Lekhraj Kirpalani: constant Prostitute & Brothel references

From: Another topic

'all prostitutes come to Baba and cry''.

Was she referring all female followers as prostitute?

The BKs would think any non-BK carrying out normal sexual and emotional activities with other human beings is acting like a prostitute. The god spirit of the Brahma Kumaris has also referred to Hindu temples as "Brothels" and slaughter house for carrying out marriages. You can see many such quotes, here.

The number one corruption is to make one another impure. This is a brothel. Iron-Aged India is called a brothel. Everyone is born through vice ... It is now the unlimited brothel. It is completely Tamopradhan ... Those deities are pure. They descend from Shivalaya and come into the brothel ... Shiva created deities and then their temples were created. That is the living Shivalaya and then this becomes the brothel ... If [Sanyasis] did not become pure, Bharat would have become too much of a brothel ... and so on.

On the other hand, interestingly enough though, their leading guru Lekhraj Kirpalani once had a ceremony were married his own spiritual daughter Om Radhe ... we presume with his real wife either in the audience or in the know about it ... and, in the cult's early days, consorted with the young girls bathing with them in the same tank semi-naked, lying about in bed and sleeping together, massaging them ... and it is hint much more ... as he played out his god Krishna fantasy.

This was long before they introduced a God Shiva into their cult and only had a God Brahma ... him, Lekhraj Kirpalani. Prajapati God Brahma, Krishna, Narayan and Vishnu incarnate, as he claimed.

Lekhraj Kirpalani is referred to in the court documents as "not being a moral man". It would seem he knows quite a lot about and is fixated on brothels.

How his real wife felt is not recorded.

The Brahma Kumaris scriptures also refer to this entire world as a "Brothel".

Prostitution, the sex trafficking of young impoverished girls, and caste bound slavery trapping children in the cycles of sexual enslavement and abuse are huge problems in India. Although I do remember Lekhraj Kirpalani encouraging the BKs to go and "serve them", i.e. encult them in BKism, I have never read of BKs becoming involved in any serious campaign to uplift this element of humanity ... most of which, it must be said, are victims not "sinners" and are forced by poverty to live terrible lives and die early ... nor any great degree of success in this area.

It is an aspect of Indian society were there are huge hypocrisies, e.g. ashrams prostituting off young widows to pay their bills, the rich, powerful and even caste Brahmins indulging in commercial sexual activity whilst their wives are kept silent etc.

But when we read Brahma Kumari scriptures, we have to remember that their mention can be taken in two ways. BKs tend to believe such comments are about the outside world. PBKs tend to assume that such references are metaphorical or allegorical and refer to the Brahma Kumaris themselves acting as 'spiritual prostitutes' e.g. as in prostituting their assets (feminity ... young Kumaris?) to their "clients" ... from who they then extract money and living off it.

Perhaps someone else can correct and develop that theme ... but I think it seem a more likely inference ... that is to say, the "world that has become a brothel" is the BK world itself ... not the outside world.

That would seem accurate enough although the BKs' ego and vanity would struggle to accept it.

I would presume that the BKs' tendency to unenlightened caste-style prejudices would lead to any such individuals being stigmatised and diminish within their community, and relegated them to the lowest activities, e.g. forbidden to cook food and their food not eaten by "pure" superiors, but I know of no such case at all, nor the publication of them.

I agree with you, if the BKs' "feminism" went as far as to liberate and uplift this lowest element of Indian society, I think it would be a very good thing.

In the meanwhile, I think their prostitution of other people's religions, beliefs and ideas for money from their clients at their spiritual brothels is appalling, and ... if we are to extend that metaphorical understanding of the BKs' scripture further ... that makes it's leaders, particularly the influential male Seniors, spiritual pimp masters trafficking young girls around for profit.

Correct me if I am wrong.

BTW, the Brahma Kumaris would claim that these are not Lekhraj Kirpalani quotes but that they are spoken by God himself.

If so, I find it strange that "God" would know all about prostitutes and brothels ... but nothing about Jainism, Judaism, Taoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism and other religions and philosophies etc when he incarnated on earth ... and chose a man who was deluded into believing he himself was god for 20 years, and behave like Krishna with his gopis as his representative.

Perhaps some BK can explain why?*

The BKs are full of excuses why their god spirit does not know such simple matters, and gets all sorts of prediction about humanity absolutely wrong, e.g. world populations, predictions of the End of the World ... but strangely silent when such anomalies are pointed out.

* In answer to the latter ... they also claim that Lekhraj Kirpalani was the most impure human being on earth and was the cause of Fall of humanity from heaven and purity 2,500 years ago.

Just what makes Lekhraj Kirpalani even more sinful and impure that, e.g. the genocidal Hitler, Stalin and Maos or local mass murders, child abusers and serial rapists etc I have no idea.

Perhaps the BKs can also explain logically?

The PBK references sound like Protestant's language toward Rome after the Reformation.

Just as the scriptures referred to the Whore of Babylon, the Protestants (validly) believed the Roman Church had prostituted itself and depicted the Pope and the Roman church as a prostitute. One can’t but help notice the patriarchal misogyny and hypocrisy of the language, both equally claiming some divine authority to cast derogatory aspersions against all and sundry (except themselves).

Very ”spiritual".

On a more mundane level ... removing the impossible suggestion that the utterances in the Murlis are god speaking ... I think such references give us more insight into the state of Lekhraj Kirpalani's psychology and his life experience.

Why the repetitive obsession with brothels and prostitutes?

I think a psychotherapist would assume there was some immediate and direct significance to this ... a guilty conscience at a prior indulgence perhaps?

Why would a pure and knowledge-full god come down from heaven know all about brothels and prostitutes ... but nothing about some of the greatest religious traditions in the world?

And why would such a pure, knowledge-full and wise god feel the need to go on and on about "brothels" and "prostitutes" to a room full of virgin girls and old ladies who had hardly stepped outside of their families' cloistered homes, and never alone?

It just does not add up.

Most of them would have had no idea what a brothel or prostitute was, and would have had to have had it explained to them. Why would they need to?

It's utterly and off the scale irrational.

Given our other recent exploration of his 'Lekhraj Kirpalani's "cinema is the depths of hell" quote ... it suggests to me there is more than meets the eye to the "lusty old thorn" and the BKs aren't telling the whole truth.

Well, as you have said elsewhere ex-l, prostitution is one of the few options open to women who do not submit to the patriarchal will that dominates Indian society, much more so in those days. Then there’s the ”prostitution” of arranged marriages, where a woman trades sex and manual labour for the socio-economic security given by marriage. Which may or may not be a bad thing, depending.

I am sure they knew what prostitution is. The endless repetition of the term is more than a metaphor of or a society that has sold itself for material reward, it's more like what you are getting at in other threads; the use of the term is a constant reminder of what choices those women have if they leave. It associates the ”outside world” and its options with what is seen as the worst fate that can befall a woman. After all, this is not a society with legal brothels and regulated, sex worker-unionised prostitution, so the term "prostitution" has worse connotations than we might generally imagine.

And it carries another undertone as well - implications that are quite insidious in the influence it would have over the naive audience - you can either find your socio-economic security in this collective, give your life, body and mind, to this way of life and work in a group of (mainly) women with similar interests and be free of the demands of sex and children etc, or you can join those others in society who give their lives even more phsyically for their security, to potentially cruel or (unlikely to be particularly caring) husbands in arranged marriages. It is both a threat and an enticement.

And just as they were shaped by those values, they seek to shape the next generation the same way, ensuring the hive flourishes and supports them as they supported their predecessors.

I must admit my knowledge of Sindhi and Calcutta brothels and prostitution in British India is very limited, but I did watch a film about the ashrams in Benares - which Lekhraj Kirpalani went - where widows, even child widows, were dumped and by which young widows were sometimes prostituted out for funds to support the unwanted women.

The conditions of their lives were appalling. They were reduced to being shells of human beings, living off begging.

On the other hand, temples and prostitution were not that far separated and so Lekhraj Kirpalani's criticisms are not far wrong, e.g. on one hand you have the devadasi system where lower class infant girls are turned into child prostitute and, on the other hand, many of the dancing girls attached to temples were plain and simply prostitutes as well. Many of both were dedicated solely for the use by the upper class Brahmins and priests, the temples taking all or shares of their earnings. These were common in the Sind of this time.

One study states how any woman could dedicate herself to prostitution live within temple walls, being fed and cared for and used by the priests.

You may be right that the older BK women would know about them. It is recorded that within the Amir durbars (assemblies), many prostitutes became very rich and powerful). A proportion of the early Om Mandli was made up of Amirs.

The Victorian British, of course, influenced Indian society to a great degree, "cleaning up" a lot of what they considered immorality. Much of that was highly immoral and would fall under human rights concerns. But a lot of the rest sounded like fun ... bacchanalian festivals, sensual naked dancing girls etc.

Immediately, you can see where BKism fits within Indian society as a sort of "purified form". Females are still dedicated to or taken by the BK temples, and used as 'dancing girls' to entertain the upper classes. Upper rank BKs receive their own female servants. Their charms are still prostituted out to attract donors and supporters ... just in a purified form where actual sex is removed from the equation.

It's the same model, just moved to the side a bit.

The point you make which is worth emphasising though, it where you underline how few options the girls and women had ... and how far into a hell they had to drop is they left. There was no independence as enjoyed by Western women today. And no societal safety nets, e.g. welfare, protection societies.

And, yes, it's worth underlining how backward their mentality was by today's Western standards and how the institution of it was a backward step for Westerners attracted to the BK cult in the 70s and 80s, and perhaps really still is today.

it's worth underlining how backward their mentality was by today's Western standards and how the institution of it was a backward step for Westerners attracted to the BK cult in the 70s and 80s, and perhaps really still is today.

For Western women who are confused about their sexuality or have been damaged by their sexual upbringing or experiences, the BK view of sexuality gives, at best, a refuge for a while. At worst, it's a cage with a one-way door in which no healing for the damage or confusion can take place - because the ”healthy” state is proscribed, decried as sinful.

Do you mean confused about sexuality on the whole or that Brahma Kumarism might be a refuge for women who might be lesbians?

I would have thought that in India that would have been a stronger influence. Especially for dominant lesbians. The center-in-charge role would be a good alternative for them in the same way as being a priest was an acceptable alternative for homosexual males during more repressive times (and even today).