3HO Schools in India

May 2000
By a former student

After reading articles at your Web site regarding 3HO I noticed that one important issue has not been mentioned. The fact that parents within the 3HO/Sikh Dharma are often encouraged to send their children to India for schooling. This may ultimately consist of most of their childhood (e.g. Grades 3 to 12).

There have been many different schools that the 3HO/Sikh Dharma children have attended in India. At some of these schools, scandals caused 3HO to pack its bags and find another place for their children to go. Such scandals included allegations and/or rumors about drinking, drugs, bullying the Indian children, sex among the children as well as with teachers/guardians--whom had special relationships with students that resulted in pregnancies.

I believe that the current school is called "Miri Piri Academy," but this is actually run by people from 3HO--as opposed to authentic Indian Sikhs.

An American 3HO child is often sent away in the third grade, across the world to India--only coming home to visit a few weeks each year, that is if the parents can afford to pay for such visits, which many cannot. Thus many 3HO children in Indian schools do not see their parents very often.

Some within 3HO say, based upon supposed "Sikh Dharma" dogma, that a person's real parents are Guru Gobind Singh and Mata Sahib Kaur, which is roughly the equivalent of Jesus saying his real father was God--or a Christian claiming their real father is "God" or "Jesus." In this sense certain 3HO members seem to rationalize biological family separation.

Yogi Bhajan appears to cement devotion regarding the children within 3HO by taking away their biological parents and sending them to a new environment, which he controls--where they must instead bond with each other and their teachers, while receiving "Sikh Dharma" indoctrination.

Although some children do manage to come home after high school and a few even may make it to college--it seems most kids after attending 3HO run Indian schools do not continue their education. It appears that lack of higher education often holds the young people within the group-- frequently working for minimum wage in some 3HO related "family business." Of course if they're lucky--their own family may actually own that business.

Yogi Bhajan clearly has discouraged college attendance for many of 3HO's young people--hoping they will move to Espanola. This is the location of a group compound where many young, newly matched and married 3HO couples live. Here they can work for "family businesses" in most often a low-income situation, which is very hard to break away from.

There are many "survivors" of the 3HO Indian schools, but the scandals and their personal stories frequently are never heard by Yogi Bhajan's "Sikhs" in America. Only at times do parents and other students become of aware of these issues.