A SENIOR saint of the BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha said the group chose silence over protest during a row over a visit by the group’s delegation to the Eiffel Tower last month, and is now "relieved that truth has prevailed".
Speaking from London in a television interview with Indian broadcaster Arnab Goswami last week, Swami Brahmaviharidas said the monks had followed a spiritual discipline not to hit back at critics.
"Even if anybody abuses, hurts, persecutes us, we will not react back," he said. "Instead, we have to pray for people who persecute us."
He said BAPS spiritual leader His Holiness Pujya Mahant Swami Maharaj had asked the monks to stay quiet and let the investigations run their course.
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The controversy began after around 100 people linked to BAPS visited the Eiffel Tower on September 5, during celebrations for the opening of the group's new temple in Bussy-Saint-Georges, east of Paris.
Female staff later said they had been sidelined, replaced by men or told to keep away from certain areas during the visit.
Workers, represented by the CGT union, went on strike, and the Eiffel Tower was closed for a day.
An investigation by the General Inspectorate of the City of Paris (IGVP), reported by Le Parisien, has since found no written or explicit request from BAPS to have women removed during that visit.
It said the delegation's original request concerned avoiding physical contact between religious figures and women, and that the message became distorted as it was passed on by word of mouth within the tower's management.
The probe did confirm that female employees were moved from their posts.
Patrick Branco Ruivo, head of SETE, the company that runs the tower, will step down at the end of the year after an investigation found "operational flaws and shortcomings".
SETE had earlier said the delegation asked for "interactions with women" to be limited, and that those conditions should not have been accepted.
Swami Brahmaviharidas, who oversaw the building of the BAPS temple in Abu Dhabi, rejected claims that the group is anti-women.
He pointed to its founding figure, Bhagwan Swaminarayan, who he said campaigned around 250 years ago against female infanticide and sati, the practice of widows dying on their husbands' funeral pyres.
"When our founder protected women right from their birth to the end of their lives, how can any activity be anti-women?" he asked.
He said more than 60 per cent of BAPS followers are women, and that its volunteers serve people equally during disasters, with "no differentiation" by gender, caste or creed.
The senior saint said the allegations had been "concocted, distorted for perhaps an ulterior reason", though when asked whether there was a wider conspiracy, he said he preferred to rely on facts rather than opinions. "Those who know us, they know us," he said.
At the end of the interview, he asked to share a message "from my heart". He said His Holiness Pujya Mahant Swami Maharaj wanted everyone to "move forward positively" and has offered prayers for Paris, France and the Eiffel Tower's employees.
"Let bygones be bygones," he said, describing the new temple as "a home of harmony".
In a statement last Friday (2), BAPS Paris said it had "never asked for female employees to be hidden, removed or excluded", and expressed concern for staff affected by the events.
