Interview with the Brahma Kumaris: Living on France's "Cult" List

In this 2010 CICNS video, French members of the Brahma Kumaris describe what the 1996 parliamentary listing meant in daily life. Among them are Dominique, a local representative, and Armelle, a psychomotor therapist dismissed from a municipal crèche in Saint-Jean-d’Illac: a six-month fiscal audit, refused venues and advertising, professional discrimination, police surveillance and an attempted arson. Alain Chevillat, organiser of the Voix de Femmes forum, also testifies to the press campaign triggered when he invited the movement’s European representative, Jayanti Ben.

CICNS interview. (English translation of the interview published on the CICNS YouTube channel on 24 January 2010. The French transcript was machine-transcribed from the video and cleaned before translation; passages the machine could not reliably hear are marked [inaudible].)

[Interviewer]: Has the CICNS been able to observe the damage done by the anti-cult struggle in our society? Over the past five years, the CICNS has been able to observe the damage done by the anti-cult struggle in our society. Our team has met several of the spiritual minorities listed in the 1996 parliamentary report. Among them, the Brahma Kumaris agreed to testify before our camera. Endowed with general consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council and consultative status with UNICEF, the international organisation of the Brahma Kumaris enjoys a certain respectability around the world as an ambassador of peace.

The situation in France is quite different. The word “cult” is truly charged with an extremely negative connotation.

[Participant]: You pass into a bracket of demonic people. I told myself it was like stepping into the skin of a traitor, but there I was able to feel the weight of such an assertion. And above all when it has nothing on you, when nothing is known, when nothing has been done — apart from the fact that the people here practise meditation and practise silence. You can imagine the crime.

[Participant]: We had a very severe fiscal audit and, from the way it was done, one understands very well that they were really looking for a secret, a treasure, a gigantic manipulation behind this movement or within our association. We did not come out of it one hundred per cent white. So that was the first fiscal audit, which carries out an operation lasting six months.

[Participant]: We took part in trade fairs which, from one day to the next, barred access to everything that was called a cult. We could no longer put up posters, and in the shops: we will never accept your poster again. We worked with radio stations, we worked with… They were forced to tell us: there, we can no longer, we are obliged to stop. You cannot hold it against people, since they do not know and everything starts from a piece of false information. You are refused halls, places at fairs, and so on. That is the first impact we felt, quickly: we have the feeling of losing our freedom of expression.

[Interviewer]: Testimony of Alain Chevillat, organiser of the Voix de Femmes forum, who had invited the European representative of the Brahma Kumaris, Jayanti Ben.

[Chevillat]: There was a barrage of fire from three newspapers of the local press. “Behind the guests, the cults”: the mayor of Aix-les-Bains and the director of the tourist office were alerted, and we were asked to cancel the participation of the contested person. Pressure was exerted on Sister Emmanuelle so that she would refuse to take part. The whole thing had been set off and driven by Mme Boulanger of the ADFI of Chambéry.

[Interviewer]: Thanks in particular to the intervention of Sister Emmanuelle, the event was able to take place without incident, but under close surveillance, as Dominique, local representative of the Brahma Kumaris, would learn later from a journalist friend.

[Dominique]: “You are both listed with the Renseignements Généraux as dangerous cranks (« dangereuses illuminées »).” He himself had seen photos, because that day Jayanti was being followed. She was going to the Voix de Femmes forum and, from her departure, certainly, she was followed. She was photographed. It is one of those events — there have been others.

[Participant]: We meet at least once a year, the leaders from each country. And it is true that France had this problem that the other countries did not have.

[Interviewer]: Two examples of professional discrimination, a direct consequence of the French listing of supposed cults. Dominique, enrolled in a long-term coaching training course, abruptly saw the doors of the diploma closed to her, and spoke of her spiritual commitment to her fellow trainees.

[Dominique]: At that moment, one of the people really took fright. I had a meeting in a café to talk, to exchange, so that she could understand a little further what I was living. And that meeting was very striking for me. The person facing me had a very, very strong belief: that I belonged to a dangerous cult. And from then on, everything she heard fed her beliefs. She heard it in such a way that it fed her beliefs. So anyone who lives through this process of being pushed aside, of rejection, simply through belief, should hear what I am saying here. So, all of a sudden, the conclusion was that it was better for me to keep quiet.

The national college of teachers of that school met and, at the end of the session, in three minutes, ruled that I could sit my certification, but that I could not have that school’s label until I had proved that the Brahma Kumaris were not a cult.

[Interviewer]: Armelle, a psychomotor therapist, worked in a municipal crèche. At the outset, nothing implicated her spiritual affiliation. She simply took the side of her director in a personality conflict with some parents, who then turned against her.

[Armelle]: They discovered that on the internet it was stated that I belonged to a cult. In fact, belonged to a very dangerous, apocalyptic cult. It was at that moment that the way people looked at me completely tipped over. That is to say, I believe that whatever I might have said or done, in any case it was interpreted a priori.

I was no longer left alone with the children at all. There was always a parent who came, who followed me from one room to another. They were even sorry about it, I think. There was an element of mixture in it. I imagine some of them must also have lived through this life at that time. It was very peculiar, in fact. Very peculiar. Because they knew me at the same time. And then, they could clearly see the relationship with the children.

[Interviewer]: After three trying months, suddenly comes the suspension.

[Armelle]: They summoned me for a suspension. They asked me to take all my equipment. And I had to leave that very minute and go home. I no longer even remember what was said, it was so shocking. It was in a place where I had lived for seven years, where I had really invested myself. I confess I do not remember it. What happened is that I remember I was crying.

[Interviewer]: Some time after the suspension, at a meeting, Armelle learns of the charges against her.

[Armelle]: I was accused of having lent books. Well, I can show them to you: they are “La pensée du jour” (“The Thought for the Day”) and “Coopération globale pour un monde meilleur” — in fact, “Vision d’un monde meilleur” (“Visions of a Better World”). So lending books, in fact, was also considered a cult practice.

[Interviewer]: Various old practices disapproved of by the parents. First practice: food brought in from outside.

[Armelle]: It is true that when there are snacks or, in any case, when there are parties at the crèche, we also bring in things from outside.

[Interviewer]: An invocation of good humour equated with proselytism.

[Armelle]: “Press the good-mood button.” Like when we say, in fact, that a child changes the record, you see. So supposedly that was a cult practice.

I had made a film which was very successful, in fact. And Jack Lang even sent a letter of congratulations about that film. People from my association, Brahma Kumaris, bought that film. Yes, the films were sold, indeed. But they were sold at the colloquium, with the president. I even had a witness who said that the president was indeed there and that she was selling the films with me. There was the parents’ authorisation to sell the film. There was no misappropriation of money, nor anything of the kind.

[Interviewer]: A dismissal on the same grounds would follow the suspension, and the affair would then suddenly be taken up by the media.

[Voice]: What is said about the Brahma Kumaris: they are considered a cult, in the 1997 parliamentary report — a dangerous, hallucinatory cult specialised in the extortion of funds. The title of the article is “The town hall’s crèche hides a cult”.

[Voice]: There you have it: for all the parents of Saint-Jean-d’Illac, in the Gironde, the creation of a municipal crèche was a godsend — until they discovered the incredible truth. The mayor of the village, Pierre Favre, got wind of the scandal. He immediately took measures.

[Armelle]: The mayor also fed off this whole story; I think it is a political level. There was television, there was radio, there was even an article in India, where it was stated in the article that two Brahma Kumaris had been put in prison.

The director was dismissed as well, because there were, after all, two of us in this story, because she had covered for me. It completely destroyed her life. Her children, at school, people would say: “So, your mother belongs to a cult?” She could have turned against me, of course. She never did.

[Interviewer]: Armelle’s claim before the labour tribunal (prud’hommes) for unfair dismissal would be rejected in a dismaying judgment which, without providing any evidence of the supposed dangers, justifies its decision by the parents’ fright and by the rumour of a cult.

“At the meeting of 1 April 2003, Mme Armelle G. acknowledges belonging to a cult. Therefore certain parents were validly alarmed by the facts when they were brought to their knowledge. They considered them as placing in danger the children entrusted to the crèche. It is all the same put a priori, no doubt, in an exaggerated way. Certain parents having interpreted their children’s behaviour in that sense, but which are justified given the very generalism.”

[Participant]: It is a condemnation a priori, out of fear, in case something might happen.

[Participant]: We had the start of a fire. The entrance door of an apartment: they had put petrol on a wreath of cotton. Fortunately there was the caretaker in the building — in the 6th arrondissement — gone up in smoke, with residents in that building. It was very dangerous. I remember, the police were extremely worried.

In this centre here, there was a criminal act, but, in my opinion, the person in question was disturbed, since he left all his gear: petrol, cotton, wick, and so on. He must have been disturbed by a shutter opening, a neighbour who must have heard noises, but he was ready to go through with it.

We no longer felt like laughing. It could turn criminal. You see, when you are listed in this way, everyone else has every right. Who is going to challenge them? You sometimes walk on quicksand, because you sense that around you — and here I am talking about those close to you, I am talking about people who were your friends — they themselves no longer know who they are dealing with. They no longer know whether you are really the person they have always known, or the one who has changed and who has himself lost his own self-mastery.

[Participant]: It is an interesting experience to live through. For people who practise meditation, it was a test. It was a test to pass and, today, I am glad to have passed it. That is what tests are for. Tests are there to make us grow.

[Participant]: I would say that everyone is dying of a lack of spirituality. So I would rather expect the opposite gaze from our fellow citizens. After all, there are people here who, instead of throwing themselves into all-out consumption — at least here are people who pause and who try to reflect on themselves, and on the future of the world, and on the right moves, the right gestures to make. Not at all: you are taken for a kind of extraterrestrial.

[Participant]: What would be beautiful would be to manage to demystify these stories about cults. My experience is that it gets dropped through the trapdoor. It gets set aside. When this kind of story happens, including for the people who suffer it — I am convinced that everyone does their best. That is my observation as I move forward in life: most of the time, everyone does their best.

But this subject touches the deep identity of the being. “You are not like me. You do not believe as I do. You frighten me. I do not know whether you are dangerous or not.” And the damage is this: it is that there is this silence which suddenly falls, because we do not know how to deal with the subject.