Sister Jayanti (2022) Photo taken by Don Jordan.

Journalist Philippa Blackham speaks to Sister Jayanti about her life story.

PB: You were born and raised in Pune in the state of Maharashtra in Western India where you lived with your mother and father, grandparents and younger brother. When you were eight years old, your life changed when your family moved to live in London. What effect did it have on you switching country and culture halfway through your growing up years?

SJ: I grew up in London with parents who were very traditional Hindu parents – I say traditional but they must have been quite open minded to come to London in 1957 because there weren’t many Indians in the UK at that time. I wasn’t really aware at first that I had two cultures. It was only when I started going to India in my teens to visit family that I realised that there was a big difference between what I was experiencing in India and my life here in London. I felt that I had the best of both worlds. In London I was living in a world in which education was given importance as a way of opening up the intellect, whereas in India it was very different. What I loved about India was that I had such a big extended family with lots of cousins. Visiting India was always a very happy, family time. Gradually I understood that the very basic differences between India and London was something I needed to sort out in my own mind, in terms of my own life and life choices. There was the permissive society in London, the mainstream UK society, the Hindu society and then there was the spiritual path which my mother was following with The Brahma Kumaris. It wasn’t part of mainstream Hindu society, but she had the courage and the insight to be able to follow her heart. This difference of cultures was something I came to appreciate when I became a translator for one of the senior sisters within The Brahma Kumaris, Dadi Janki. What was interesting was I found that it wasn’t enough to give a literal translation of the words Dadi was using, but I had to translate the cultural context of the language and many of the concepts she was using.

PB: You mentioned that your mother was already on a spiritual path with The Brahma Kumaris and that she had a family connection with the organisation. At the age of 19 you began to question what your life path was going to be and you decided to explore the spirituality of India. Dadi Janki, who you’ve just mentioned, became your meditation teacher and she then went on to become your mentor for the next 50 years. How did you come to your decision to dedicate your life to spirituality and the teachings of The Brahma Kumaris, and what role did Dadi Janki play in bringing that about?

SJ: I had known Dadi Janki throughout my childhood in India and she had always been someone very, very important to me. When, as a family, we came to London, in 1957 when I was 8 years old, Dadi would send regular letters to my mother and of course my mother would send letters back to her. The letters were in Sindhi which I couldn’t read, but my mother would share Dadi’s words with me and my brother. And so the connection with The Brahma Kumaris was kept alive through correspondence, sent backwards and forwards across the oceans. I met up with Dadi Janki over the years when I went back to visit India.

When I reached the age of 19 I was ready to hear the answers to the many questions forming in my mind and I began to listen to the spiritual teachings. I was so excited – joyful - that I had found answers to the questions that I had carried about life and existence and the Divine, and why are we here, what are we doing, and it was really like a jigsaw puzzle coming back into place – it was really exciting.

Then, every time I went to The Brahma Kumaris Headquarters in Mount Abu, Dadi Janki was there with us, as our guide. She knew everyone at Mount Abu and she knew how things were done, so it was like entering into the very heart of the organisation.

Later on, Dadi was the one who inspired me to go back to London and start a Centre and do whatever I could here. So she was the seed of the service that is now happening. Later on when she herself came to live in London and I became her translator, I continued to gain many insights into how to work with different personalities and situations, and use spirituality as a tool in life. And of course when things were not so easy when I was dealing with my own personality challenges which were holding me back on the path of spirituality, she was the one who would help me navigate my way through all of that also. So she has played an incredibly important role in my life

PB: Returning to live in London so you could bring the ideas of Raja Yoga Meditation to the West wasn’t easy for you at first. Things began on a very small scale and then slowly, with support from Dadi Janki and other senior sisters, the interest began to grow. From those early days the organisation has expanded hugely, not just in the UK but to over 110 countries throughout the world. What stands out for you when you look back over the years?

SJ: When I came back to London I could see that the 60’s had changed things dramatically and meditation was now something being talked about. TM and Hatha Yoga were now on the scene and yoga was seen as something different from normal exercise. A vegetarian diet was being made popular through the Hare Krishna movement. But everything was very much happening on the fringe, not yet part of the mainstream culture.

The Centre was established gradually in 1971 and slowly meditation became more and more a part of the culture here. There was an understanding that it can be beneficial to well-being - to spiritual well-being, emotional and mental well-being as well as having a positive impact on health and physical well-being. So it’s beautiful to see how people have gradually accepted this as being part of life itself, not for just a few people on the fringe but really as part of the mainstream.

Spirituality applies to everything we are doing in life in the world. And so that has been my passion, to share these ideas so that people can understand what’s going on because so often there is confusion. There’s conflict inside, more so today than in the past. Spirituality gives you a very clear picture and a guideline of not only what you can do for yourself, but also what is the contribution you can make for the world.

And the other thing has been of course, our affiliation with the UN, which has helped enormously in giving us credibility in certain circles. In 1986 we received seven Peace Messenger Awards from the UN for our work for the International Year of Peace. Our project, The Million Minutes of Peace, was the largest programme led by an NGO for the United Nations in the Year of Peace. And that relationship has continued and has blossomed. We now hold General Consultative Status with the UN which is the highest level that an NGO can achieve.

A lot of our work in recent times has been related to climate change with the COP conferences, biodiversity, and the environment generally, but also in other areas that the UN works in. So it’s been a very beautiful partnership. I now realise that the UN is accepted more in the developing world than it is in the developed world. But yet still it carries a certain authority because it’s the only global authority of its kind in the world. And so that’s been a very interesting development through the years.

PB: How do you see your role within The Brahma Kumaris and what do you see as your unique contribution to the world?

SJ: I see myself as an instrument to clarify the teachings of the East and bring them to the West. Dadi Janki was, of course, the person who played a major role in that. But just translating for her, and learning from her, and also knowing what people here were thinking and believing, it became my role to be a bridge. And so I think to a certain extent that role still continues. More recently it has been the other way around - being a bridge person to help people within my organisation understand what we are doing in the West in terms of spiritual teachings, and why we do things in a certain way, which wasn’t always clear to them earlier. It’s becoming more clear, but I think there’s more work to be done there also.

PB: Isn’t it interesting how our lives give us exactly the experiences we need in order to carry out our life’s work! The experiences you had of growing up in two cultures prepared you so beautifully for the role that you are playing now – communicating across those two worlds. Do you see a thread that has woven its way through your life and brought you to this place now?

SJ: Absolutely. I think it was a Divine plan. I wouldn’t have chosen to come to London, but at age eight your parents don’t ask you. At least in those days they didn’t, probably today, they do. But at that time, I wouldn’t have known where London was, or how far away it was, not just in terms of distance, but also in terms of thinking. And so, I found myself here, and it took a little time to get used to the difference, but then I enjoyed it and I’ve really enjoyed what the West can offer.

And then to go back to India and discover my roots, and also to know the depths of spirituality that India holds, has been a tremendous adventure and a great experience. To have Dadi’s company for so many years and to see how she viewed things has been a huge learning. Not just from the East and the West – she really viewed things from a spiritual perspective, which was above these differences of East and West.

And so yes, I do believe that there’s a plan that is there for each one of us, and the more you’re open to it, the more you begin to understand and use it in the best way possible.