Did Isha kill a forest to make AdiYogi statue?
Did Isha Foundation really destroy a forest to make the AdiYogi statue? Many who seek a controversy may not like the truth, but this is just a lie being peddled around thousands of times just to make it appear as a truth. I will show the proofs here in this article.
Let’s look at a 2018 Google Maps snapshot of the Isha Yoga Center. This will tell us the truth, Loud and Clear!
There is a road laid by the Forest Department demarcating the Forest lands and the Agricultural / Residential lands adjacent to the forest area at Velliangiri foothills. In the above map, it is shown as ‘Isha Yoga Center Rd’. For the careful observers, this road is visibly extending from behind the ‘Dhyanalinga’ and ‘Nalanda grounds of Isha Foundation’. This road is used by the Forest officials and tribals from nearby villages.
The whole area that extends to the left side of this road marked spottily by green and brown spots is the actual forest / hilly area. On this side of the picture, the brown spots indicate the rocky surface whereas the greenery indicates trees in the hilly area.
It can be seen in the bottom right corner of where the AdiYogi statue is, well into the area where Agri lands are. In fact, right behind the AdiYogi statue is a place called ‘Karthik Farms’ which is someone’s private agricultural property. It is quite obvious from the map that the AdiYogi statue is not in forest area.
A person who actually visited the place during the MahaShivaRathri event in 2017 had posted images showing evidence of Sugarcane crop in the parking area. That is just additional evidence that the statue is not built in forest area.
Even the approval from Government departments show it as agricultural land only, which had been declassified as ‘wet land’ since there was no agriculture happening in the area where AdiYogi statue was built.
These lies about AdiYogi statue built on forest land are easy to spread mainly because Isha Foundation’s lands are ‘near the forest’ thought it is not actually in the forest land itself. Many people cannot differentiate it in the maps unless they know what they are looking for. So, many have been merely fooled by the vested interests in this case.
Here is a detailed video by an individual who also in the quest for truth, published it in YouTube.
Where did these lies originate from?
These lies were really started by people like Piyush Manush who made such claims in the first place. It is a shame that they claim to be environmentalists who are just paid activists hidden under the facade of nature-lover.
They used a map produced by Mr Saravanan Chandrasekeran on Facebook once. Saravanan had actually posted a Google Earth image of the Isha Foundation and incorrectly questioned if Isha was occupying the forest land.
Both the Isha Foundation and the Forest Department had later clarified that this is not the case.
No land of Isha Foundation is on forest area but the allegation had by then caught the attention of vested interests who spread it like wild-fire for gullible public to consume.
Saravanan himself had later published an apology that his initial analysis was incorrect.
Why are people still believing the lie?
The ‘mind-blowing’ logic I keep hearing from people is that why would a lot of people believe it if it is not true! This is really a laughable statement. Given the brainwashing influence of mass media like TV channels and Newspapers on common public in India, I am surprised that people still believe what they see in news channels or on TV debates!
There are vested interests in Tamilnadu (cartoonist bala is just one peg in this whole chain) who started spreading such misinformation to defame Isha with images like this in the print and online media.
Immediately all the TRP hungry media in that poisonous ecosystem jumped on the story of deforestation by Isha Foundation and spread that false news with alarming speed.
But nobody bothered to spread the clarification that came later that there was indeed ‘No deforestation’ by Isha and that it was declassified agricultural land.
There is also lot of money being pumped into promoting negative news about Isha in the media, for several reasons. Some TRP-chasing media like Vikatan, Sun TV, etc. had covered these allegations extensively without bringing out the facts clearly.
Not every common man has either time or the resources to research and find out the truth for themselves. Most of the time, they just go with what media says. Hence the confusion with common public in this case.
In the below article, the author explains how online trolls pick up false news from one place and keep spreading it everywhere: https://betterhumans.coach.me/the-complete-guide-to-understanding-and-dealing-with-online-trolls-4a606ae25c2c
This works like the childhood game where you stand in a line and the first person whispers a phrase to the second person, who whispers it to the next, and on down the line until it’s hilariously distorted by the time it reaches the last person in line.
In this case a troll in one forum says something flip, and another troll takes it as truth and repeats in another forum. Then it becomes a lie that gets told over and over again.
Hope this whole post brings some clarity to the whole picture of how Isha Foundation has been falsely targeted in this deforestation issue. Spread the word around :)
Edit: Some people wanted more proof on this and here it is: https://medium.com/@bigfundu/inspite-of-having-written-a-detailed-post-earlier-9912691ad9e6
