Isha MahaShivRatri 2020 — Controversies 1
Every year, lakhs of people are attending the MahaShivRatri celebrations at Isha Yoga Center in Coimbatore. I had posted earlier my experiences of this year’s festivities in post 1, post 2 and post 3.
As soon as the event is over, usually some controversies break out and a few people try (rather desperately) to tarnish the image of Isha Foundation and Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. What contributes to this hatred towards this one man and what has he done to deserve it? This is going to be my next post. For now, we focus on what the controversies surrounding this year’s ShivRatri festivities are and the fact versus fiction.
Fiction #1: Poor people were not let into the venue at all.
Fact #1: All people, rich and poor, were able to attend the MahaShivRatri celebrations. Everyone went through the same process to enter the venue and avail all the facilities offered.
Details: This lie about poor people has been tried earlier as well — check my earlier post here.
Every year, lakhs of people come for the MahaShivRatri event. To organize an event of this size, the Isha Foundation spends several crores of rupees. So, some part of the funds are raised for conducting the event from people and many people generously donate too. There are definitely paid tickets to the MahaShivRatri venue and a few seats are allocated for those who buy such tickets. But that is only part of the story.
The money thus raised is used for providing similar facilities for lakhs of people who come to the event and attend it FREE. Here is the seating layout of the venue for this year’s celebrations.
Obviously, this image is not to the actual scale but as one can clearly see there were tens of FREE seating bays, each with several hundred chairs. One had to just register and get the free tickets for these seats AND One could also come to the venue and get the free seating pass there also.
This registration process is very important for the Foundation to get an idea of how many people would be attending the event at any point of time. Otherwise, planning such a huge event can be a disaster.
As I had indicated in my earlier post, the seats were very full in all the bays when I went around the venue at 10 PM in the night.
Just having these many bays constructed to regulate the seating and that itself appeared a humungous task. The Isha Foundation Volunteers and residents who took it up have done a phenomenal job. The surprising fact was that equal amount of people were all around as well. Even with so much floating crowd, all the bays were fully occupied by people.
Above all, Sadhguru makes it a point to periodically walk all through the ramp to the last of these seating bays so that everyone gets to see and hear him in person as well.
And the Annadanam (food) offered to all the devotees on the auspicious night at Isha Yoga Center is the same, irrespective of who one is. People of all social classes were welcomed with folded hands and offered the prasadam with great devotion by hundreds of volunteers.
The rich and the poor forget their social differences and all devotees have the prasadam offered before Adiyogi sitting on the ground.
All the prasadam offered was over before 11 PM. And yet, thousands of people were still trying to get into the grounds with lines stretching for several hundred metres outside the main venue.
How many ever lies are perpetrated by the naysayers regarding this event, every year the number of people attending the event keeps increasing. My guess (from past experiences) is that this year, the crowd would have been at least 30% more than it was last year.
The live stream of the event online was watched by more than 3 million people.
The program was also telecast live on over 80+ channels for devotees all over the world to be able to see and participate.
There is not an iota of truth in this lie and yet such lies are being perpetrated year after year.
Also in this series:
- Post on my personal experience of MahaShivRatri 2020 — https://medium.com/@bigfundu/as-promised-here-is-my-blog-on-my-experiences-of-the-mahashivratri-celebrations-at-the-isha-yoga-a0ed7a05ba27
- Post on MahaShivRatri 2020 artiste performances — https://medium.com/@bigfundu/isha-mahashivratri-2020-performances-7d1f51ecce45
- Post on MahaShivRatri 2020 social impact — https://medium.com/@bigfundu/isha-mahashivratri-2020-society-2dca1a9f49f1
