Indian Politicians interested in spiritual Program - just normal

A few days after our lecture in Frankfurt in June 2003, my Danish friend left Mainz again and drove back home to Copenhagen in his mobile home. I also moved on to a few more places to do program. It was normal for me to be home on Radhashtami and so I flew back to be there for this celebration in the beginning of September.

At the Ashram we were then happy to welcome two visitors from Germany, too. It was the woman who had organized my first program in Frankfurt and the director of that yoga center. They came and joined us in the Radhashtami celebration.

We had always had big programs on the day of Radhashtami because it was the birthday of my grandfather and we wanted to honour him with spiritual program and gatherings. To that year’s program we had invited the now late Governor of our state, Vishnukant Shastri and the Minister for Home Affairs, Swami Chinmayananda.

They and some other popular and important spiritual and religious people had joined the program. We had a big stage, many decorations and had prepared a lot for that day. Important people and speakers had been invited and of course it was an open program for anybody else who wanted to come. The whole Ashram was full, people were sitting until the gate in order to hear us and those people talk.

Having these VIPs at the program however also meant having lots of security there. I was actually used to that because I had had this kind of important people in my programs many times, for example the now late former President Giani Zail Singh or chief ministers.

My German friends however were astonished about the security. Having got over their amazement about the security, they found themselves even more surprised seeing politicians come to a spiritual program. I told them that it was very normal in India. These politicians were spiritual people themselves. People in India are in general spiritual, it is normal. Another point is that politicians always look where people are. They go where the public is to be in touch with their possible voters.

When the program started, everybody got some time to say some words. It is a bit like a conference. There are many people who would like to say something or who get honoured by getting to say something, so we had a rough schedule and everyone got about ten minutes for their own little speech. So I spoke, my father did, Swami Chinmayanada and Vishnukant Shastri did as well as many others.

The audience loved it and it was a nice and successful program. After the speeches we had a big bhandara and everyone who had come got something to eat. You can imagine the atmosphere – it was amazing!