In case you missed it, a man with a big beard who [snip snip snip snip snip - Legal Ed] decided to set off from Trafalgar Square in London on Monday, 21 March on a mission to save the world's soil.
To bring awareness about this noble mission, Jagadish 'Jaggi' Vasudev aka Sadhguru is undertaking a solo bike ride from London to India, covering 30,000 km and 27 countries in 100 days.
Now this all might seem a bit counter-intuitive, riding a bike all over the place to 'save soil', but shhhh, that's not what you're supposed to say. After all, the 'modern-day mystic' has some heavy-hitting support on his side.
Supporting organisations are supposed to include the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) as a "key partner of the Save Soil movement, collaborating in multiple aspects including scientific knowledge, communications, and outreach."
There's also the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), whose Faith for Earth Dialogue earlier this year featured a pitch for the movement, the UN World Food Programme (which has signed an MoU with the Isha Foundation regarding food and nutrition security, which references the upcoming Save Soil movement), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
There are environmental experts backing the movement too, like former UN Environment Executive Director Erik Solheim, UNEP head of nature for climate branch Tim Christopherson, former chairman of ISRO AS Kiran Kumar, as well as 'global leaders' like Deepak Chopra, the Dalai Lama, Antigua and Barbuda PM Gaston Browne and Dr Jane Goodall.
Not to mention business leaders like Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the World Economic Forum and the guy who is the head of Salesforce.
And perhaps more importantly, celebrities like Juhi Chawla, Mark Wahlberg (in a very short video on what one hopes isn't a golf course given what this is all supposed to be about), Matthew Hayden and will.i.am. Now that's a line up that takes one back.
In addition to getting all these people to endorse the Save Soil project, to promote his three-quarters-life crisis bike ride movement, Sadhguru did a bunch of promotional video interviews all over the place, with the biggest of course being the one with well-known late night host Trevor Noah on The Daily Show.
This is where it gets a bit weird.
General Concerns About Sadhguru's Credibility
The Daily Show is no Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, but they tend to ensure their humour (of varying quality) is generally backed up by reasonably good research; this is Jon Stewart's show, after all.
While it is focused on issues in the US, it has done segments on significant issues in other parts of the world – including India. Back in February 2021, Noah addressed the farmers protests, which he termed "the biggest protests anywhere".
Clearly, therefore, The Daily Show has the capability of doing a bit of homework when it comes even to issues which aren't generally part of its programming.
And if it does have the ability to do that bit of homework, then how did Sadhguru get away with such minimal cross-questioning on the show?
One can understand the interview was organised as promotional material for Sadhguru's Motorcycle Diaries homage movement, but surely all they had to do was get an intern to do a quick Google search for Sadhguru + controversy and voila, some niggling questions might have appeared on the horizon.
Let us be clear here, we are NOT talking about the time his wife decided to perform Mahasamadhi back in 1997 and just 'voluntarily' give up her life through a Yogic ritual. The police completed their investigation into her death and decided not to file any charges, so that's not one of the controversies that should have raised an eyebrow or two.
Apart from that, however, there are several to pick from.
There are his 'progressive' comments at Mount Carmel School in Bengaluru on how most feminists "didn’t live well, it’s because they talked and talked and talked.” And that “it isn’t the lack of men that made their lives empty, it’s their choice of living in constant ‘reactionary’ mode.”
There are also – and these are relevant given the Save Soil movement is supposed to be based on scientific evidence of damage to the soil and the need to replenish it with organic matter – his staggeringly dubious ideas about science.
These include various comments on how food prepared during a lunar eclipse is poisonous, if he looks at water in a certain way for a while, then well-being will come over you, and that if you don't tie the toes of a dead body together as per Hindu rituals, "from the lower end of the body it will start imbibing life… Because all the cells in the body are not dead.”
To those who have had the fortune of hearing the odd bit of obscure spiritual advice from Sadhguru over the years, often packaged by his YouTube channel as him swatting away the naysayers with brilliant zingers, The Daily Show's decision is surely a puzzling one.
But wait, you might say.
This is someone who has been conferred with the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian honour. Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to watch his lucid explanation of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA) to get rid of their misconceptions. Why would a neutral outsider not think he was worth talking to?
And let's be clear, if one tries to just look up Jaggi as an individual and an entity, he might well seem legit. Sadhguru has been a big name on the mystic/Yogi scene for decades now. His YouTube channel has nearly 10 million followers. His Isha Foundation has millions of devotees and rakes in a pretty penny.
Of course, this is what good research is supposed to be able to delve beyond, and The Daily Show should surely have been able to do so, to get a better measure of the man who would be fist-bumping Noah.
If they had, they might have learnt from multiple articles (including here at The Quint) and fact-checks (even one from Times Now, for crying out loud) just how misleading Sadhguru's much-touted CAA video was.
There was a lot of gaslighting, a lot of half-truths, but perhaps the best summation of Sadhguru's credibility when talking about major issues came from his own admission – while lambasting 'illiterate' students for not reading the CAA and seeing how amazing it was – that he had not read the CAA himself.
The Environmental Elephant in the Room
Hold up a minute though. Fact is, there really is a need to save the world's soil.
So if Sadhguru is talking about it, drawing attention to it and not talking rubbish about it, what's the harm with him being given the special treatment on The Daily Show?
Indeed, if we go by the actual interview, Sadhguru does not in fact engage in any of his customary talk about spirituality. He keeps it to the issue of soil degradation and the need to take urgent steps to address it and even at one point expressly says he isn't going to get into issues of spirituality.
Toh phir, as the line goes, problem kya hai?
Well, this is where we come to the elephant in the room.
Which is there, according to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General back in 2017, because the Isha Foundation built a bunch of buildings on land near Coimbatore that the Forest Department had once said were supposedly in the protected area of the Booluvapatti reserve forest area, which is known for an elephant habitat/corridor.
The CAG notes that in March 2003, the Tamil Nadu government had said major construction in this area required permission from the Tamil Nadu Hill Area Conservation Authority (HACA), which had not been obtained by the Foundation in 2005 when it started work on the buildings.
So, to put it mildly, the foundation set up by someone who is on an environmental mission to save the earth's soil, has had a bit of a complicated history when it comes to complying with environmental norms.
The Isha Foundation insists that it got clearance from the relevant authorities for its building, but as the CAG noted in its report, this clearance was asked for ex-post facto. The Foundation has also consistently stated that it has not encroached or built any structures on forest land or in an elephant corridor.
In a detailed response to The Quint, the Isha Foundation reiterated this position, pointing to an RTI reply from the Tamil Nadu government in 2021 and previous filings in the courts and the National Green Tribunal which indicate the Foundation's buildings were not built on forest land or an elephant corridor. A Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) affidavit also noted that the buildings were not built on forest land or on a notified elephant corridor, although it pointed out that the Tamil Nadu government had proposed some mitigation measures "since the area is a known elephant habitat."
The ex-post facto approval only came through in 2017 (soon after PM Modi inaugurated an Adiyogi statue on the Foundation's campus) and prior to that, the Foundation continued construction on the land despite notices from the Forest Department in 2012 and a rejection of the original request in 2013. The MoEFCC affidavit cited by the Foundation also notes that prior HACA approval was not taken at the time of the disputed construction.
Permissions were also not taken initially from the town and country planning department, but no objection certificates from these departments were also obtained in 2017.
The Foundation built its Yoga Centre in the area without appearing to have obtained a prior environmental clearance under the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) notification of 2006.
While it did apply for this ex-post facto (which is allowed upon payment of certain penalties) in 2018, it withdrew this application, on the basis it had been filed under a wrong category.
Interestingly, even though the Foundation denies any wrongdoing, Newslaundry has published the covering letter for its since-withdrawn EIA application dated 12 April 2018, in which the Foundation itself admits that it had not obtained prior environmental clearance, "thereby violating the EIA notification, 2006."
The Foundation categorically denies any violation of environmental norms including failure to obtain prior environmental clearance and terms Newslaundry's report "wishy-washy".
In November 2021, the Coimbatore district environment engineer issued a show cause notice to the Foundation over its failure to get an EIA conducted for construction from 2006 to 2014.
The Foundation obtained an interim stay from the Madras High Court against any action by the state authorities, arguing that an exemption provided under the 2014 EIA notification for educational institutions should be considered to apply from 2006 onwards. The high court continues to hear the matter at this time.
Even if Trevor Noah – or all these other organisations and people who are supposed to be supporting Sadhguru's movement – don't consider this environmental snafu grounds to avoid the mystic, surely they need to be asking questions about it?
Supporters of the Save Soil movement, according to its website.
(Photo: Save Soil website https://consciousplanet.org/our-supporters)
The information is all easily there in the public domain, yet not one question was posed to Sadhguru by Noah or any of the other people in the promotional videos posted by the Save Soil movement, about those previous concerns and whether they affected the credibility of the movement and its ability to achieve its goals.
Does Any of This Seem a Bit Too Simple?
To ask questions about Sadhguru's credibility to be the face of a movement like this would be perfectly reasonable, not just in terms of the clearances and permissions, but also the previous concerns of environmental experts about the simplistic nature of his big environmental projects.
Back in 2019, a coalition of India's leading environmental rights groups wrote to Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, known for his environmental activism, urging him to reconsider his support for Sadhguru's 'Cauvery Calling' campaign.
While on paper, a campaign to plant 2.42 billion trees along the banks of the Cauvery river seems like a good thing, the activists warned that this was too simplistic approach to a complex problem.
"But on deeper investigation it comes across as a method that promotes a monoculturist paradigm of landscape restoration which people of India have rejected long ago. Besides, such a programme could create unintended and unforeseen social and ecological consequences, as planting trees in certain regions (grasslands and floodplains for instance) could result in drying up of streams and rivulets, and destruction of wildlife habitats. Further, it can also lead to encroachments of the floodplains and riverbeds, as has happened at numerous places."
The Isha Foundation strongly refutes the letter sent by the activists, pointing out that their draft policy document on revitalisation of rivers includes an annexure on soil rejuvenation which warns of the impacts of monoculturist practices. They also point out that Di Caprio never withdrew his support despite the letter.
(You can read the draft police document here, with the Annexure in question by Dr. Saravanan Kandasamy at pg 434)
Despite these concerns being reported in the international press as well, no questions were asked by Noah or any of the other cheerleaders of the Save Soil movement about the details of Sadhguru's favourite new environmental campaign.
To be clear, this doesn't mean that the Save Soil movement isn't a legitimate one or that the concerns it raises about soil degradation do not need to be taken seriously.
But since everyone else seems to have forgotten the need to ask the person spearheading this movement any appropriate questions dealing with legitimate concerns about his suitability for the gig, perhaps this can be a start.
Corrigendum: This article has been edited to add further rebuttals from the Isha Foundation in addition to the public refutations which had already been included in the original piece.
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