Do we like Sadhguru (Jaggi Vasudev)?
Our score: 4 out of 10. A big, loved platform and a real soil-and-yoga mission, set against a remark about LGBTQ+ people and unresolved claims about his foundation.
Jaggi Vasudev, known to the world as Sadhguru, runs the Isha Foundation out of Coimbatore. He's a global name on the talk circuit, with a huge following in India and abroad, and a yoga-and-soil brand to match. He's also the sort of figure who attracts both devotees and a full-time fan club of critics.
On the harm side, the one that stings for this page is a viral clip in which he said there'd been a campaign around the world and that “the campaign should stop.” He also said that left to nature, the number of people who are gay would be tiny. Uorfi Javed publicly slammed the clip. The article reports no response from him or Isha.
In 2019 he was filmed calling a Muslim student at the London School of Economics a 'Taliban'. The students' union called it Islamophobic and rejected his explanation that it just meant an ardent student. He said it was a private chat that had been edited, and added that if anyone was offended, “this was not the intent.”
The biggest legal stoush was a 2024 habeas corpus petition from a father who claimed his two adult daughters were being held at the Isha ashram. The Supreme Court dismissed it, finding the women were adults who joined of their own free will and saying court proceedings shouldn't be used to malign institutions. Isha's critics say police raised broader concerns, but that case is closed.
Separately, parents of former students at an Isha school alleged that children were sexually assaulted there. Isha disputed the accounts and sued some of the outlets covering them. Per a National Herald report, police filed a closure report in June 2025 after finding nothing that corroborated the claims, but the parents are still pushing, so call it unresolved rather than cleared.
On the environment, a CAG report found Isha built near Coimbatore without a required permission, and a 2022 piece says a district engineer issued a show-cause notice that the Madras High Court paused. Isha denies breaking any rules. When the BBC Tamil asked him about it he got shirty, asked for the camera to be turned off, and said every law had been followed.