Erotic Buddha book raises ire in India

Whenever the Baileys propose to launch a book in India, the Bajrang Dal and the Shiv Sena seem to dispose. Mr Jack Bailey, former resident of Sheffield, United Kingdom, and now a globe-trotting guru with ashrams in the USA, UK, New Delhi, Kathmandu, Australia and Japan, along with his literary as well as living partner Ms Claire Marie Bailey, a former Salvation Army member, have become the newest targets of the two organisations. Rather, it is the `autobiography` penned jointly, Diary of a tantric priestess, that has made the Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena create a bonfire of it, even though the book in the world`s only Hindu theocracy, Nepal, passed without any controversy. Mr Bailey, a septuagenarian who claims he mastered the art of Buddhist tantric sex by meditating for years in the freezing caves of the Gangotri region and can cure patients of all diseases including cancer and even AIDS, has narrated how he achieved `enlightenment` and prescribed a nine-day tantric sex session and `coin meditation`, a psychic breathing exercise for physical healing and spiritual awareness. Ms Claire Marie, the 43-year-old mother of seven, claims being cured of bulimia and stomach cancer by the `White Guru` as he is known, and transformed into a tantric practitioner with now her own group of devotees in the US. In the book, estimated to have sold 300,000 pre-publication copies on the Internet, she narrates their life in Sri Lanka and sexual encounters with various people as a result of which they were cured of their ailments. The book was recently launched in Kathmandu in the presence of a former Miss Nepal without any untoward incident. But the publishers ran into trouble in India where the Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena took umbrage, reportedly at the book jacket showing Buddha sitting in the lotus position and in a sexual union with a naked woman, reminiscent of the Khajuraho erotic sculptures. The publishers, Pilgrims Publishing, has decided to redesign the cover and the launch in India is on hold till then. This is the second time the authors have evoked the ire of Indian organisations, the first time being about five years back, when they wrote a similar book that raised the hackles of the Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal because of some reportedly sexually explicit passages. Copies of it were burnt at the Gateway of India. But Mr Bailey, who now calls himself Swami Krishna Chaitanya, is unfazed. He spoke about how several Indian magazines, had `belittled` his `art`.