Sharath: Latest Response – an analysis
Latest response from Sharath on his Instagram account where he did face anger and criticism relating to his ‘apology’ for his grandfather’s abuse with my observations below. I think his response may have been deleted since then but this is a direct copy from his account with no edits:
“Some people have accused me of taking my Grandfather Hillam Please take back your worlds,whatever I’m today it is because of my 30 years of hard working. I have gone through many difficulties in my life.I have dedicated my entire life to Yoga practice Getting up every day at 2am to do my practice. I didn’t practice yoga to become famous it’s my life it’ll stay for ever until my last breath. I have spoken to my Grandmother about my Grandfather asana adjustments She was the only one who could control him but unfortunately she passed away in 1997
I was only 19 years old when I restarted yoga,Senior students who were 20 years older then me who came year after year to study with him didn’t speak about it ??
Please understand it’s because of my many years of dedication & commitment that has brought glory to Ashtanga Yoga & many people are relishing it .You can criticize me what ever you want…. I have always respected & supported women my students know it & god knows it. That’s the reason why I have more female students because they feel safe studying with me
It’s so unfortunate that this world 🌎 is not for good people
I’m getting very emotional now 😭…..I’m getting tears in my eyes I’ll stop at this now🙏🙏🙏”
Sharath, I can hear through your words how upset you are and I think it’s a good thing you show it. Under your rule, a lot of us were left out in the cold and suffered. Everybody who didn’t agree with you was made wrong, i.e. we were said to practice wrongly and were morally wrong. Hence the backlash now. Seeing you emotional like that helps me to stay connected and less judgemental. In this spirit I offer a few more observations:
You say that whatever you are today is because of your 30 years of hard working. I want to challenge that. Not just you, but a lot of us have ploughed their whole life into yoga and most of us did not become famous and for many it didn’t even supply a livelihood. Some put in decades and were left broken in body and soul. I’m suggesting that a big part of what you are today is simply because you were born into a “yoga dynasty”.
Think about it, if it wasn’t for you being born as grandson of KPJ where would you be today? When you were crowned Paramguru many of us thought, “what a coincidence that the grandson of KPJ gets to be Paramguru”. If you were simply looking at merit and compare your practice with some of the other luminaries it can be contended that it was you who ended up in that position. I thought Richard’s, Karen’s and Tim’s practice to be better than yours. Sorry.
Please also note, that during the entire contemporary Ashtanga-history a narrative was carefully developed and that was that Ashtanga was a Jois-family venture, Jois-property, a Jois-brand. Many of us teachers were told we weren’t allowed to teach once we had fallen from your grace. Nobody was ever allowed to train teachers unless they were a Jois. Can you explain to me why?
What exactly under God’s wide heaven makes you Jois’s so special that only you can determine when someone is a teacher or not?
Look how you and your grandfather outlawed teacher trainings. Only Jois’s were allowed to certify teachers. Then have a look at what it took to become a teacher under your and your grandfathers rule. The number one determining factor was devotion to a Jois. So, I think the position you are in today is because you cleverly took charge of the narrative that Ashtanga = Jois.
You then again hit out at those senior teachers (I was a junior back then so I’m nicely ducking away under the blow). I remember the seniors well. Back in those days most of us had a lot in common. We had lost our home countries as a spiritual home and we were looking for a new one. We travelled around the world, broke and ended up with all the tropical diseases in the book. Many of us ended up in India, many died, succumbing to drugs or ended up in bizarre cults (hint, hint). India wasn’t the relatively cushy place it is today where you can buy any level of comfort as long as you have the money (but not cushy if you don’t). And we didn’t have any money to start with. For us it was a big journey into the unknown and at no point was the outcome certain. I don’t think many of us knew that you could turn yoga into money until the year 2000 struck (for the record that’s 22 years after I started yoga). Yoga wasn’t taught in our countries, not in our cities and certainly not in our family homes. In those years us oldies had to travel very far, in most cases alone, to places where we knew nobody, to find yoga. For you yoga was taught in the house you grew up in.
I’d like you to put that into perspective when you bag those old guys. They didn’t speak out, true, and I’d like to now know their side of the story and in writing please. But your repeated barb at them reminds me of the fact that they travelled around the world (sometimes overland in those days), found and promoted your grandfather. Without those guys your grandfather would have remained obscure.
With no students in your grandfathers house, what would you have done after your finished your electrical engineering degree? Set up a yoga shop to teach the citizens of Mysore?
No, I think it’s fair to say that you are what you are mainly because of those pioneers who promoted your grandfather. And you just inherited the family business.
One of your main claims to your position today is “Getting up every day at 2am to do my practice”. I want to respond to that because I heard that over and over again aired by your followers as support for your greatness. That not many could have gotten up at 2am.
Sharath, I recently met a retired guy who for 47 years worked nightshift in a huge publishing house. They were printing 10’s of thousands of books, newspapers, catalogues, etc so the printing presses could never stop. So this guy went to work his whole life from around 10pm and finished at 6am. He got paid a pittance and now that he’s retired he can’t sleep. Many of us have to do things like that and it’s no claim to greatness.
Sharath, there are a few 100 Million people in the world in the police forces, defence forces, hospitals, aged care, transportation, etc. who work most of their lives at ungodly hours and get little to no reward. In the 90’s I worked as a night cab driver to earn your grandfathers fees. You don’t get credit for your work times. Nobody does. Welcome to the real world.
Reading through your above message what stands out is the use of “I”, “my”, and “me”.
Here we go, “people have accused me”, “whatever I’m today”, “ my 30 years of hard working”, “I have gone through many difficulties in my life”, ”I have dedicated my entire life” “to do my practice”. “I didn’t practice yoga” “ it’s my life” “ until my last breath”. “I have spoken”, “my Grandmother”, “my Grandfather” “I was only 19 years old”, “when I restarted yoga, “ it’s because of my many years”, “criticize me what ever you want”, “I have always respected “, “my students know”, “why I have more”, “studying with me”, “I’m getting very emotional”, “I’m getting tears”, “in my eyes”, “I’ll stop at this now”.
If I counted right you managed to squeeze in 26 references to yourself into a short paragraph. Astonishing! Sharath, do you know how they call a person that can only talk about themselves and can’t see the other?
They call’em a narcissist.
Sharath, this “apology” was meant to be about the survivors of your grandfathers sexual abuse, wasn’t it?
Or was it about you, after all?
But let’s get to what seems to be the core message of your above statement: “it’s because of my many years of dedication & commitment that has brought glory to Ashtanga Yoga”.
Sharath, so let me get this right, Ashtanga’s glory exists because of “your many years of dedication & commitment”?
What about those tens of thousands of students that through the decades trapesed to Mysuru to attend your grandfather’s and now your and your mothers’ classes? What about those dozens of senior teachers who invited your family traveling first class (and all of us traveling economy)? Those senior teachers who taught tirelessly for four decades to spread the word? What about those hundreds, thousands of junior teachers who kept open small studios around the world teaching “your” yoga brand?
It’s because of all these people that you have an army of students showing up at your shala. Without them nobody would even know about you.
And finally what about the 100’s of thousands of students worldwide whose name we don’t even know. They are often single parents, struggling with loans, often in stressful or poorly paid jobs. And still they do their practice.
Often they can’t practice daily and their practice may not be very spectacular. But it is to them that I want to bow down, Sharath. Not to you.
For they are the glory of Ashtanga Yoga!
But this is something you may always struggle to understand. You were born into a family that gave you a spiritual movement/cult as an inheritance (jury is still out which one of the two, granted). But all you can do is worry about that those senior teachers who don’t understand your greatness and fail to bow to you.
Could it be that you exaggerate your own importance because you entered movement as heir-in-waiting at age 19 and from then on never had peers but only a growing number of devotees?
Could that be the reason why your above response lacks emotional maturity? A maturity that’s also prevented you from seeing that in this whole crisis more is at stake than just you and your family. What is at stake is a glorious system of yoga practised by a worldwide community, for which many of us have given their life to make it glorious. Not just you.
Sharath, there is another way: Reach out to the survivors, acknowledge them by name. Say that you are sorry. Don’t try to defend yourself or make yourself look better. Simply “sorry”. Then ask the survivors what they would like to see you do? Ask them what they would need to feel better? They need to see you care. They need to see you render service.
Can you do that?
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