Do we like them?Do we like Sadhguru (Jaggi Vasudev)?
Our score: 5 out of 10. Real good work and real criticism sit side by side, and the record I could actually open is thin, so he lands in the middle.
Jaggi Vasudev, known to millions as Sadhguru, was born in Mysore in 1957 and turned a yoga teaching career into the Isha Foundation, a spirituality empire based near Coimbatore. He picked up a Padma Vibhushan in 2017 and is a fixture of big stages and TV interviews. Fans see a polished guide to inner life; critics see a brand with a lot of money and a lot of land.
The biggest legal stoush was in 2024. A father alleged that his two adult daughters were being held at the Coimbatore ashram, the Madras High Court ordered a police probe, and police went into the campus. The Supreme Court stayed that order on 3 October, took the case over, and on 18 October closed the habeas corpus matter after the two women told the court they were there by choice. The closure did not stop police pursuing other pending cases, so the wider questions are still open.
Around that, Isha has faced years of claims from critics and former followers about land use, construction approvals and how the ashram is run. Isha denies them, says it has the approvals, and has won some rounds in court. Nothing I could open shows a court finding against Sadhguru himself, so these stay allegations. I could not open the long investigative pieces, so treat the detail as unverified.
On the harm test, the best-documented moment is 2019 at the London School of Economics, when he reportedly called a Muslim student a “Taliban” and then apologised, saying it was a joke. The students’ union said that, even if so, “this does not lessen their impact”. A viral clip, criticised by the performer Uorfi Javed as queerphobic, reportedly has him linking a rise in LGBTQ numbers to a worldwide “campaign”. I could not pin down its date or full context, so I give it limited weight. A 2016 remark putting a better humanity ahead of women's rights fights also gets cited, same caveat.
The harm test has plenty of empty space too. I found no anti-vax push, no election-denial and no campaigning against trans people's rights. He has also been on the receiving end of fakery: in October 2025 the Delhi High Court told Google to use its technology against ads falsely claiming he had been arrested. That kind of smear counts for nothing against him. Nothing fresh and damning turned up lately either; 2026 coverage is mostly festival events and takedown fights.
The good stuff is real, though mostly in Isha's own telling. The foundation runs Isha Vidhya schools for rural kids and the Save Soil campaign, and Sadhguru rode a motorbike across 27 countries in 2022 to promote it. Experts have questioned the Cauvery Calling tree-planting plan, and Isha has dismissed that criticism. Those figures come from Isha's own reports, so take the numbers with a pinch of salt.