Golden Temple Foods deal opposed by leaders of Yogi Bhajan's cult
by Gursant Singh 
, Yuba City California USA, Saturday, October 15, 2011, 00:29 (4793 days ago)
edited by Gursant Singh, Saturday, October 15, 2011, 00:45
Published: (Friday, Oct 14, 2011 05:01AM) Today
Four of the six Golden Temple managers accused by the state of wrongdoing in a long, messy lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court want to settle.
So does state Attorney General John Kroger, who sued the managers of the Eugene natural foods company a year ago in his role as supervisor of Oregon charities. So does Unto Infinity, the four-member board of business leaders which, following the death of Sikh leader Yogi Bhajan in 2004, was charged with overseeing Golden Temple and the Sikh community’s other businesses, as well as its large network of religious and yoga nonprofit organizations.
But the Sikh religious leaders, whose lawsuit against Golden Temple managers was merged with the state’s in December 2010, are not on board with the proposed settlement.
Their attorney, John McGrory, said in an e-mail to the court that the proposed settlement would “directly impact the relief my clients are requesting from the court.”
“We believe that in ruling on potential objections to the settlement the court will be preemptively ruling on issues that are to be decided in the trial,” the e-mail said.
He asked Judge Leslie Roberts to schedule a hearing on the proposed settlement after she issues her ruling on the ongoing lawsuit.
Judge Roberts has not yet scheduled a hearing on the proposed settlement. Unto Infinity’s lawyers filed a joint motion for approval of a settlement agreement earlier this week.
If the settlement is approved, it would shift a big portion of ownership and control in Golden Temple from the four Golden Temple executives back to Unto Infinity, the four-member board that oversees the Sikh community’s businesses.
Unto Infinity would pay the four executives a total of $156,000 for their ownership interest, which would give Unto Infinity a majority stake in the company, boosting its ownership from 10 percent to 56.8 percent, according to court filings.
The four executives would pay $104,000 to Unto Infinity and $40,000 to the state, according to the motion.
The state in turn would drop its claims against the four Golden Temple executives, and Unto Infinity would offer them some protections against possible future legal disputes and costs.
The settlement also would smooth the way for the next stage for Golden Temple of Oregon, which started out as a tiny bakery founded by Yogi Bhajan’s adherents in Eugene and evolved into an international concern with $125 million in annual revenues.
The settlement would ensure “an orderly transition of management during a time of monumental changes at Golden Temple,” the motion said.
For decades, Golden Temple, with its thriving cereal and tea business, was a cornerstone of Lane County’s natural food industry. The company sold its cereal division to Hearthside Food Solutions of Illinois for $71 million in May 2010. Golden Temple still owns and operates the Yogi Tea division, which has about 50 employees in Springfield and about 100 in Europe.
This summer arbitrators in Portland ruled that the trademark rights for Yogi Tea belong to Yogi Bhajan’s heirs, including his wife Bibiji. Golden Temple must discontinue using the Yogi brand as of Jan. 1, and is in the midst of rebranding its tea line — a costly and risky endeavor, marketing specialists say.
Under the proposed settlement with the state, the four Golden Temple executives, including CFO Karam Singh Khalsa, COO Ajeet Singh Khalsa, sales manager Gurudhan Singh Khalsa and R&D director Guru Hari Singh Khalsa, would stay on at the company until the end of the year with the same salary, compensation and bonus plan as before. When they leave their jobs, they would be bound by an agreement not to compete with their former employer in the tea business until June 30, 2014.
Attorney Michael Farnell, who represents these four Golden Temple managers, provided The Register-Guard with this statement from his clients:
“Some of us felt that our ownership interest was creating too much of a distraction and too much litigation for us personally. Other owners have a different view and that’s their prerogative. We each respect the views and approaches of the other.”
“We hope that by entering into this settlement agreement and conveying our equity interests to Unto Infinity LLC, we can put all of this distraction behind us, and continue to focus all of our energies on selling tea for as long as the business will have us.”
Hammering out a settlement agreement took two months, Unto Infinity attorney Thomas Johnson said.
“UI feels like it negotiated a good deal for the nonprofit,” he said. “They’re confident the deal is in the best interest of the organization.”
Tony Green, spokesman for Attorney General Kroger, said “the settlement is consistent with the goal of returning assets to the charity for its benefit.”
The two Golden Temple managers who are not part of the proposed settlement are CEO Kartar Singh Khalsa and marketing director Robert Ziehl.
Their attorney, Irving Potter, said the parties agreed to restrict their comments to what was available in the public record. He declined to comment on why his clients did not join the other four Golden Temple Managers in the proposed settlement agreement.
Published: (Tuesday, Oct 4, 2011 05:00AM) Today
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By the first of the year, the boxes of Yogi Tea on store shelves may look the same, but the product inside and the company making it will be different.
Meanwhile, Suvi — a newcomer in the tea section — may start selling the old Yogi Tea flavors under the Suvi brand.
This turn of events involving the popular brand Yogi Tea and its Lane County manufacturers was set in motion by an arbitration panel in Portland.
The widow of Sikh spiritual leader Yogi Bhajan — the namesake of Yogi Tea — sued tea-maker Golden Temple, a Eugene company, for trademark infringement in U.S. District Court in California in February 2010.
The case went to arbitration, and this summer the arbitrators found that the Yogi Tea trademark belongs to the heirs of Yogi Bhajan, including his widow, not to Golden Temple, the company that has made the tea for years in Springfield and in Europe. The Springfield tea factory has 50 employees.
The arbitrators ordered Golden Temple to stop using the Yogi trademark by Jan. 1, 2012, and to pay Yogi Bhajan’s widow, Los Angeles resident Bibiji, $822,302 in damages for trademark infringement from January 2009 through October 2010.
Assuming Yogi Tea’s sales stay relatively steady through the end of the year, Bibiji would be owed about $485,905 more for royalties from November 2010 through December 2011, according to Bibiji’s attorney, Surjit Soni.
Yogi Tea, a top-selling natural tea brand in the United States and Europe, had sales of more than $27 million in 2009, according to court documents.
It’s unclear what effect the trademark issue and name change will have on the Springfield tea factory.
Golden Temple officials did not respond to requests for comment from The Register-Guard. However, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records show that the company applied on Sept. 6 to register “Suvi.”
It is an unusual and costly situation for both sides in the dispute, according to trademark and branding experts.
“One of them has the product but no brand. The other has the brand but no product,” said Ken Kwartler, a trademark attorney in Lake Oswego.
Losing a brand is “a big deal” for a company, said David Funk, a branding expert with the Eugene marketing firm of bell+funk.
“To rebrand where there’s existing equity in a product can be very expensive because you have to literally reintroduce your loyal audience to a brand new name,” he said.
It requires creating the new name, registering that name internationally, which requires money and time — “about six months if they have good luck,” Funk said. Then the company has to advertise and contact distributors and store buyers, he said.
“We have to be talking in the millions of dollars by the time you’ve redeveloped a brand, gone through all your distribution networks and let the market know, ‘Hey, we’re no longer Yogi Tea; we’re this,’ ” Funk said.
“With a $27 million-a-year business, I would be ready to invest some serious money,” Kwartler, the trademark attorney, said.
“I typically tell people they should spend 3 to 5 percent of the money they’re making a year just to register and protect the brand,” he said. “Here you have a bigger challenge. It’s not just registering, but you have a whole marketing campaign on top of that.”
As for the brand name Suvi, “at least it sounds generally familiar, like Sufi and Yogi,” Funk said. It also may bring to mind other natural tea brands: Rumi, Numi, Tazo and Souvia.
The people who have newly acquired the rights to the Yogi brand also have challenges ahead, Funk said. They have to create new flavors and develop the packaging, he said. They have to set up manufacturing and distribution.
For Suvi and Yogi, “It’s basically a race to the market,” Funk said.
Bibiji, the yogi’s widow, plans by January to introduce a product line of 45 to 50 formulations, including organic, herbal and ayurvedic teas, her lawyer said.
“We’ll provide a broad range,” he said. “She has her own formulations.”
Soni did not disclose who will manufacture and distribute the tea.
“My understanding is that Golden Temple is rebranding (and) they’ve selected a name and are trying to reach the market with a new product,” Soni said.
“I suspect they’re going to make a run at trying to keep (the Springfield) plant operating and functioning,” he said. “We wish them good luck.
“We have no ill will toward them and the people who work at the plant.”
Soni said Bibiji regrets that she and Golden Temple executives could not reach an agreement to license the Yogi trademark to Golden Temple.
“When there’s a change of control over Golden Temple, there may be an opportunity for us to work with them again,” he added.
Soni was alluding to a lengthy lawsuit awaiting a decision from Judge Leslie Roberts in Multnomah County Circuit Court. In it, the religious leaders of the Sikh community founded by Yogi Bhajan sued the Sikh community’s business leaders, alleging unjust enrichment and breach of fiduciary duty.
Oregon Attorney General John Kroger, who supervises charities in Oregon, sued Golden Temple’s managers on similar grounds, and Kroger’s case was merged with the religious leaders’ case.
Arbitration findings generally are not made public, but the Yogi Tea decision was included as an exhibit in other court proceedings filed in U.S. District Court in New Mexico. The New Mexico proceedings involved a dispute between Bibiji and Yogi Bhajan’s 15 female former assistants over their competing claims to the yogi’s estate.
Yogi Bhajan was born in India and brought his own brand of Sikhism to the United States in the late 1960s. He encouraged his adherents to create businesses; that was the origin of Golden Temple, which made granola and other cereals in Eugene. That division was sold to Hearthside Food Solutions in May 2010, leaving just the tea division, Yogi Tea, in Golden Temple’s control.
Hearthside, which is based in Illinois, had a two-year license from Golden Temple to produce Yogi brand cereals, Soni said. He said Bibiji plans to phase out that product by the end of the year.
Then she’ll produce a line of Yogi cereal and is in discussion with an appropriate candidate to do that, Soni said.
http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-5502-khalsa-vs-khalsa.html?current_page=1
Khalsa vs Khalsa
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A simmering lawsuit coiuld decide the fate of a $1 billion Sikh empire
By Corey Pein
The young woman locked the door to her office. In the hall, a man was shouting. He began pounding on her door.
She knew who it was, and she knew what he wanted. He wanted the keys.
The siege on the second floor was the most dramatic moment of a coup, years in the making, that went down seven months ago in dusty Española.
The modesty of the setting belies the stakes: control of a large private army that has won more than $3.5 billion in government contracts, ownership of a trans-Atlantic natural foods empire and, not least, the fate of an influential decades-old religious sect called Sikh Dharma.
The sect’s founder, the late Yogi Bhajan, inspired thousands of mostly white, middle-class men and women to stop cutting their hair, put on turbans and adopt a common surname: Khalsa.
Bhajan died in 2004. Soon after, his inner circle began to splinter. The disputes were quiet at first. By Dec. 3, 2009, the divided loyalties could no longer be ignored.
It was on that day that Guru Kirin Kaur learned that she and her colleagues had been given an ultimatum. Over 14 years—most of her adult life—Kirin had worked her way up to become chief financial officer of Sikh Dharma International, the sect’s religious nonprofit organization; now she, her coworkers, her boss and the SDI board could either sign a new loyalty oath, or find new jobs.
The demand came from Guruchander Singh, the sect’s chief numerologist and manager of the administrative nonprofit, Sikh Dharma Stewardship.
Kirin parked her car outside a long, white building at Sikh Dharma’s picturesque Española campus. There in the gravel parking lot, she claims, she met Guruchander.
“He started to verbally assault me, accusing me of stealing and yelling that I would be going to jail,” she writes in an email posted to an online Sikh forum.
“He was extremely hostile, escalating into a violent rage, and frankly, very scary.”
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Sikh Dharma’s leading numerologist, Guruchander Singh, serves on the New Mexico Board of Chiropractic Examiners.
When another employee tried to call the police, Guruchander allegedly said, “Hang up if you want to keep your job.”
Kirin claims Guruchander followed her upstairs, where she locked herself in her office. “The next thing I knew he was kicking at my door so hard the building shook,” she writes.
Hearing her colleagues enter the hall, Kirin opened her door. Guruchander then barged inside, she claims, making off with computers full of confidential information. Later, she claims, he used her Social Security number to convince a Santa Fe Wells Fargo employee to put SDI’s bank accounts under his control. Then, he allegedly tried to have the locks changed.
A legal complaint filed later says Guruchander, who also co-directs the Yoga Santa Fe studio on Llano Street and serves on the state Board of Chiropractic Examiners, “behaved in a manner that was more akin to a violent criminal than a supposedly peaceful Sikh.”
Sikh Dharma’s leading numerologist, Guruchander Singh, serves on the New Mexico Board of Chiropractic Examiners.
Kirin, Guruchander and others in the office that day either ignored SFR’s messages or declined comment for this story. “I have no response as the legal case is still pending,” Guruchander writes in an email to SFR.
Indeed, the action has moved to a courtroom 1,300 miles away, in Portland, Ore. A judge there will decide who should control the late Bhajan’s business empire, including the omnipresent Yogi tea brand and what may be New Mexico’s largest private company, Akal Security.
Will control remain with the coup leaders—the Sikh Dharma Stewardship and its parent company, Unto Infinity of Oregon—whom Bhajan left in charge of the sect’s business side?
Or will it go to the former SDI board, which includes Bhajan’s widow and others entrusted with religious matters?
Neither side can claim total purity. Some leaders of the former group have renounced key tenets of Sikh Dharma, cut their hair and allegedly raised their own salaries. A few in the latter group are connected to long-standing charges of impropriety and mismanagement.
Yet the stereotype of the bully in a business suit creates some sympathy for the religious leaders, even among those reluctant to take sides.
“I almost feel sorry for the religious heads in Española,” Kamalla Rose Kaur, who runs an online forum for other ex-followers of what she calls the “Yogi Bhajan cult,” tells SFR. “They’re really the underdogs, at the moment.”
Lucky for them, long odds are nothing new to the followers of Sikh Dharma.
Page 2 Santa fe reporter
Khalsa Vs Khalsa
The future Yogi Bhajan had what The Times of India calls a “fairly privileged childhood.” He was born Harbhajan Singh Puri in 1929 in a part of British India that is now Pakistan. After college, he spent 15 years working as a customs official.
In 1968, he moved to North America. Long before Walmart began selling $20 yoga mats, Bhajan introduced Americans to the Hindu practice of Kundalini yoga, blended with his own take on Sikhism, a 500-year-old religion with some 26 million followers, most of whom live in the Punjab region. Hippies loved it.
Bhajan called his new community 3HO—the healthy, happy, holy organization—and selected a remote headquarters: Española.
“Yogi Bhajan used to say, ‘God lives everywhere, but his address is in New Mexico,’” Avtar Hari Singh, a former Hollywood executive who joined Sikh Dharma 17 years ago, tells SFR.
From the outset of his American adventures, Bhajan cultivated powerful connections. Among the earliest 3HO devotees were the wife and two daughters of James Angleton, the late Central Intelligence Agency deputy director who inspired the 2006 Matt Damon spy flick, The Good Shepherd. One daughter, Siri Hari Kaur Angleton-Khalsa, showed off her stunning home, garden and pool north of Santa Fe to Architectural Digest last year.
Early on, Bhajan “had his share of spooked critics—‘Bogi Yogi,’ some folks called him—and there were the usual charges of cronyism, moral turpitude, etc,” the Times of India writes in his obituary. “But it was his business enterprise, as much as his religious teaching, that was striking.”
Indeed, financial success—and Bhajan’s alliances with powerful politicians and Hollywood celebrities—helped the community gain the acceptance of its neighbors. Like the prosperity gospel of some Christian megachurches, Sikh Dharma praises the cultivation of wealth.
Bhajan also embraced Sikhism’s martial tradition.
“As opposed to the philosophy of ‘turn the other cheek’—not to denigrate that—it is the philosophy of protecting those who can’t protect themselves,” Avtar Hari says.
And so the private security business, which combines steady income with paramilitary discipline, was a natural choice to sustain the community.
Bhajan’s followers established Akal Security in 1980. One founder, Gurutej Singh, was famously booted by the New Mexico State Police for refusing to doff his turban and shave.
“Yogi Bhajan told him, ‘Why don’t you start a security company, and they’ll work for you,’” Avtar Hari recalls.
In time, that’s pretty much what happened—but success wouldn’t come easy.
The 1980s were not a great time to be Sikh.
In June, 1984, the Indian Army raided the religion’s most sacred site, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, in search of a separatist leader.
Weeks after the siege of the temple, Bhajan summoned members of the Sikh diaspora to join him in Española “to formulate a joint program of action,” The New York Times reported; Indian Sikhs who had long disparaged Bhajan and 3HO Sikhism accepted the invitation.
Four months later, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was murdered by her Sikh bodyguards. Bhajan condemned the murder. The ensuing riots left thousands of Sikhs dead. In 1985, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it had foiled another alleged “Sikh terrorist” plot to assassinate Gandhi’s son on US soil.
Today, India’s prime minister is himself Sikh, but it took decades for the religion to shed the “terrorist” label, which was once thrown as casually toward Sikhs as it is now toward Muslims. (For what it’s worth, Avtar Hari says Sikhs are more like Jews, resented for their success.)
Yogi Bhajan, who inaugurated an annual “Peace Prayer Day” in 1986, was never publicly linked to any criminality during this period—with one strange exception.
In 1988, the Drug Enforcement Administration indicted a Bhajan deputy based in Virginia, named Gurujot Singh. Agents charged that he had tried to smuggle some 20 tons of marijuana into the US from Thailand via ship. He also had allegedly asked an informant for help obtaining illegal weapons, including pistols with silencers, automatic rifles, grenade launchers and a 50-caliber machine gun.
According to The Los Angeles Times, he entered a plea that “admitted no guilt, but acknowledged the prosecution could likely prove its case.” Federal Bureau of Prisons records confirm Gurujot Singh Khalsa—previously known as Robert A Taylor, and not to be confused with a younger man with a similar name in Española—was incarcerated for an unknown time, and released.
Akal co-founder Gurutej Singh Khalsa is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, but declined to speak for this article.
SFR reached Gurujot twice on his cell phone; both times, he said he was driving and to call back later. SFR called at the suggested time, but Gurujot did not return the message.
In a lengthy recent interview with an Indian journalist, Gurujot casts the 1988 indictment as police entrapment. Gurujot claims police placed an informant in his temple, and covertly recorded the informant’s idea to smuggle drugs, which he flatly rejected.
In the same interview, Gurujot blames “white supremacists” for having posted the “false” indictment online in an effort to undermine his businesses. The interviewer, Khushwant Singh, writes that “since Gurujot was part of Akal Security” at the time, the company’s enemies hoped to tar it by association.
After Akal won an airport security contract in Hawaii in 1999, someone sent anonymous letters to state officials, evidently alluding to Gurujot’s indictment. An Akal spokesperson told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin “the confusion stems from a 10-year-old drug arrest on the East Coast of someone who bears the same last name”—Khalsa—but has “no relationship to our company or religion.”
Despite that disavowal, other Sikh Dharma organizations that are supported by Akal still embrace Gurujot. Today, he teaches 3HO-approved Kundalini yoga in Virginia, where he makes a living running outsourcing and call center businesses with operations in Pakistan and South Africa. He also served as board president of the 3HO Foundation of Washington, DC, at the time of Yogi Bhajan’s death, the most recently available federal tax records show.
The revelation of the charges against Gurujot and other sensational accusations led to the sect’s first exodus of members in the mid-1990s, according to Kamalla Rose, an ex-3HO follower who now lives in Washington state. Today’s split in Sikh Dharma harks back to that time, she says, in that the newly empowered business-side leaders “are trying to cut out the crooks and the bad wood.”
Within the past few years, Gurujot has publicly signed himself as “secretary in chief” of Sikh Dharma International, but the organization’s lawyer tell SFR he was not on the board as of last year’s coup.
In any case, Gurujot was among the first to sign an online petition supporting its ousted board members in Española, and against the Sikh Dharma business leaders who took control of SDI and Akal Security.
The new millenium brought another wave of discrimination against people wearing long beards and turbans.
America’s bigots may have frequently confused Sikh cab drivers for Al Qaeda sympathizers, but the US government was more discerning. Indeed, the worst terrorist attacks in US history turned out to be great for Sikh Dharma’s flagship business.
Two weeks after the 9.11 attacks, Akal co-founder and President Daya Singh Khalsa met George W Bush at the White House to discuss new airport security measures, as well as anti-Sikh discrimination.
Today, Akal’s best customers are the departments of Defense and Homeland Security. According to a federal contracts website, Akal and its subsidiary Coastal International Security have received at least $3.5 billion in federal awards since 2000.
Akal’s charges include federal courthouses, military bases and US embassies abroad. On top of that, Akal profits from untallied millions in contracts with state and local governments across the country.
Akal co-founder and President Daya Singh refuses to disclose numbers. “We take advantage of our privately held status,” he tells SFR.
Estimates vary, but Avtar Hari says Akal has $500 million in annual revenues and approximately 15,000 employees.
The company boasts reams of client testimonials and awards. But, as might be expected for so large an enterprise, Akal’s record also has some blotches.
In 2003, Akal won the “access control” contract for Fort Hood, Texas, after the Pentagon began deploying the National Guard to Afghanistan and Iraq. Akal lost the contract four years later, having paid $18 million to settle a federal lawsuit that claimed the company had failed to hire enough properly trained guards.
(In a sense, Akal lucked out by losing the Fort Hood contract before the shooting massacre on base last year.)
In 2007, the City of Phoenix fined Akal for repeated contract violations, including airport guards sleeping on the job. And in 2009, guards at the federal courthouse in San Francisco sued Akal for retaliation after they complained about coworkers being drunk and high on duty and, in one case, waving a gun around.
Obviously, the Sikh Dharma company isn’t responsible for the more controversial policies of its biggest client, the federal government, but it has proved happy to carry them out.
For instance, Akal guards illegal immigrants on government-chartered flights from Tucson, Ariz., to Mexico City, working under the deportation contractor, CSI Aviation Services of Albuquerque.
CSI was founded by former New Mexico Republican Party Chairman Allen Weh. This year, Akal gave Weh $2,000 for his failed gubernatorial campaign.
Such generosity toward politicians surely aided the company’s rise from a small, local outfit whose contracts once specified “Sikh guards only,” to one of the biggest players in private security, in league with Wackenhut and Blackwater.
In New Mexico, the company’s best allies are Democrats. It has given thousands to the gubernatorial bid of Lt. Gov. Diane Denish. Attorney General Gary King, who runs the state’s key investigative office, also has benefited.
Akal has been one of Gov. Bill Richardson’s biggest donors, kicking $46,000 to his political committees over the years. A handful of other Sikh entrepreneurs and businesses, including Golden Temple of Oregon, have contributed another $23,000.
Richardson appointed Akal co-founder Gurutej Singh to the Private Investigations Advisory Board, which regulates security companies.
When Bhajan died, Richardson ordered state flags flown at half-staff. Later, the governor visited Española to dedicate Yogi Bhajan Memorial Highway. It intersects Interstate 285 at the Trans-Lux Dreamcatcher Cinema and winds eastward, past the golden dome of the Sikh Dharma temple.
When SFR visited in late June, the placid green campus of Sikh Dharma was deserted. Most of the 200-some Sikh families who live in the area were miles away in the hills, celebrating the summer solstice.
SFR came at the invitation of Avtar Hari, a genial, scholarly type who abandoned an entertainment and real estate career to follow another path.
“No one is more surprised than I am when I look in the mirror,” he says. “I have a lot of three-piece suits in the closet.”
Former SDI Board Chairman Avtar Hari Singh is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit to regain control of the organization.
As it is, his attire consists of a white robe and turban, only shades brighter than his long white beard.
Years ago, as Arthur Warshaw, he was president of Time-Life Television. As Avtar Hari, he put his Harvard Business School degree to use as board chairman of Sikh Dharma International—until Dec. 3, 2009, when he was stripped of the title.
He provides a tour of the temple, which features a striking mural of the Virgen de Guadalupe sandwiched between two meditating gurus.
Outside, as monsoon clouds gather, Avtar Hari points across the grassy lawn to the headquarters of Akal Security. It seems odd that the squat, prefab-looking structure a stone’s throw from the temple houses a half-billion-dollar company that employs a number of people with high-level security clearances.
But then, Akal rarely seeks to draw attention to itself or its religious origins. Golden Temple, the food company in Oregon, takes a different tack, printing yoga poses and religious sayings on boxes of Yogi tea. (In 2008, the Sikh Dharma business leaders in Oregon removed Yogi Bhajan’s picture from
the packaging.)
With no outside equity investment, Avtar Hari says, these two companies grew to have a combined annual revenue of $800 million. And the profits have allowed Sikh Dharma to sustain its membership and spread the word.
Yogi Bhajan always intended that “these companies would provide jobs for our children and anyone else who wanted to work in a conscious business,” Avtar Hari says.
Most Akal employees are not Sikh, but some children of Sikh Dharma will find work in the Khalsa family business. In a video posted online, Akal co-founder Gurutej Singh leads dozens of youths in a tug-of-war type challenge at Camp Miri Piri, Sikh Dharma’s youth academy in India.
Some fear the leaders of the coup will sell off the training camp, as they did the cereal division of Golden Temple earlier this year.
The lawsuit in Portland—whose key plaintiffs include Akal’s Gurutej and Avtar Hari of SDI—seeks to prevent further “deterioration” of the Sikh Dharma organization. Until the case is resolved, Multnomah County Circuit Judge Leslie Roberts has barred the business leaders in Oregon from selling off Akal.
In a nutshell, the religious leaders want to recover damages and remove the business-side leaders from their positions of power.
The plaintiffs claim the business leaders have abandoned Sikhism and taken to living in high style, while depriving SDI—and by extension its beneficiaries in the community—of some $50 million in property, stock and monetary donations. Worse still, the plaintiffs say, the business leaders fired 25 Sikh Dharma nonprofit employees and, beginning last summer, tried to push Bhajan’s widow, Bibiji Inderjit Kaur Puri, out of her lifetime appointment to the SDI board.
Each year, Akal and Golden Temple donate millions, perhaps tens of millions, of dollars to the bevy of nonprofits inspired by Yogi Bhajan. The nonprofits include the 3HO Foundation, which stages festivals and other events; the Kundalini Research Institute; and SDI, the authority on matters of doctrine.
In 2003, aware that Bhajan’s long illness might soon claim his life, he and his advisers began planning for the future of Sikh Dharma. In so doing, they established a new set of organizations with interlocking relationships.
A chart included with the Portland lawsuit lays out this corporate structure. Near the top is Unto Infinity LLC, a for-profit Oregon company. Unto Infinity ultimately owns both Akal Security of New Mexico and a portion of Golden Temple in Oregon.
Unto Infinity also controls the nonprofit Sikh Dharma Stewardship, run by the numerologist Guruchander Singh, and by extension SDI, which he allegedly “stormed” last December. (The SDS website says it replaced SDI’s board due to poor financial reporting and unspecified conflict-of-interest concerns; the Portland lawsuit was first filed nine weeks before the December incident, and followed many months of escalating tensions.)
Advised by his longtime secretary, Sopurkh Kaur, Bhajan signed off on this structure, which left the business and administrative leaders of Sikh Dharma in a position superior to that of the religious leaders.
Sopurkh is a defendant in the lawsuit. The lead defendants, however, are Kartar Singh and Preaim Kaur, both directors of Unto Infinity. Kartar and Preaim now live in Oregon and are a romantic couple, according to multiple sources.
The plaintiffs allege that these defendants “formulated a plan to renounce the faith and their orthodox practices before they obtained these positions of power.”
Whatever their motivation, top Unto Infinity leaders today bear little relation to their old, turbaned selves; photos from recent fundraisers in Portland show a beardless Kartar and a dancing Preaim.
Kartar, a Golden Temple executive, has allegedly increased his pay from $127,000 to $800,000 a year.
No one claims Yogi Bhajan was less than lucid when he approved the new corporate structure. But did he expect all this discord?
“I believe he wanted to see all the organizations flourish and continue in the way they did when he was alive,” Avtar Hari says.
The defendants’ attorney, Gary Roberts, did not return SFR’s call. In an interview with the Eugene, Ore., Register-Guard, which has covered the case closely, Roberts suggests Avtar Hari, Gurutej and the other plaintiffs are merely jealous that Bhajan didn’t leave them in charge.
The defendants say they have followed Bhajan’s wishes, and are within their rights to lay off anyone they please. In a court filing, the business side’s lawyers liken the plaintiffs to Girl Scouts and their complaint to the following:
“The Girl Scouts have reduced funding at the same time that they increased their officers’ salaries. So I want to sue the directors of the National Girl Scouts for damages, overturn all of their decisions, remove all of their directors and have new directors chosen by people I like.”
Bhajan’s widow, Bibiji, did not respond to SFR’s email. A lawsuit she filed against Golden Temple in federal court to recover royalties lost following the removal of Yogi Bhajan’s image from Yogi tea boxes was dismissed on June 9 when a judge said the parties should enter arbitration.
The late yogi’s son-in-law, Bhai Sahib Satpal Singh, tells SFR in an email that he isn’t taking sides.
“I am praying that good sense may prevail on both sides and the situation is settled amicably,” he writes. “I have suggested to all sides that if they are unable to come to a resolution, rather than go [through] the courts, they must first try to involve the Supreme Sikh leadership from India as mediators.”
Stating the obvious, he writes that “lawsuits and disputes will certainly have a negative effect on the organizations started by Yogi Bhajan.”
Akal President Daya Singh Khalsa met with George W Bush shortly after the 9.11 attacks.
Gurutej Singh did not return SFR’s call. The other Akal Security co-founder, Daya Singh, downplays the effects of a possible change in his company’s ownership.
“Whether it ends up changing the people on some board seats, none of that would really have any substantial impact on the company, as far as we can tell,” he says.
If nothing else, the lawsuits show how much Yogi Bhajan personally held his community together. Kamalla Rose, the ex-3HO member and gadfly, believes the sect is unraveling. “Everybody’s growing up and they may be deprogramming—particularly the Unto Infinity group,” she says. Reflecting on her time as a “flower child” 3HO follower, she is, in a way, grateful:
“I wanted to move into a commune. A lot of us did. We were looking for cults,” she says. “I’m just glad I didn’t join Scientology.”
While the court case drags on, the Sikh Dharma rank and file is torn.
“It feels like our Dharma has a huge wound that is bleeding profusely,” Jeevan Joti Kaur, a local yoga instructor, writes in a recent letter to Guruchander Singh, the numerologist and Sikh Dharma Stewardship leader. “People worked for our businesses for years… Don’t they deserve to know that it wasn’t all in vain?”
In his written response, Guruchander and the SDS board urge community members to “be patient and try to remain neutral.” In the meantime, people should “focus their divine energy on something positive.”
“Our prayer is that, when the litigation is finished, there will be a chance to come together,” the letter says. “Ultimately, whether or not that happens is in the hands of the Guru.” SFR
See more photos and discussion on facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=108156&id=1214270541&l=5a22781e63
“Amid the legal infighting following Yogi Bhajan’s death, critics are offering another portrait of the Sikh leader.”
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3HO Sikhs are now fighting amongst themselves in a lawsuit over the millions of dollars in profits made from using the sacred Sikh religious symbols and scriptures for their own personal gain.3HO Sikhs, who follow Yogi Bhajan, funnel the money to support Yogi Bhajan's tantric cult church which 3HO Sikhs have deceptively camouflaged using names like "Sikh Dharma International", "3HO foundation", "Sikh Dharma Stewardship","SikhNet.com","Sikh Dharma Worldwide", "Unto Infinity Board","Khalsa Council" and "KRI(Kundalini Research Institute)". See "Sikhnet's" and "Sikh Dharma International's" slick new websites which were produced with the millions in ill-gained profits using the name of the Golden Temple, names and images of the Sikh Gurus, and sacred Sikh shabads for profit in commercial enterprises.
""Yogi's Legacy in Question"".[/link]
"New lawsuit hits Golden Temple with fraud!"
LETTERS IN THE EDITOR’S MAILBAG: Friday’s paper
Appeared in print: Friday, May 28, 2010
"Bhajan was a leader ‘by fluke’
Humility is the hallmark of a Sikh, and Bhajan had none of it. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, describes people such as Bhajan succinctly: “Those ... who have no virtues but are filled with egotistical pride.”
Hardev Singh Shergill President, Khalsa Tricentennial Foundation of North America Editor-in-chief, The Sikh Bulletin El Dorado Hills, Calif.
"Sikhism and Tantric Yoga"
by Dr. Trilochan Singh (Link to entire book)
"The book Sikhism And Tantric Yoga is available at: www.gurmukhyoga.com.This website which is operated by a genuine White Sikh is highly recommended. Gursant Singh was a member of the Yogi Bhajan Cult (3HO and the Sikhnet Gora Sikhs or White Sikhs) for over 30 years and has intimate knowledge about the inner workings of this cult which attempts to miscegnate Sikhism with Hindu idolatry. I downloaded the book from Gursant’s website and found it to be absolutely compelling. I read it in one compulsive and sustained draught. It is a study not only about cults in Sikhism but about the miscegenation of the Sikh Religion by Hinduism. It is a classic work rendered in beautiful English prose and it is patently the work of a profound intellectual scholar with a deep knowledge of Sikhism."
Quotation taken from: http://www.sikharchives.com/?p=5513&cpage=1#comment-2011
You may also view individual chapters to "Sikhism and Tantric Yoga" at these links:
Sikhism & Tantric Yoga A Critical Evaluation of Yogi Bhajan
http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php?id=192
Sikh Doctrines and Yogi Bhajan's Secret Science
http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php?id=193
Yogi Bhajan's Adi Shakti Shaktimans and Shaktis
http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php?id=194
Yogi Bhajan's Clap Trap Theories of Kundalini Yoga
http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php?id=195
Yogi Bhajan's Ego Maniac Utterances
http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php?id=205
Yogi Bhajan's Seven Years in America and His Tinkling Titles
http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php?id=206
Yogi Bhajan's Arrest and Release on Bail
http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php?id=207
Yogi Bhajan Becomes the Only Maha Tantric in the World
http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php?id=208
Sikh Leaders without Conscience
http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php?id=209
Call to Truth and Authentic Sikhism
http://www.gurmukhyoga.com/forum/index.php?id=210
Please read an Excerpt below taken from "Sikhism and Tantric Yoga"
The Name of Golden Temple and its Murals
"In England last year a firm advertised some blue jeans as Jesus Jeans. The whole religious world of England rose in one protest and stopped the manufacture of these jeans. The word Golden Temple has become an instrument of commercial affairs of Yogi Bhajan He has now even named shoe stores as Golden Temple. I was given a "Wha Guru Chew.""
"Yogi Bhajan is using the sacred Sikh mantras and the sacred name of Guru Ram Das as a mantle for his Tantric Sex Yoga which will inevitably lead to mental and physical debauchery of those who take his brand of Sikhism contaminated by crazy sex-energizing asanas seriously."
Read about the "war between 3HO Sikh's Unto Infinity Board and Yogi Bhajan's Sikh Dharma". Yogi Bhajan set up all these organizations and installed their leaders. Decide for yourself if the Tantric Sex Yoga which Yogi Bhajan taught inevitably leads to mental and physical debauchery.
Many of these 3HO profiteers have cut their hair and renounced Sikhi! See these pictures below of Kartar Khalsa CEO of Golden Temple Foods and chairman of Yogi Bhajan's "Unto Infinity Board" who has cut his hair and is no longer a Sikh.
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(Is it any wonder that Kartar and Peraim, Controlling members of Yogi Bhajan's "Unto Infinity Board",are wearing circus masks in the above photo?)http://cirrus.mail-list.com/khalsa-council/Kartar-Peraim.2-10.jpg
See these articles in today's Eugene Register Guard which shows the greed surrounding this dispute:
"Money trail at heart of Sikhs’ legal battle."
Wha Guru being used sacriligiously for huge profits by 3HO Sikhs
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"Five flavors and they're all nuts!"
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"What did the magician say to the Wha Guru Chew? Open sesame."
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Yogi Bhajan used the sacred name of the Golden Temple, names and images of the Sikh Gurus, and sacred Sikh shabads for commercial enterprises to make millions of dollars. Wha Guru is even used as the name of a candy bar by Golden Temple Foods!Links appearing on the internet advertise Golden Temple along with wine and alcohol such as in this Google search link: "Golden Temple Granola - Food & Wine - Compare Prices" Other internet links associate Golden Temple massage oil with sex and sensual massages as in this Google search: "Sensual Soothing... Golden Temple Soothing Touch Massage Oil."
See for yourself the pictures below of the Darbar Sahib(Golden Temple) in Amritsar and Guru Tegh Bahadar featured on yogi tea boxes:
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3HO Sikhs are associating yogis, ashrams, tantric sex yoga rituals,drinking of wine and magicians of the occult with the Sikh Gurus and the Golden Temple See the Rare Photo (above) featuring the Harimandir sahib in 1908 when it was under the control of the Pundits or mahants. Sadhus and yogis felt free to sit wearing only a dhoti and no head coverings.The Gurdwara Reform Movement stopped such practices in India and gave the Gurdwaras back to Gursikhs.
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Idolatry is forbidden in sikhism....why does an 8-foot high statue of the Hindu god Ganesh, adorn the entranceway to the Siri Singh Sahib (yogi bhajan) lane in espanola. This is the hindu god of "prosperity", as in the 3HO publication "prosperity pathways".Adi Shakti Chandi 3HO Tantric Deity worshipped by 3HO in songs and prayers(shown above). Read about Yogi Bhajan's Shaktiman and Shakti women.
Read these shocking fire pujas and occult numerology,(below), practiced and advertised in the latest newsletter published by 3HO Sikhs. These "kriyas" or pujas are complete rubbish,only adding to the destruction and dissolution of the Sikh faith and should not be practiced by Sikhs of the Guru. The object of these practices is to combine the Sikh faith with Hinduism; to defang, neuter and completely destroy Sikhi. The strategy is to introduce idolatry and a stratified priesthood into the Sikh Religion. Yogi Bhajan and his 3HO shakti cult followers are introducing idolatry and Hindu practices of pujas and tantra mantra into the Sikh religion. The Bhajan movement is attempting to shift Sikh worship from the commonwealth of Gurdwaras to private estates controlled by 3HO priests of Yogi Bhajan's Tantric sex cult church.
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Idolatry is forbidden in Sikhism....why does a golden statue of a yogi adorn the entranceway to the 3HO Gurdwara in Espanola. This is a Hindu practise.
3-HO Sikhs demonstrate(in the photo above)their complete subservience to false worldly material power by exhibiting the Flag of God (The Nishaan Sahib) at an even level with the flag of the United States in front of the 3HO Gurdwara in New Mexico. The Nishaan Sahib, (The Respected Mark of God under the shadow of the Sikh Broadsword) should always fly higher than the flag of all the false materialists. The Flag of the Khalsa should occupy a place of exaltation above any government's flag that temporarily inhabits the material world.
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Tantric Yoga asanas (above) taught by Yogi Bhajan
and practised in 3HO Gurdwaras
"Tantric doctrines involving sex-poses or physical contact poses are extremely repulsive to Sikhism. The Sikh Gurus repeatedly ask the Sikhs to shun Tantric practices because they are based on a mentally perverted outlook of life. The Sikh Gurus ask the Sikhs to shun the very presence and association of Shakti-Cult Tantrics." Dr. Trilochan Singh "Sikhism and Tantric Yoga"
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See how Hindu gods and yogis are displayed in 3HO Gurdwaras, (see link in blue).
See this post which exposes the most shocking relationship Yogi Bhajan had with Jagjit Naamdhari who is considered by his disciples as the 11th Sikh Guru. The Naamdhari Sikhs keep the Siri Guru Granth in a closet while they bow to Jagjit and refer to him as "SatGuru Ji" as you can see in the photos at this link.
If you want to stop these degrading and sacriligious practices by Golden Temple Foods and Yogi Bhajan's cult followers; Post a letter of support on this website or write your local food stores and demand they stop selling Golden Temple Food's products. Some of the major stores which carry these products are Trader Joes, Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats but there are many many other stores who sell millions of dollars in Golden Temple Granola, Peace Cereal, Yogi Teas, massage oil and Wha Guru Chews.
Yogi Bhajan's sacrilegious teachings in the name of Sikhism are illustrated quite distinctly by pictures of Yogi Bhajan's portrait, hindu idols being displayed in and around 3-HO Gurdwaras and the practice of kundalini and sex energizing tantric yoga asanas inside 3-HO Gudwaras by Yogi Bhajan's students.
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Idolatry is forbidden in Sikhism. Why does an eight foot high image (above) of Yogi Bhajan controlling the tantric shakti "energy" adorn the 3HO Gurdwara in Espanola? You can see the menacing image of Yogi Bhajan overshadowing the Sangat on the right side of the entire Espanola Gurdwara in the photo above.
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Yogi Bhajan's students are intstructed to meditate on Yogi Bhajan's picture everyday which you can see displayed in the 3HO Espanola Gurdwara in these photos.
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In a painting at the New Mexico 3HO Gurdwara(above)you can see the sacrilegious misrepresentation of our sacred Khalsa symbol "Khanda" with two swords around it. You may also observe in this painting how Yogi Bhajan is depicted on an equal level with Guru Ram Daas(the 4th Sikh Guru): Dr. Trilochan Singh recounts this observation in 1977 when he writes, "The other picture was the Khalsa symbol Khanda with two swords around it. The Khanda (double-edged sword) within this symbol was replaced by a picture of an American woman with Sari-like robes. The woman is called Adi Shakti. I saw this published in the Beads of Truth in London and have already commented on it in my book, The Turban and the Sword of the Sikhs. I told Shakti Parwha that this is the most sacrilegious misrepresentation of our sacred symbol. As usual she dismissed my opinion as unimportant."
The sikh code of conduct says food offerings to the GURU are forbidden, but there is a 'testimony' page over at sikhnet.com, a 3HO run site loaded with volumes of Yogi Bhajan nonsense talks. Yogi Bhajan instructs 3Hoer's to prepare meals as offerings at the gurdwara and calls this "a dish for a wish". This is nothing more than the Hindu practice of puja. The testimony states "a dish for a wish".
Please read an Excerpt below taken from
"Sikhism and Tantric Yoga"
by Dr. Trilochan Singh (Link to entire book)
"Yogi Bhajan is using the sacred Sikh mantras and the sacred name of Guru Ram Das as a mantle for his Tantric Sex Yoga which will inevitably lead to mental and physical debauchery of those who take his brand of Sikhism contaminated by crazy sex-energizing asanas seriously."
Yogi Bhajan studied and taught at the Sivananda Ashram in Delhi. This, in addition to his first Kundalini Yoga teacher Sant Hazara Singh. In the mid-1960s, Harbhajan Singh took up a position as instructor at the Vishwayatan Ashram in New Delhi, under Dhirendra Brahmachari. This yoga centre was frequented by the Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, his daughter, Indira Gandhi, and diplomats and employees from a host of foreign embassies.
Here's an article on Sivananda's approach to Kundalini Yoga:
www.dlshq.org/download/kundalini.htm
These are all Hindu practices.
You can also read about the Gurdwara Reform Movement which stopped such practices in India and gave the Gurdwaras back to Gursikhs.
Gurdwara Reform Movement
A Rare Photo of Harimandir sahib in 1908 when it was under the control of the Pundits or mahants. Sadhus felt free to sit in meditation wearing only a dhoti.The Gurdwara Reform Movement (Gurdwara Sudhar Lehr) is the Legislation passed by the Punjab Legislative Council which marked the culmination of the struggle of the Sikh people from 1920-1925 to wrest control of their places of worship from the mahants or priests into whose hands they had passed during the eighteenth century when the Khalsa were driven from their homes to seek safety in remote hills and deserts.
When they later established their sway in Punjab, the Sikhs rebuilt their shrines endowing them with large jagirs and estates. The management, however, remained with the priests, belonging mainly to the Udasi sect, who, after the advent of the British in 1849, began to consider the shrines and lands attached to them as their personal properties and to appropriating the income accruing from them to their private use. Some of them alienated or sold Gurudwara properties at will. They had introduced ceremonies which were anathema to orthodox Sikhs. Besides, there were complaints of immorality and even criminal behavior lodged against the worst of them. All these factors gave rise to what is known as the Gurudwara Reform movement during which the Sikhs peaceful protests were met with violence and death and ended with them courting arrest on a large scale to gain the world's attention. Before it was all over many would fall as martyrs with some being literally blown apart while they were strapped to cannaon barrels.
‘During the Gurdwara Reform Movement, the Sikh leaders started a publication that was named Akali. From this paper and its policy the leaders began to be called Akalis, in view of which they formed the present Akali party. These Nihang Akalis should not be confused with the members of the Akali party.’ The Turban And The Sword’' , by Dr. Trilochan Singh. (Page 402)
I found this post at SikhSangat.com It exposes the most shocking relationship Yogi Bhajan had with Jagjit Naamdhari who is considered by his disciples as the 11th Sikh Guru. The Naamdhari Sikhs keep the Siri Guru Granth in a closet while they bow to Jagjit and refer to him as "SatGuru Ji" as you can see in the photos below.