Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Official finding Hindu and Hindu-derived contexts Guru lineages, ashrams, and maths Lenox, MA, USA · 1994

Kripalu removes founder Amrit Desai after concealed relationships with disciples

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Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

founder and guru

Organization

Kripalu Yoga Fellowship, Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The cited record identifies guru authority, residential-community dependency, celibacy rules, and unpaid or low-paid disciple labor as the material spiritual doctrine, practice, authority, or pretext connected to the documented harm. The relevant authority role is founder and guru.

  • Guru or spiritual-teacher authority

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. Date in cited record · institutional removal and public acknowledgment

    Kripalu Yoga Fellowship. Desai resigned after admitting concealed sexual relationships; later federal litigation recorded the guru-authority and disciple-labor structure. This was not a criminal adjudication.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • guru authority
  • residential-community dependency
  • celibacy rules
  • unpaid or low-paid disciple labor

Cited record

Sources

organization record institutional acknowledgment Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, “Holding the Pose.”

Kripalu’s institutional history states that Desai was asked to resign in 1994 after concealed inappropriate sexual relationships with female disciples and financial improprieties came to light.

court civil opinion Dushkin v. Desai, 18 F. Supp. 2d 117 (D. Mass. 1998).

The federal opinion records Desai’s guru role, the residential disciples’ labor and donations, the concealed sexual relationships, his public acknowledgment, and the court’s treatment of related fraud and unfair-practices claims. It is a civil procedural opinion, not a criminal verdict.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis
https://kripalu.org/living-kripalu/holding-pose Corpus classification: organization-record; evidentiary role: institutional-acknowledgment.
Retrieval
2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp2/18/117/2449890/ Corpus classification: court; evidentiary role: civil-opinion.
Retrieval
2026-07-27 · Retrieval failed
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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