Chandraswami

Tantrik Jagadacharya Chandraswami (born Nemichand Jain; 29 October 1949 – 23 May 2017) was an Indian Tantrik, the great spiritual leader and the guru of different world leaders and celebrities.

His father Dharamchand Gandhi Jain came from Behror in Alwar district of Rajasthan. He worked as a money lender and was a RSS activist, later Chandraswami made a college in Behror on his father's name Dharamchand Gandhi Jain Govt College Behror and donated the land and building to Government of Rajasthan to handle the operations. The family moved to Hyderabad in 1960's when he was a child. Like a father, son too, was also involved in the Save Hindi movement, and also agitated against cow slaughter. “In Hyderabad, in 1963, the Save Hindi movement was launched he was only 13 then, but he joined the movement very actively and was even jailed. It was talked about all over the country. That a 13 year old student went to jail for the sake of Hindi. He became a famous figure. The Congress leader Seth Govind Das Richharia came all the way from Delhi to meet him. Then, in 1966, began the save cow movement, which resulted in the political assassination of Gulzarilal Nanda. He was active in that as well. In the charged religious atmosphere of that movement, he promised himself that he would give up seeking self-fulfilment and dedicate himself to the welfare of the Indian people and Nation. With that promise, he started on the holy path of sadhna. From here his spiritual life began. Chandraswami was attracted to the study of Tantra from an early age. He left home when still young to become a student of Upadhyay Amar Muni and the scholar of Tantra, Mahamohopadhyay Gopinath Kaviraj. He later lived in the jungles of Bihar and Kathmandu where he spent time in meditation. He claimed that after four years he obtained extraordinary powers called siddhis. After meditating in Bihar’s jungles, he burst onto the scene with his first yagna in Madhuban. “Everyone reported it, all over the country. Even at the time of Choudhary Charan Singh becoming prime minister, newspaper headlines screamed: “the tantrik behind Charan Singh’s throne”. In all, Chandra Swami claimed to have organised over 25 yagnas until the late 1980s, and several of these were attended by politicians, ministers and even the some world leaders. The yagnas were a front of course. As he hobnobbed with the high and mighty of socialist India, and impressed them with his ‘tantrik’ powers, Chandraswami gained uninterrupted access to them and used it to his advantage. He became the man to go to if you needed something done in Delhi or Central Govt, and he knew both the right people and the wrong people of the world.Though Chandraswami was by birth a Jain, he became a "sadhaka" (worshipper) of the Goddess Kali. He was also interested in interfaith dialogue, and sat on the Board of World Religious Leaders for the Elijah Interfaith Institute.

Rise to fame

He first gained fame through his skill as an astrologer but his rise to national prominence came as a result of his association with 3 Prime Ministers of India P. V. Narasimha Rao, Chandra Shekhar and V. P. Singh and many other heavy political leaders like Gulzarilal Nanda, Nanaji Deshmukh (Sangh Parivar veteran and former Rajya Sabha member) and Choudhary Charan Singh(Former Prime minister), Jagjivan Ram(former deputy prime minister) and Jayaprakash Narayan (social reformer and political leader), Zail Singh(Former president), Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sanjay Gandhi, Natwar Singh, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat(Former Vice president), Sushilkumar Shinde, Bal Thackeray, N. T. Rama Rao from Andhra Pradesh, L. K. Advani(Former deputy PM), Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh, George Fernandes, Sharad Yadav, Mulayam, Gopinath Mundeo, Om Prakash Chautala, N. Chandrababu Naidu, T. N. Seshan, Parkash Singh Badal, Keshubhai Patel, Arif Mohammad Khan, Bandaru Dattatreya, Subramanian Swamy, Sahib Singh Verma, Buta Singh Ajit Singh (Assam politician), Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari, Smriti Irani, Uma Bharti, Vasundhara Raje, Neeraj Shekhar, Praful Patel, Mallikarjun Kharge, Kirti Azad, Parvesh Verma, Jaswant Singh Yadav and many others celebrities like Jeetendra, Dharmendra, Rajesh Khanna, Vinod Khanna, Sunil Dutt, Asha Parekh, Amitabh Bachchan, Kamal Haasan, Raj Babbar, Jaya Bachchan, Hema Malini, Aditya Pancholi, Chunky Panday, Shakti Kapoor, Pooja Bhatt, Preity Zinta etc and many indian business leaders like Jindal family, Birla's, Dhirubhai Ambani, Harshad Mehtaand Prathap C. Reddy were in the list of Tantrik Chandraswami. Chandraswami was said to have been their spiritual adviser. Soon after P. V. Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister in 1991, Chandraswami built an ashram known as Vishwa Dharmayatan Sansathan in Delhi's Qutub Institutional Area.The land for the ashram had been allotted by Indira Gandhi. Chandraswami is said to have dispensed spiritual advice to the Sultan of Brunei, Sheikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa of Bahrain, actress Elizabeth Taylor, tennis player John McEnroe, British PM Margaret Thatcher, president of Phillipines Ferdinand Marcos, arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, crime lord Dawood Ibrahim, businessman Tiny Rowland, Mohamed Al-Fayed and Palestinian political leader Yasser Arafat. His loyal supporters include his secretary former BJP MLA Vikram Singh, Assistant Vijayraj Chauhan, the late Kailash Nath Aggarwal known as Mamaji, brother babu bhai, nephews Satish gandhi, Ashok Gandhi, Sunil gandhi, Mammu Gandhi and abhay gandhi. Chandraswami's finances have fluctuated with his political fortune.

Legal challenges

Chandraswami has been accused repeatedly of financial irregularity activities. In 1996 he was arrested on charges of defrauding a London-based businessman of $100,000. He has faced charges for repeated violation of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. An income-tax raid on his ashram is reported to have uncovered original drafts of payments to Adnan Khashoggi of $11 million. In its report, the Jain Commission dedicated a volume to his alleged involvement in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Seventeen years after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Enforcement Directorate was still investigating his alleged role as financier of the killing. In May 2009, the Supreme Court granted Chandraswami permission to travel abroad, lifting a ban on overseas travel imposed as a result of his alleged involvement in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. In June 2011, the Supreme Court fined Chandraswami, for violating the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, a sum of ₹9 crores.

Death

Chandraswami died of multiple organ failure at Apollo Hospital in New Delhi on 23 May 2017. Some of his followers believe that he was given slow poison while admitted into the hospital.