110 Biography of a YogiThe court proceedings indicate that Yogananda filed a counter- suit when
Dhirananda finally attempted to collect the amount of the promissory note
after finishing his degree in 1935. Yogananda’s counter- suit claimed that the note
was wrongfully extorted under threat of defaming his name and reputation by
releasing fabricated information to the press and additionally falsely charging
that Dhirananda was his associate and partner in the publication of The Science
of Religion as well as the Yogoda pamphlets.^45 The latter set of “false” charges is
actually historically true— Dhirananda was credited on the covers of both pub-
lications as Yogananda’s “Associate.” It would not be unreasonable to imagine
that Dhirananda’s threats of defamation may have also had some roots in actual
events or, at least, Dhirananda’s belief that such events had occurred. Rumors
have since circulated in the SRF community that Dhirananda’s unexpected visit
to New York was prompted by hints that he might discover Yogananda’s living
situation to be highly problematic. Other rumors have claimed that Dhirananda
actually arrived to discover Yogananda sharing his apartment with a woman. No
official claims concerning such matters were ever made by Dhirananda himself.
Yogananda spent the duration of the lawsuit in India and later in Mexico. Directly
prior to leaving the country in 1935, Yogananda incorporated the Self- Realization
Fellowship as a nonprofit organization and reassigned all of his property, includ-
ing Mt. Washington, to the corporation, thereby protecting his assets.
Such accusations would resurface with greater specificity when Nirad Ranjan
Chowdhury, Yogananda’s new associate, left in a strikingly similar manner ten
years later. Chowdhury was brought in to take over Dhirananda’s role in directing
the center only months after the latter’s departure. Under the name Sri Nerode, he
taught at and maintained the Mt. Washington center and also toured the lecture-
circuit with Yogananda and his associates for the next decade. Chowdhury had
attended the University of Calcutta and subsequently traveled to the United
States to study Sanskrit at Harvard and Berkeley. He first encountered Yogananda
at public lectures in Boston and San Francisco in the early 1920s and subsequently
became head of a newly established Yogoda center in Detroit in 1926. Chowdhury
never took any formal vows and was thus known as Sri Nerode (an Anglicization
of his first name) or Brahmachari Nerode. By 1929, when Yogananda called upon
him to take the reins at Mt. Washington, Chowdhury was heading Yogoda cen-
ters at Detroit and Pittsburgh, had published two small books advertised in
Yogananda’s East- West magazine, and was lecturing extensively both at the cen-
ters and other locations across the country. In 1932 Chowdhury, who was now
married and recently a father, set off on a promotional tour that lasted until 1937,
when the family returned to Mt. Washington.
All appeared to be well until in October 1939 the newspapers exploded with
stories of a half- million- dollar lawsuit filed by Chowdhury against Yogananda.
Like Dhirananda before him, Chowdhury left the SRF, leveling a number of