The court directed police to compile a list of all cases related to the Isha Foundation. (File)
When spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev got his own daughter married, why is he encouraging young women to tonsure their heads and renounce worldly lives to live like hermits, the Madras High Court has questioned.
A bench of Justices SM Subramaniam and V Sivagnanam posed the question for the Isha Foundation founder after a retired professor alleged that his two well-educated daughters had been "brainwashed" into permanently staying at the Isha Yoga Centre.
S Kamaraj, who used to teach at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore, had filed a petition seeking the appearance of his daughters in person in the court.
The two women, aged 42 and 39, who appeared in the court on Monday, said they were staying at the Isha Foundation out of their own will and were not being detained.
The women had given similar testimonies in the past in the decade-old case after their parents claimed their lives had become "hell" since they "abandoned" them.
The judges, however, decided to probe the case further and directed the cops to compile a list of all cases related to the Isha Foundation.
"We want to know why a person who had given his daughter in marriage and made her settle well in life is encouraging the daughters of others to tonsure their heads and live the life of a hermitess," said Justice Sivagnanam.
The Isha Foundation asserted that the women choose to stay with them voluntarily.
"We believe that adult individuals have the freedom and wisdom to choose their paths. We do not impose marriage or monkhood, as these are personal choices. The Isha Yoga Centre accommodates thousands who are not monks, alongside a few who have embraced Brahmacharya or monkhood," they said.
It also submitted it has only one pending police case while another was stayed by the court.