Welcome to a site that seeks to
provide an incisive critique of the current promotional activities pursued by
Prem Rawat
and his various organisations, such as The
Prem Rawat Foundation
and Elan Vital
(EVI).
Prem Rawat and his supporting
organisations present themselves as being concerned with education,
spirituality and philanthropy, however the promotional activities that they
pursue are unusually aggressive in comparison to the common standards of the
"not for profit" sectors in which Rawat and his organisations seek to operate.
In the light of this
unusually aggressive stance, Prem-Rawat-Critique places a particular emphasis
on the legal and ethical aspects of the promotion of Prem Rawat.
SUPPRESSING BAD
NEWS:
Prem Rawat's Elan Vital
organisation has twice employed the provisions of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (USA) against websites that carry information that Prem Rawat and
his supporters consider to be damaging. In 2003 the
Ex-premie organisation
site was served with a DMCA notice and in 2005 Elan Vital, Inc. (EVI) slapped
a DMCA notice on the hosting company for
Prem-Rawat-Maharaji.info (PRMI) resulting in that site being
forced off-line. PRMI's hosting company accepted that the DMCA notice
submitted by Elan Vital was groundless and. PRMI was
summarily reinstated.
A further
notice against Prem-Rawat-Maharaji.info was submitted by EVI, which as in the
earlier Ex-premie organisation case EVI declined
to pursue. Further details and commentary of this action by EVI can be found
here.
PRE-EMPTING CRITICISM:
Prem Rawat and his supporting
organisations are concerned to ensure that individuals who become involved
with Rawat's "teaching" should not subsequently offer public criticism of
Rawat or his organisations. Issues of free expression, promotion of stigma and
institutional obfuscation are dealt with in an examination of Rawat's
promotional device The Keys
.
ENHANCING
LEGITIMACY:
The promotional effort of Prem
Rawat's supporting organisations in recent years has been focussed on the
Legitimacy Project a key aspect of which has been
a concerted attempt to link Prem Rawat with the United
Nations
REWRITING THE
FINANCIAL PAST:
Any success of the "legitimacy
project" would be undermined by suggestion of financial impropriety, Elan
Vital is engaged in a re-presentation of at least one of the many strands of
the fiscal history of the Prem Rawat movement.
THE SELLING POINT AND THE SALES PITCH:
Prem Rawat
is just one of many ‘gurus’ who became popular in the 1970s, Rawat’s claim to
a unique selling point was the unremarkable mediation that he calls
Knowledge.
Rawat’s main activity is in selling the idea of his Knowledge, the philosophy
and the techniques Rawat uses to make his
sales pitch
are revealing
Further articles are in
preparation.
The operators of this website
welcome constructive feedback on this website's contents. We are happy to
receive suggestions for further articles, and particularly would welcome the
submission of additional content.
For feedback, suggestions,
submissions please write to prcritique@mailcan.com
All efforts have been made to
ensure material facts are accurate. If you consider that any part of this site
is not accurate please contact us with the appropriate references on which to
base a correction.
The material on this
web site is provided 'as is' for educational purposes only. No payments of any
kind are required to access this site and you are free to use any of the
content under applicable fair use provisions. The operators of PRC reserve the
right not to accept suggestions and to maintain editorial control over the
content
