Here Comes the Yogiman 109
as Dhirananda’s. If Dhirananda was the presiding chief of an organization where
“a love- cult [was] being conducted under the cloak of the Vedantic religion of
India,” then Yogananda was similarly guilty as the “writer of various books and
pamphlets in which an unusual philosophy of love and sex control are declared
to be unfolded.”^42 Yogananda wisely chose to remain in Washington, DC, at
that time. Unsurprisingly, the District Attorney’s concern was specifically over
whether young women had been present at the various classes during which “the-
ories” of love and sex had been discussed. It is not possible to determine whether
the center had ever actually offered any such classes, though it seems doubtful
given the general tone of Yogananda’s teachings and especially the conservative
attitude of Dhirananda.
Nevertheless, as in the case of his early experimentation with hypnotism, there
is some evidence to suggest that Yogananda did not altogether renounce the per-
sona of the lascivious Yogi. Only a year after the “love- cult” scandals, Dhirananda
left Yogananda and the Mt. Washington center. He lectured under his own name
in the Los Angeles area. His advertisements often appeared only inches from
Yogananda’s in the papers, and the Los Angeles Times profiled him as one of the
city’s most influential Swamis alongside Yogananda and Paramananda in 1932. In
December 1932, Dhirananda abandoned his Swami title altogether and entered
the University of Iowa to pursue a doctorate in electroencephalography. A sub-
sequent 1935 lawsuit by Dhirananda— now once more Basu Kumar Bagchi—
would raise questions as to whether his departure was in some way prompted
by sexual indiscretions on Yogananda’s part. The lawsuit dealt more specifically
with a promissory note that Dhirananda had “coerced” Yogananda to sign as a
form of remuneration and severance when Dhirananda unexpectedly appeared at
Yogananda’s New York apartment before returning to Los Angeles and officially
leaving the organization.
The newspapers scrambled to cover the sensational “Swami Row,”^43 which was
presented as a squabble over money and a bruised ego. Dhirananda cited his and
Yogananda’s mutual cooperation at the Ranchi school and his subsequent journey
to America at Yogananda’s request, which he consented to only after Yogananda
had imploringly sent him the passage money. However, Dhirananda claimed that
ultimately he “found a disgusting situation... . He [Yogananda] had given people
the impression that I was as a foundling, a puny little boy that he might have
found in the gutter. He was my preceptor here, although in India I held higher
scholastic degrees and received higher salaries.”^44 Yet it had taken Dhirananda a
full seven years of dutiful cooperation to become unsatisfied with this state of
affairs, which raises the question of whether the “disgusting situation” that had
spurred him to action was something other than a lack of proper recognition
from his associate.