Justice for Premananda

(published in the Tamil magazine "Gokulam Kadir" in November 2000)

Nirmala Devi Mataji with Swami Premananda
during his three-day jail leave in 2002

In the western countries we find many institutions or organizations that are run by women only. Likewise, I was working for many years in a women's refuge in Switzerland as a social worker. It was a place where women could get shelter together with their children when they had problems with their husbands because of alcohol, drugs, sexual abuse, etc. We were a team of seven women to run this institution and we did everything on our own: maintenance of the building, social and legal counseling, raising funds, contacts with the local authorities and government to get financial support, contact to the press people and media, etc. I was used to work independently and to be considered by men as an equal person.

When I came for the first time to India , 14 years, ago, I was first of all shocked to see how women had to submit to a male oriented world. Their lives seemed to revolve around cooking and looking after the children. Very often my fighting spirit flared up and I thought that the women's liberation movement had still "a lot of work to do here in India ."

I came to know Swami Premananda in 1987 and took him as my spiritual guru. I spent many years in his presence and gave service in the newly built Ashram, which was inaugurated in 1989. In the Ashram I never felt that women were a lower race. On the contrary, women were given a lot of respect and also the opportunity to perform spiritual rituals, which from ancient times only men had been allowed to do. Ladies did the same duties as men. They did responsible work, moreover it was the women who actually ran the management. Under the guidance of the President, a young devoted lady disciple, Mother Divya, other sannyasins [renunciants or monks and nuns according to Hindu tradition] and women bhaktas [devotees] were directing and managing the various departments of the Ashram.

In this regard Swami Premananda is a kind of revolutionary guru. He considers women to be equal to men and offers them the same opportunities. This might also be one of the reasons for the problems he had to face a few years after establishing the Ashram. Swami always insisted that ladies are able to develop spiritually to a higher stage and that they remain subordinated to men in their lives is mostly because of their lack of self-confidence.

After the problem in November 1994 [Swami Premananda's arrest] we were "thrown into deep water" and we were forced to swim ... and we did!

Along with Swamiji five male disciples and devotees were put into jail and only we ladies remained in the Ashram. It was a new situation, especially unknown for those amongst us who were not of western origin. Now it was up to us to take decisions and to act, to run the Ashram and to show the outside world that we were able to do it. Many attempts were made from various sides to harass and intimidate us in order to give up the Ashram. However - by the grace of the Divine Mother and our Guruji - we struggled and remained firm. We continued the work, we dealt with various authorities, for rations, land matters, income tax, with lawyers, press people, etc.

Whoever comes to the Ashram is surprised to find a beautiful, peaceful and green place with many hundreds of children in need who receive free education, three meals a day, clothing and medical care. The visitors' astonishment grows even more to see that this place, which resembles a huge colourful garden, is being managed by mainly ladies, from Sri Lanka and European countries such as U.K., Switzerland, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. This is an ample illustration for women's shakti [power]!