My Daughter Joined a Cult

Hello everyone! I am Divya Parmar and I am writing this blog to present my reading upon the documentary: "My Daughter Joined a Cult" by Discovery+ so first of all we will see the superstition environment in india. Then I write my reading upon the documentary. 

Superstition environment in india:

India is a large south Asian country with billions of people belonging to different castes and creeds with different social and cultural background and socioeconomic class. Here, people have different views, beliefs, perceptions, and knowledge about different situations. 

Superstition in India is considered a widespread social problem. Superstition refers to any belief or practice which is explained by supernatural causality, and is in contradiction to modern science.Some beliefs and practices, which are considered superstitious by some, may not be considered so by others. The gap, between what is superstitious and what is not, widens even more when considering the opinions of the general public and scientists.

Superstitions are usually attributed to a lack of  education. But, in India educated people have also been observed following beliefs that may be considered superstitious. The literacy rate of India, according to the 2011 census is at 74%.The beliefs and practices vary from region to region, with many regions having their own specific beliefs.The practices may range from harmless lemon-and-chilli totems for warding off evil eye to serious concerns like witch-burning. Some of these beliefs and practices are centuries old and are considered part of the tradition and religion, as a result introduction of new prohibitory laws often face opposition.

Psychologists and anthropologists suggest that Individuals who follow superstitious practices do so to cope with misfortune and uncertainty and to make sense of a complex world.Other research has suggested that superstitious beliefs can endure if the probability of them being exposed as untrue is low. If there is always some chance of a bad outcome when following superstition and some chance of a good outcome when not, an individual might never realize that it is untrue and continue to follow it. Even though the world has faced many changes and development in the field of science and technology, the belief of the people over superstitions still exists in society.

About documentary: 

In 2019, Netflix released a documentary feature, Bikram: Yogi, Guru & Predator, detailing the many sexual misconduct allegations against popular yoga guru Bikram Choudhury. A year later came Bad Boy Billionaires, which singled out the shady dealings of Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Subrata Roy. A damning portrait emerges of another absconder, Nithyananda, in the three-part documentary series My Daughter Joined a Cult, which streams on discovery+. Using news footage, a lot of it from local media in Karnataka, talking heads of ex-devotees and journalists, and video bytes of the godman’s sermons, the show tracks the quick rise and subsequent fall of Swami Nithyananda. 

“The moment you sit in front of me, enlightenment starts,” says Nithyananda to his audience. It is one of the many declarations the godman makes, which leave us questioning what made people fall for him. His legion of followers includes influential and wealthy people, who are unnamed, and like many Indian spiritual gurus he has his share of foreign devotees. There are accounts from followers-turned- whistleblowers. The most insightful voice here belongs to an anonymous woman whose experience suggests that Nithyananda knew how to target the vulnerable and make people commit to him so much that they’d be ready to sever ties with their families. 

Nithyananda’s two-faced ways are revealed best by Sarah Landry aka Sudevi, his social media manager, and Jordan Lozada through their recollection of goings-on in the ashram, which include verbal abuse and beating of disciples as well as demands to ramp up the videos propagating his teachings and increase the enrolments for his inner awakening programme. Landry and Lozada do as the boss orders with a video segment called “Keeping up with the Kailashians”, in which they dress up in saffron robes and chronicle their lives in the ashram.

The series often runs like a well-edited Wikipedia entry as it documents the key events in Nithyananda’s controversial life—the foremost being the “sex tape” which rubbishes his claims of being a celibate; accusation of rape from erstwhile follower Aarthi Rao, and the sudden death of a young woman at his ashram in Bidadi near Bengaluru. These hardly deter his followers, who instead launch a malicious campaign against his detractors. What the series is low on are nuggets on his origins, the lapse which led to his escape from India, apparently without a passport, and Kailaasa, a country he reportedly founded and is currently based in. A quick search on Google tells you that it can be accessed only through chartered flights. 

Nithyananda is not the only one missing. The series begins with footage of Janardhan Sharma and his wife searching for their two daughters, who they believe are held against their will by the swami at his ashram in Ahmedabad. "I am very happy here. I am not kidnapped,” says Nanditha in a video call with the media, rejecting her parents’ claims. Sharma’s two daughters are yet to be found. While most of his former followers are busy critiquing him, Jansi Rani is one of the few to call out her own follies. Rani’s 24-year-old daughter died of a heart attack in the ashram under mysterious circumstances. “He told us the sun rose because he appeared,” she says. “All of us were crazy.” Many continue to be under his sway watching his videos and supporting him as he hides in Kailaasa, a place few can pinpoint on a map and where the self-proclaimed ‘Paramashivam’ continues to preach. 

Video clip of Sarah Landry's confession of cult :

 

Another points to notice from documentary: 

The title speaks to the predatory behaviour of self-styled godmen towards young individuals, and the stories in the docu-series map how this grooming takes place. A viewer who is not clued into how religious cults work may wonder what compelled parents to hand over their children to a religious organisation, giving up control and access entirely. The godman in My Daughter Joined a Cult earned the trust of parents — who saw him as the pole star of their lives — and presented himself as a father figure without any need for romantic or sexual attachments. 

The second and third episodes in the docu-series are a study in absurdity. Rather conveniently, Nithyananda dismisses the notion of ‘karma’ as being legitimate: “Karma means that the effect of our actions will come back to us in the future, is a myth. There is no CCTV recording going on in the cosmos… where your actions will be bringing suffering to you in the future. God is not playing the game of judge.” In the series, we also learn that a summons from the court does not reach the godman, because his security team quite literally does not allow it to pass. When a TV journalist attempts to be a medium for the summons by carrying it with him at a press conference held at the ashram, he is chased out before he can even finish reading it. 

The unwavering support and devotion that Nithyananda enjoyed would not exist if it weren’t for a carefully constructed self-mythology. The godman at the centre of My Daughter Joined a Cult not only commodified faith but also himself. One of the many manifestations of this is his devotees taking selfies with standees of his image. Saraiya remembers another story concerning a devotee who claimed they were healed of an acute health issue because of the godman’s mere touch. The docu-series paints a picture of how Nithyananda changed his appearance over the years; as his hair grew out, he also increasingly presented himself as a pathway to enlightenment, and Shiva himself. “A coupon code for God,” as Saraiya aptly puts it. 

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