Talk:Yogi Bhajan

State Highway 106 - no such highway
''The State of New Mexico honored Yogi Bhajan by naming of a highway after him. State Highway 106 which ran in front of his home was renamed the Yogi Bhajan Memorial Highway'' Not a highway. It is a state road - and it's less than a mile long. Speed limit 35 mph.

Yogi Bhajan edits & "Neutral Point of View"
NOTE: I'm moving this here from my user talk page. This is the correct place to discuss the matter.Courtesy ping @Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa, @Horse Eye's Back. Netherzone (talk) 19:39, 28 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Dear Netherzone - Thank you for your concern. It is fine in principle to speak of "Neutral Point of View" but when that translates as indifference to or sheer ignorance of a subject, it becomes problematic.  I made the recent edits to the Yogi Bhajan article because there were numerous citations based on a flawed report, An Olive Branch Report (ref: https://fairinvestigation.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Thompson-Report.pdf).
 * My impression is that these citations have endured for so long in the article because of a combinations of: 1) readers being indifferent to the facts of the matter, 2) readers being ignorant of the facts of the matter, or 3) readers - and contributors - being biased against the subject of the article.
 * I made the edits in good conscience because I like Wikipedia and wish it to be a truthful resource so far as possible. If you and horse eye prefer the article to persist in its perverted form, that will be your karma, though I hope you don't.  Either way, I wish you the very best! Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa (talk) 17:11, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hello and thank you for your message, @Guru Fatha Singh Khalsa. Please do take a moment to read WP:NPOV. No one is saying that the report you speak of cannot be included if it is published in a reliable source. All points of view that cover the matter should be represented as they are in the reliable sources to achieve balance in encyclopedia articles.
 * Just so you know, I did not touch any of your edits in the article, which you can see if you click on article history. I simply informed you on your talk page that you have a conflict of interest WP:COI and that may influence your ability to maintain a fully neutral perspective, and that you should not be editing the article directly as per our guidelines. I too wish you the very best! Netherzone (talk) 19:35, 28 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I was alarmed at first to see the edits on the article as it appeared the abuse allegations and the coverage of that had been removed. Now I see it just has been buried. I still think this create a more positive impression of the man and his actions. Obviously the Bhajan cult which is quite wealthy will continue their campaign to try to prevent others from learning about the allegations and the report. Now the hardliners who deny the abuse have taken over his empire I am sure they will try to scrub as many references as they can to the allegations and the AOB report which concluded based on the numbers that came forward that the allegations are on balance most likely true. Given he was already dead that is about as far as one can take it.
 * this article still contains a large amount of biased information including his biography etc etc. I guess I will just need to trust that as you have more skilled wiki editors will come along and address these flaws. As I am biased in wanting to expose this cult and the damage Bhajan and his loyalists did to so many people I obviously would not help the situation if I again re-edit and revise. I am thankful that Chaswick Chap (sp) came along and prevented the constant removal of all negative material on Bhajan and put the info at the top that at least alert readers that this is a heavily biased view of Bhajan. Thanks for your work  Netal2001 (talk) 05:48, 5 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Chiswick Chap is the correct name of the editor that helped me challenge the bias using the proper procedure Netal2001 (talk) 05:50, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Burying of sexual assault allegations
Presently, the sexual assault allegations are buried in the "Biography" section. However, given that these allegations largely surfaced (long) after Yogi Bhajan's death, it doesn't make sense to include this in the biography section. Furthermore, burying it there serves to produce an article structure that fails to reproduce the actual amount of emphasis and coverage of the sexual assault allegations by recent, reliable sources in relation to other facts about Yogi Bhajan, in violation of WP:NPOV, and in particular, WP:DUE.

Even "Obituaries and memorials" gets its own top level section, when anyone actually looking at the up-to-date reliable sources covering this individual could very quickly see that far more ink is split covering the (alleged) sexual assaults than "obituaries and memorials" to Yogi Bhajan.

The fact is that the sexual assault allegations are the single largest topic covered by every single reliable source about Yogi Bhajan in the last several years. (The fact that such a topic was poorly covered, or not at all, prior to circa 2019 is only because such allegations only surfaced (publicly, anyways) beginning in that year. Wikipedia articles are living entities, and WP:NPOV does not mean that we bury coverage simply because the coverage was of events not generally known until recently.)

This article has suffered from continuous NPOV problems throughout its existence, as evinced up and down this talk page, due to tendentious editing by individuals closely affiliated with Yogi Bhajan's organization. We should strive to correct these issues, and this is a good starting point. Brusquedandelion (talk) 00:36, 26 February 2024 (UTC)