Managing Crisis and Commercial Success: The Case of 3HO/SDI

In this paper, we examine promotional emails sent out by a Sikh New Religious movement (NRM) commonly known as 3HO/Sikh Dharma. The 3 Hs Organization, where the Hs stand for Happy, Healthy, and Holy (3HO)/Sikh Dharma International (SDI) community has been mired in controversy since 2020. By analyzing their promotional emails, we aim to better understand the steps religious organizations take to maintain a positive image of community identity and continue to grow their significant commercial success in the face of a classic crisis in NRM literature. 
 

With the death of Puri in 2004, 3HO/SDI faced upheaval, as do many organizations when a charismatic leader dies or leaves (Aronica 1987; Barnes 19978; Bromley 2016 [2014]; Brumann 2000; Dawson 2002; Leatham 2003). The continued success of an NRM at this point hinges on whether the community has been or is able to successfully develop institutions able to support the community without a charismatic leader (Brumann 2000). In the case of 3HO/SDI, they were largely able to weather the storm immediately following the death of Puri. There were some who disaffiliated and some internal power disputes (largely over control over resources), but the larger structures set up stayed in place. This appeared to be the case up until 2020, when common issues that NRMs fact in aftermath of the charismatic leaders’ death reemerged.
 

In the early days of the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020, a former member of 3HO/SDI published an autobiography in which she raised allegations of sexual assault against the founder of this community, Harbhajan Singh Puri (also known as Yogi Bhajan or the Siri Singh Sahib). Although these allegations were not new (Piccalo 2004), when they resurfaced in that moment it kicked off an internal reckoning. Many others who had been or were involved in 3HO/SDI raised similar concerns about Puri, allegations of sexual assault committed by other authority figures within the community, and more general allegations of abuse and neglect experienced within the community, in particular for the children raised within it (Stukin 2020). 
 

Turning to organizational promotional emails, they help us understand community responses to this moment of crisis. We take the 3HO/SDI community, and representative organizations within it, as in need of legitimation (Schoon 2022) and their organizational emails as efforts to achieve it. 
 

We view these emails as illustrations of “ideal” organizational priorities, attempts to highlight organizational endeavors, and crucially, claimed successes within these respective organizations. As promotional emails, they must be understood as a glimpse of the way these organizations wish to be perceived, rather than a reflection of their “true” character. They are claims to identity and efforts at image management. We compiled hundreds of emails from five specific organizations: 3HO, SDI, Kundalini Research Institute, (KRI), International Kundalini Yoga Teachers Association (IKYTA), and the Siri Singh Sahib Corporation (SSSC). The analysis for this paper builds on analysis already conducted on four of these organizations, expanding the analysis to include additional emails from four of these organizations and including an additional organization, IKYTA, to get a better picture of the community internationally. 
 

Although there are several other organizations connected to the larger 3HO/SDI community, I focus on these specific ones because they reflect the predominant aspects of the community’s organizational priorities. 3HO, KRI, and IKYTA all focus on kundalini yoga as taught by Harbhajan Singh Puri. 3HO is a non-profit founded with the broad mission of sharing the practice of Puri’s Kundalini Yoga globally. KRI is an organization focused in particular on certifying people to teach Puri’s Kundalini Yoga as well as certifying people to train others as yoga teachers. Similarly, IKYTA the network of all people certified to teach Kundalini Yoga globally. SDI, on the other hand, is an organization whose mission focuses on sharing Sikh teachings as taught by Puri. Besides yoga, this is the other central organ of the community, focusing on their interpretation of the Sikh faith. Finally, the SSSC is an organization created to manage the legacy of Puri after his death. This entails overseeing the organizations created within this larger community, the property owned by these different organizations, and the promotion of Puri’s teachings in each of these organizations. We conduct a content analysis of these emails, coding them thematically to better understand efforts the process of image management in service of crisis management.
 

As we continue this analysis, we expect to find multiple strategies at cultivating a positive image. As previously found, these include positive portrayals of diversity and emphasizing ties to the Indian context. By expanding our analysis to include a more explicitly global organization, IKYTA, we aim to better understand how distinct religious landscapes shape organization claims at a positive identity.

References
Aronica, Michele Teresa. 2017 [1987]. Beyond Charismatic Leadership: New York Catholic Women’s Movement. Routledge: New York, NY.

Barnes, Douglas F. 1978. “Charisma and Religious Leadership: A Historical Analysis” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 17(1): 1-18.

Beetham, David. [1991] 2013. The legitimation of Power. London, UK: Macmillan International Higher Education.

Brumann, Christoph. 2000. “The Dominance of One and it’s Perils: Charismatic Leaders and Branch Structures in Utopian Communities” Journal of Anthropological Research 56(4): 425-451.

Dawson, Lorne L. 2002. “Crisis of Charismatic Legitimacy and Violent Behavior in New Religious Movements” in Cults, Religion, and Violence edited by David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton. Cambridge University Press: New York, NY.

Piccalo, Gina. 2004. “A Yogi’s Requiem” Los Angeles Times. Accessed on October 1st, 2023 at  https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-oct-23-et-yogi23-story.html

Schoon, Eric W. 2022. “Operationalizing Legitimacy” American Sociological Review 87(3): 478-503.

Stukin, Stacie. 2020. “Yogi Bhajan Turned an L.A. Yoga Studio into a Juggernaut, and Left Two Generations of Followers Reeling from Abuse” Los Angeles Magazine. Accessed on April 12th 2023 at https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/yogi-bhajan/