Once-influential, later scandal-ridden Indian Hindu guru Chandraswami dies at 66

Another backlog item--more evidence that religious scandals aren't only to be found among "Christian" televangelists or Roman Catholic clergy. Submitted for your approval, the following, as reported by Ellen Barry of The New York Times News Service, June 25, 2017:

Chandraswami, a Hindu holy man who counselled such 1980s glitterati as Elizabeth Taylor, Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and the Sultan of Brunei before coming under a barrage of criminal investigations, died in New Delhi on May 23. He was 66.

A spokesman for Apollo Hospital said Chandraswami had a stroke recently and died there.

Born Nemi Chand Jain, the son of a Rajasthani moneylender, Chandraswami left home to study astrology and meditation, only to emerge a few years later as a "guru on the make," said Vinay Sitapati, a political scientist who interviewed him for a book. How Chandraswami spent the intervening time was never clear.

In the decades that followed, he built a vast network of political connections, most of them in the governing Indian National Congress, Mr. Sitapati said. In doing so, he became an influential purveyor of information about India's power centres and of that coveted good: access.

Rustic in appearance, with his wood staff and flowing beard, Chandraswami proved skillful at winning the trust of international leaders, securing their confidence by rattling off the names of his influential confidants and performing such seemingly supernatural feats as mind reading.

Often he would ask a new acquaintance to write questions on scraps of paper, crumple the scraps into balls, and then repeat each question as they unfolded the paper.

"He closed his eyes and went into a trance," wrote K. Natwar Singh, a senior diplomat. "Suddenly he asked my wife to pick up any of the paper balls. She did so. Opened it. Chandraswami then told her what the question was. He was spot on."

In the mid-1970s, Mr. Singh arranged a meeting between Chandraswami and Margaret Thatcher, then the newly elected leader of Britain's Conservative Party. (She was elected prime minister in 1979.) He said he had watched her skepticism melt away as the "godman," as he called him, who spoke only Hindi, guessed her scribbled questions correctly.

"By the fourth question, the future Iron Lady's demeanor changed," Mr. Singh wrote. Mr. Thatcher was so impressed, he said, that she asked for a second appointment, and even agreed to his request that she wear a red dress.

This talent, "for entering the heads of others," as one journalist put it, gave Chandraswami access to all manner of regents and superstars in a period when India's economy was beginning to tap into international networks.

Among Chandraswami's patrons, none mattered more than P.V. Narasimha Rao, India's prime minister from 1991 to 1996.

The two had met in 1971 at the Hindu temple Tirupati Balaji and entered into a kind of symbiosis. Mr. Rao was "a bit of a provincial country bumpkin" eager for the contacts and intelligence the guru could provide. Chandraswami won him over by passing on what other party members were saying about him, said Mr. Sitapati, author of the biography Half-Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India.

"He needed someone like Chandraswami, who could use the back channels," Mr. Sitapati said.

When Mr. Rao was unexpectedly named prime minister in 1991, after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, Chandraswami's ashram became a hub for Delhi's power circles. He vacationed aboard Mr. Khashoggi's 86-metre yacht, Nabila. (It was later used as a set for a James Bond film and owned for a time by Donald Trump.)

Subramanian Swamy, a member of Parliament and a long-time friend of the guru's, said Chandraswami's prominence began to attract ill will.

"He was jetting around the world, living in great comfort," Mr. Swamy said. "A guru is supposed to sit in a hut."

His time in the limelight ended with breathtaking swiftness.

In 1996, Chandraswami was arrested on charges of defrauding Lakhubhai Pathak, a London-based Indian-born businessman, of $100,000 (U.S). Mr. Pathak, nicknamed the "pickle king" by the popular news media for the commodity his family business sold, claimed the money he had given to Chandraswami was meant for Mr. Rao, who left power in 1996. Chandraswami was acquitted in the case, as was Mr. Rao, who faced fraud charges.

An income-tax raid on the guru's ashram reportedly turned up records of $11-million in payments to Mr. Khashoggi, who was later implicated as a middleman in the Iran-Contra scandal, the clandestine effort in which the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran and channelled the proceeds illegally to right-wing counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua.

In 1997, Congress Party leaders suggested that Chandraswami was party to the conspiracy that led to Gandhi's assassination, though the investigation was curtailed the next year and he was never charged. He was prohibited from travelling abroad, however, and politicians who had sought Chandraswami's blessings for years now avoided him. Even Mr. Rao, his old friend, kept his distance.

"Many of these people, who looked upon him as a spiritual person, seeing that he was not able to protect himself – naturally, there was a devaluation," Mr. Swamy said. "They suddenly felt, if this is what the state is doing to him, you better avoid him."

There was no immediate word on whether he left any family.

Chandraswami was cremated on the banks of the Yamuna River in a ceremony attended by a handful of mourners. The Press Trust of India said there were no VIPs among them.