Gurusevak Singh’s Message

I feel inclined to express a personal prayer. A prayer that the community in which I have grown up can eventually and with a resounding unified voice publicly acknowledge the painful truth that YB was a complicated and conflicted man who betrayed his station as a spiritual teacher by causing irreparable harm both willfully to dozens of women and negligently to hundreds of the community’s children.

While YB gave us a foundation in yoga and Sikhi to work with, for which I am personally grateful, his betrayal of his own standards of conduct is woefully unacceptable. I am saddened that the community is so conflicted about acknowledging and addressing this, and it has contributed to my own inner turmoil about my relationship to this community. 

It is my sincerest belief that the uncovering of YB's abuses has been a blessing and has given the collective an opportunity to free ourselves from the need to attach our identity and spirituality to him as a man, a spiritual teacher, and as a figurehead for existential validation. Rather, we can now take the foundation he shared with us and freely question his lessons to validate the truths, of which there are many, shed the half truths, of which there are many, and evolve all aspects of the community (businesses, yoga, lifestyle, attitude) to a higher standard which is required across all corners. I know this sentiment is not shared across all leadership, and for this I am disheartened that many in our community are actively fighting hand, tooth and nail against it, choosing rather to keep YB on a pedestal, and with an aim to sweep his abuses once again under the rug.

He is a part of our history, but his actions have blemished our reputation and it is the communal response that will dictate our future identity.

If the community leaders and entities cannot fearlessly and publicly confront the issue of who he was, is, and will be in our communal mind, then we will forsake this community to the unmarked tombs of long forgotten cults where many feel we belong. I have hoped and have worked toward a different outcome, but still see a long struggle ahead.

December 2022

Gurusevak Singh has served on the board of KIIT -Khalsa International Industries and Trade