Attack against Mumbai Mirror

The online magazine Mumbai Mirror has published some extracts of Gail Tredwell's book in an article called In the grip of a hug. It is now flooded with offensive comments, emanating from readers who blame the magazing for being unprofessional. Who are these commenters?

The first interesting fact is that 50% of the comments are made by foreigners living in the USA, Estonia, Finland, Israel, Costa rica, Singapore, Japan, Ireland, France, Germany, Australia... We find it hard to believe that the peaceful citizens of Helsinki, New York, Chicago, Atlanta or Tokyo read Mumbai Mirror daily. Among the 50% of Indian commenters, one only lives in Mumbai. Let's take a closer look at some of the commenters.

• Hedy Benyamini is responsible for the satsang, activities and tours of Amritanandamayi in Israel
• Karen Moawad is a management counselor who collaborates with Amrita University. In her comment, she pretends that she lives in Cochin although the consulting agency that she co-founded is based in the USA.
• Cathryn Schmidt was part of the organization's board in Castro Valley
• Prem Nair is the medical director of AIMS
• His wife Radhika Nair, often testifies on the ashram's websites, particularly ammascandal. She considers that Amritanandamayi is God.
• Dr Priya Nair is a post-graduate scholar at the Amrita School of Medicine. She is always part of the staff when Amritanandamayi tours in foreign countries.
• Bithin Alangot is a PhD student at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
• Magnus von Hertzen is a Finnish singer and a great supporter of Amritanandamayi who lived in Amritapuri from 1998 to 2005.
• James Conquest is the head of the Australian center

All these people are closely related to Amritanandamayi. Who can believe that they suddenly had the same idea at the same time : reading Mumbai Mirror by chance, being spontaneously shocked by the article and criticizing the newspapers professionalism? This is no coincidence. Chances are that the ashram sent orders to the devotees worldwide. These people don't express their own opinion, they rather fullfill their spiritual master's request. Swami Amritaswarupananda, the spokesperson of the organization, has already made such call to harassment in the past.

We have saved some of the high up and foreigners comments.

Why would the ashram target Mumbai Mirror specifically? Maybe because it is the first newspaper to quote long extracts from the book with the author's permission. This harassment reminds us of the phrase that Gail often quotes : "If you cannot attack the message, attack the messenger". This is exactly what is unfolding here. The commenters mainly attack Mumbai Mirror, insulting the magazine, trying to shame its journalists and managers, for the article to be removed.

Anyway, this attack proves that Amritanandamayi is heavily supported by westerners. Would she have become a living goddess without them? We have added our voice to the choir :

click to enlarge

The article has 107 comments so far but 218 Likes on Facebook! Given the fact that some commenters posted several times, it is plain to see that the Mumbai Mirror attackers are less in number than the supporters.