with an atheist frame of mind, I can compare it with the religious'y "seva" attitude I had before.
For example, recently I spent a week writing a complex document for a community group I'm a member of. We're concerned that the City of Salem is going to waste money on an overly expensive new police facility, which means earthquake-proofing City Hall and the Library won't happen as previously planned.
Many lives could be lost as a result when the anticipated Big One earthquake hits the northwest part of the United States.
To me, this felt a lot like seva. Maybe exactly like seva.
This is the nature of all volunteer work, really. You're doing something without pay because you want to help someone or something else. It feels good to volunteer, since we humans enjoy working together for a common good.
In my view, there's nothing truly selfless about selfless service. Especially if you think, "I'm doing this not for myself, but for the benefit of God/guru." Yeah, right...
I strongly suspect that Shivinder Singh, like almost all RSSB sevadars, considers that he will be earning good karma and God's/guru's grace through his seva. Otherwise, why wouldn't he do some sort of other volunteer work, given how many unmet needs there are in India that he could help fulfill?
Understand: I'm not criticizing his decision to stop being a businessman and start being a sevadar at RSSB's spiritual community in the Punjab known as the Dera. That's up to him. During my time as a RSSB member, I knew other people who did the same thing -- become full-time volunteers at the Dera.
I'm just saying this: seva is simply volunteer work. It's no different from what countless people do without pay every day all around the world. Giving it a special name doesn't make it special.
Well said! Plus he won't be painting curbs along the road either. His particular skill set and contacts were obviously courted. Running an international cult is big business.
Posted by: Skeptical | February 13, 2016 at 06:43 AM
Why does money seva exist? They want people to work for free building their centers AND pay them??
Posted by: Neon | February 14, 2016 at 01:15 AM
RSSB is big business. Maybe he is just getting ready for his next role as head of a different business. Or perhaps he really feels he wants to focus on his spiritual journey now.
Even if it's the latter, seva is still just a business transaction. It's a bribe. The disciple is bribing the guru, but it's all fake.
Real seva, like Brian says, doesn't need the label of seva to be counted.
If you just did something for someone and just walked away without any desire for recognition or reward - that would be seva.
As I previously wrote in the article on "What is seva in RSSB?" this so-called seva is nothing but an excuse for the ego to go wild.
If seva is to help someone then RSSB seva seems to be quite the opposite as it seems to be more about rigid rules and pointless blind obedience to the hierarchy
Posted by: Osho Robbins | February 14, 2016 at 10:10 AM
I've said this before in response to an earlier post somewhere, but it seems apposite here. Seva, in most Indian languages, including Hindi, means simply "service". Just that. Nothing more and nothing less. (So that "sevak" means simply "servant", nothing more and nothing less. I suppose the same can be said of the word "sevadar" as well, but I think that's a Punjabi word, and while I understand Punjabi I don't know that language too well. )
Keeping the literal meaning of that word might bring things into better perspective. (What I mean to say is : there is no reason why "seva" shouldn't be paid seva or selfish seva or whatever.)
(Which is not to say anything about any especial or loaded meanings that RSSB applies to that word, or the merits or otherwise of RSSB-style Seva. Others are far better qualified than I to comment on that.)
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | February 15, 2016 at 03:36 AM
Seva means: Selfless service. And of course that's something some pseudo-guru's love to exploid. What better way can a fake guru have than making his devotees serve him or her for free and on top of that paying for it with real money. That's why being some "guru" is big-business. It's modern slavery, if you wanna be plain and outright naming it.
Nowerdays it's not easy for some "democrasy" like India is, to get their "guru's" some slaves without using physical violence. So...the best means to have slaves serving for them is: You call it seva. Then the devotees do it for free and they don't even know they are slaves. THAT I call the perfection of a deception. The "guru's" slaves don't even know anymore that they are slaves. Well done!
Kind regards,
Companiero Orwell
Posted by: Upsetter | February 15, 2016 at 12:57 PM
And THANK you, Brian. I totally appreciate your take on...äh...everything, although I don't agree with everything you say. And I don't have to. But I highly value the effort you put into what you do. Thanks for caring.
Seriously yours,
Europe's good old ideas of freedom and liberty
Posted by: Upsetter | February 15, 2016 at 03:53 PM
Does anyone know how donations work in RSSB? Osho?
Posted by: Neon | February 16, 2016 at 11:31 AM
Please correct me if I am wrong but wasn't this a charitable (meant to serve the underprivileged) hospital run by RSSB before it was sold to Fortis? Did anyone question the controversial decision of the RSSB "trust" (headed by the guru) to sell the hospital to a corporate house? Just curious ....
http://www.vccircle.com/news/healthcare-services/2014/02/03/religare-health-trust-buy-property-and-clinical-establishment
Posted by: Avi | February 16, 2016 at 06:08 PM
From RSSB's official website:
http://www.rssb.org/organization.php
"RSSB's sister organization, Maharaj Jagat Singh Medical Relief Society, operates three rural charitable hospitals in Beas, Punjab; Sikanderpur, Haryana; and in Bhota, Himachal Pradesh. All three hospitals function as primary care facilities with fully functioning medical departments such as: Ophthalmology, Orthopaedics, Gynaecology & Obstetrics, ENT, Surgery & Anaesthesia, Paediatrics, Radiology, and Dental.
All medical services, including medicine and in-patient care are provided free of charge. The Beas Hospital is the largest hospital with 260 beds and treats on average 1,200 patients each day through its Out Patient Department. The Sikanderpur Hospital has 50 beds, the Bhota Hospital has 75 beds, and each treats about 450 patients each day through their Out Patient Departments. The large number of OPD patients is a reflection of the limited number of medical facilities in these rural farming communities. It also speaks to the generally poor economic conditions of this population that is not in the position to pay for expensive medical treatment. No distinction is made as to the background of the patients, either in regard to their economic status, social standing, or religious affiliation."
Posted by: Avi | February 16, 2016 at 06:25 PM
Democrasy needs to be propperly applied. And to do so, UNDERSTANDING what democrasy is all about is neccessary, of course. Some guru-brand, investing some of the money they gained from their devotees into pretending they do something of some value is a very nice way to say: "Look! We do good! We engage in charity!"
The european social democratic tradition would spit on it for being just this: A front, a deception that's to be considered as charitable, by those who actually engage in slavery (what they call seva).
But that's just MY take on it.
Kind regards,
Willy Brandt (former german social democratic kanzler)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Brandt
Posted by: Upsetter | February 17, 2016 at 03:03 PM
Furthermore, I see an anti-democratic movement in what certain established institutions, like RSSB are dealing in, which is much like the cathlic-church's attempt to stay in power, being established for centuries by having all the (religious) power and recourses, spiritually AND ecconomically, and using them for one goal only: To sustain a certain policy, a certain agenda. And that agenda is: NOT seperating state and church. Because a loss of power would be the result.
Just like in us-america, conservatives try to deny and reject democrasy in its very basic sense: The seperation of state and church they don't engage in. Democrasy, when properly applied, can not be anything other than SOCIAL democrasy, because if the general public is too un-educated to even KNOW what democrasy is all about, they can easily be lead into believing that "charity", applied by some sort of religious/spiritual organisation, like RSSB is, all about, is a good thing. Pretending to be THE social aid for them, while they are just not.
Like the cathlic-church is pretending to be some "force of good in the world" they just pretend to be, while they just aren't. Spending a dollar for charity, while having hundreds and hundreds that are keept for what ever purposes, THAT is what is called: "Preaching water but drinking wine."
Debate: Atheists vs Christians (Hitchens / Fry vs Archbishop / Widdecombe): Is the Catholic Church is a Force for Good in the World?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBSH2oWVGEs
Posted by: Upsetter | February 17, 2016 at 03:51 PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
Posted by: Gossip | February 17, 2016 at 09:30 PM
But ideas, events and people go together...
Posted by: Neon | February 17, 2016 at 11:39 PM
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. Be a source of encouragement to others world is already full of critics.
Posted by: gossip | February 18, 2016 at 05:54 AM
When someone loves us, it teaches us love, kindness, charity, honesty, humility, forgiveness, acceptance, and all of these can counteract all the evil in the world. For every good deed, there is one evil deed. Man alone has the power to control the balance between good and evil, but because the lessons of love are not taught often enough, the power is too often abused.
When you enter someone’s life, whether by plan, chance or coincidence, consider what your lesson will be. Will you teach love or a harsh lesson of reality? When you die, will your life have resulted in more loving or more hurting? More comfort or more pain? More joy or more sadness? Each one of us has the power over the balance of the love in the world. Use it wisely!
Posted by: gossip | February 18, 2016 at 06:03 AM
Do you live off quotes? Just because it sounds good doesn't make it universal or truth.
Posted by: Neon | February 18, 2016 at 10:29 AM
During the regime of Baba Gurinder RSSB has grown far more richer than the imagination of their family, in cash, in assets, in disciples, in volunteers, in organisation.
The income from seva in comparison to Charan Singh’s time is thousand fold. Only in Delhi the income from just a weekend Seva during visit of Baba Gurindner is more than the seva received by Charan Singh throughout his lifetime regime.
At this stage, how can they let go the empire. There must be somebody from the family to run this vast empire, and further being in a position of a Guru adds a lot in smooth running of their other businesses as well. Baba has to prepare a successor.
Posted by: Juan | February 18, 2016 at 11:10 AM
Juan, do they disclose their numbers?
Posted by: Neon | February 20, 2016 at 02:07 AM
RSSB is a big bunch of suckers and fuckers. I have had very unpleasant experiences with them. They inspired my novel 'Black Hole' which is being serialized in my blog.
Posted by: Matheikal | February 20, 2016 at 08:15 AM
And you are such a great guy Matheikal.
.....brian when you get critic you don't allow the post but when satsangis are attacked you allow everything. You showed you Are a hater.
Posted by: noel | February 20, 2016 at 11:34 AM
noel, not true. I publish all comments, so long as they pertain (more or less) to the subject of the blog post, aren't super profane, and don't contain nasty personal insults. Also, I'm not a hater. I'm a lover of life.
Posted by: Brian Hines | February 20, 2016 at 11:56 AM
No not true. Suckes and fuckers are not insults right? They are and they are published. You many times remind me of apologetic fundamentalist. And you also published Osho posting as observer1 calling another poster idiot and to fuck off and so. And definitely this is big lie that you publish all posts. You proved here that you cannot stand critic even small one ..you always have some excuse and intellectual explanation and many times you are wrong you just want to hear it. It is fundamentalism but in another package.
Posted by: noel | February 20, 2016 at 01:47 PM
Fundamentalistic atheism and/or anti-theism is neccessary and unavoidable as long as there is fundamentalistic religion/theism/spirituality. It's kind of a law that a certain movement generates its own anti-movement.
In my perception those who are dissapointed with religion/theism/spirituality become atheists or anti-theists for reasons that can easily be understood. It's like as if you try to learn a certain craft for lets say three years from some teacher and you don't become a bachelor after you've done what was required. How would you call that? A fraud, I guess.
True real religion/theism/spirituality is supposed to deliver after its methods are practized for a certain period of time. And if that is not the case, one is supposed to complain about it.
Wouldn't you complain about a teacher, who is supposed to teach your child a certain skill and it turns out your child is has not learned the skill? Of course the fake teacher will say, "your child it too stupid. It's not my fault it did not learn it." But no, it's the other way around. The fake teacher is just not a proper teacher. And to expose fake teachers/guru's in the religious/spiritual field is what atheists and anti-theists do. Something wrong with that? I don't think so. I call that quality-control.
Posted by: Upsetter | February 21, 2016 at 06:21 AM
Yep and quality control is really freaking difficult. Especially when every book has RSSB on its spine! Really scientific, no conflicts or contradictions...
Posted by: Neon | February 21, 2016 at 01:25 PM
Recently RSSB grabbed the 15 acres of Sawan Public School in Delhi, shut down the school, packed off the staff, framed criminal cases against some staff who questioned the activities and assaulted many others. I am one of the staff who lost job.
Posted by: matheikal | February 21, 2016 at 04:40 PM
matheikal, that sounds terrible. Tell us more, if you want to. You could either leave another comment, or email me: [email protected]
Posted by: Brian Hines | February 21, 2016 at 06:46 PM
matheikal want to increase his page views like i visited his page
ha ha...
Brian i am from india following your posts from last 4 years.
I am 34 years old and have been going to beas since i was 5 years old.
I have found nothing wrong in their teachings till date. I am close to few satsangis who at the age of 75 years wont tell lie to me. According to them they have now knowledge that the path they are following is correct.
I have also been initiated but to tame this mind is very difficult.
I believe the same is true for you. To know the reality you have to have your own experience and go within.
Hope your mind can find peace and real happiness.
Posted by: Pradeep | February 22, 2016 at 01:38 AM
Neon, No they don’t disclose the numbers, but I come to know when I have happened to dine together with money seva volunteers on Babajis visit or have travelled in the same car or been together with them when they have had to deposit cash in the banks or shifted cash from one city to another, or there is a general talk on the topic between volunteers unconsciously.
Since I come from a RS family, I have many family friends and known who are and have been volunteers in Money Seva, and other sevas.
I generally go to normal satsangs and Babaji’s satsangs as well. Even I was also in this seva for a very short time in seventies.
Posted by: Juan | February 22, 2016 at 10:48 AM
Looks like they captured the school (aka land) in a planned way ..... as you would expect from a typical corporate house
http://www.bhadas4media.com/state/delhi/4844-sawanpublicschool-request-new-delhi
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/New-management-trying-to-close-school-alleges-staff/articleshow/20402538.cms
Posted by: Avi | February 22, 2016 at 01:24 PM