“Yet Again, Patriarchy Has Won”: A BAPS Female Devotee

Image courtesy: Hinduism Today

Hailing from Gujarat, I have been familiar with BAPS and its work for years. I have attended its events and observed the tradition far more closely than someone encountering it for the first time through a Paris news headline. So, when the recent BAPS controversy broke out about the visit to the Eiffel Tower, I became curious. A large part of the news reports and ensuing online debates was about women. Women’s rights. Women’s equality. Women being “invisible”. Women being oppressed.

So, I thought of doing something very simple. Why not ask BAPS women themselves? I did, and one conversation stayed with me. The woman was in her late sixties, highly educated, and a retired university professor who had been associated with BAPS for decades.

“After the Paris controversy, I feel patriarchy has won again,” she told me. I was surprised. Then she explained.

“The entire controversy is allegedly about women’s rights and equality. What exactly happened between the Eiffel Tower management, its employees, and the visiting delegation is under investigation, and the truth will come out. But look at what happened. Newspapers, commentators, and social-media users rushed to explain to the world how oppressive BAPS is. How many of them actually asked us, the women devotees? If you really care about women, why don’t you ask BAPS women what they think? Why are other people deciding our feelings for us? What is that, if not another form of patriarchy?”

There is a deep irony in claiming to defend women’s rights while refusing to respect the choices of women whose religious beliefs one disagrees with. Feminism cannot mean listening to women only when they say what we want to hear. If we ignore women simply because we disagree with their choices, then we are not giving them a voice. We are speaking over them.

For those who may not have followed the controversy, the row began after allegations that female Eiffel Tower employees had been moved from certain positions during a visit by a BAPS delegation. BAPS denied asking for women to be removed or hidden, while French authorities announced an investigation into what had happened. That investigation should establish the facts. But even before that process was complete, the controversy had already grown into a much wider judgment on BAPS and its treatment of women.

The Elephant Everyone Saw Differently

The woman then told me of an old Indian story about the blind friends who lived in a village and heard about an amazing animal. They wanted to know what it was like, so they went to touch one.

• The first man touched the leg and said, “An elephant is like a tall tree or a strong pillar.”
• The second man touched the tail and said, “No, it is thin and flexible like a rope.”
• The third man touched the trunk and said, “You are both wrong. It is like a long, wriggling snake.”
• The fourth man touched the huge, flat ear and said, “It is clearly like a big hand fan”.

Each man insisted that he was completely right and that his friends were wrong. A wise person walked by and saw them. The wise man smiled and said: “Each of you touched only one part of the animal. But each of you thought that one part was the whole elephant”.

Something similar has happened in the BAPS debate: one disputed, unverified incident at the Eiffel Tower has suddenly become a judgment on an entire tradition, its sadhus, its followers, its treatment of women, and even Hindu religious practices.

Is one disputed incident enough to decide what BAPS is, or what hundreds of thousands of BAPS women devotees think and feel?

The Irony of 7 September, 2026

On 7 September, the very day the strike by the women employees at the Eiffel Tower in Paris was announced, and the episode was transformed into an international controversy, the pre-published program at the new BAPS Paris Mandir included a Mahila Kirtan Aradhana from 3 pm, dinner for women, and a Women’s Convention from 6 pm to 8.30 pm. Earlier in the festival, the program also included women-only religious processions.  Does it not make it harder to argue that BAPS is an organization where women are expected to disappear?

So, what other parts of the elephant deserve to be seen? Let us look at Gujarat and BAPS’s history to find out.

Bhagwan Swaminarayan lived more than 200 years ago, at a time when women faced several harsh social practices. Among the social practices he opposed were sati and female infanticide. Even scholarship critical of the Swaminarayan traditions acknowledges that the movement carried out a sustained campaign against sati and female infanticide.

The history of Swaminarayan’s opposition to sati and female infanticide is well documented within the tradition and is also noted in academic work on Swaminarayan Hinduism. Cambridge University Press’s An Introduction to Swaminarayan Hinduism, for example, specifically records Swaminarayan’s prohibition of sati and female infanticide. A Cornell University study examining the movement notes that Sahajanand Swami stressed religious as well as secular education for females.

Describing BAPS’s entire history simply as hostility towards women leaves out a major part of the story. Two centuries later, that history can also be seen in BAPS institutions for women.

What about women in BAPS today?

Let us look at Karamsad in Gujarat, where BAPS runs the Swaminarayan Vidyapith, a fully residential school for girls on a 50-acre campus. It is CBSE-affiliated and teaches girls from Classes IV to XII. The campus includes laboratories, sports facilities, an auditorium, a communication lab, accommodation, and other educational facilities. The school has a capacity of around 500 students.

Then there is the BAPS Yuvati Talim Kendra at Randesan, near Gandhinagar, inaugurated in 2016, for young women. Its residential training program lasts about four months. It combines spiritual education with practical skills, personal development, and service-mindedness. The aim is to prepare young women for their personal, professional, family, social, and spiritual lives.

There is another fact that makes the Paris controversy even more interesting. One of the senior architects behind the very BAPS Paris Mandir at the center of this debate is a woman. Nahla Jajo-Legrand served as the Architectural Lead for the BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Mandir in Paris and was earlier identified by BAPS as the project’s architect and Project Director at the French architecture firm Arte Charpentier. The official Mandir website quotes her describing the project as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to help build France’s first traditional Hindu temple.

Jajo-Legrand was not the only woman involved in shaping the project. Arte Charpentier’s official project details list women including Lise Noël, Sarah Farsy and Maëlle Cabio’ch on the interior architecture team, while Mathilde Charee worked on landscaping. The 5,000-square-metre project brought together traditional Indian temple architecture with French architectural, engineering, and construction expertise.

There is a certain irony here: while commentators were debating whether women were being made “invisible” by BAPS in Paris, a woman had a leading architectural role in creating BAPS’s most important new institution in Paris. Surely, this does not fit the simplistic picture of women in BAPS as silent, powerless, or invisible. If somebody wants to discuss BAPS and women, then BAPS women, women’s institutions, women’s activities and even the women who helped build the Paris Mandir itself must be part of that discussion. Otherwise, we are again touching only one part of the elephant.

Then the French Mayor Spoke

That is also why the intervention of Yann Dubosc, Mayor of Bussy-Saint-Georges, where the new Mandir is situated, deserves more attention. Dubosc did not dismiss France’s commitment to gender equality. He explicitly called equality between women and men fundamental and welcomed the investigation into the Eiffel Tower incident. But he simultaneously refused to erase his city’s ten years of direct experience with BAPS.

He described the tradition’s conduct as respectful and its engagement with the city as open and transparent. He recalled receiving BAPS swamis at the Town Hall in 2023 and specifically said that no one, including female members of staff, was asked to move or leave. BAPS had also served as president of the local interfaith body in 2023. The new Mandir shares Bussy-Saint-Georges’ Esplanade of Religions and Cultures with a synagogue, mosque, and Buddhist pagodas.

Why are we so quick to condemn ourselves?

I do not expect Western media to understand every detail of Hindu traditions. They approach Hindu traditions with their own set of narratives. The problem is the astonishing speed with which some commentary travelled from What happened at the Eiffel Tower? to This is what BAPS is. And then, almost effortlessly, this is what Hinduism does to women.

Within hours, social media commentators began to label the organization “backward”. Then an entire Hindu tradition was put in the dock. Very few people wait for the investigation. Very few ask the devotees. Very few study history. Very few ask whether there may be another side to the story and another part of the elephant. And perhaps the more uncomfortable issue is how quickly some Indians themselves joined that race.

At times, it feels as if we still carry the colonial habit of looking at our own traditions with embarrassment. We are often ready to condemn ourselves before anyone has even established the complete facts. Criticism should come after the facts, not before them.

Where were the voices of BAPS women?

Perhaps that retired professor I spoke to had understood the irony better than all of us. A debate was started in the name of protecting women. Yet the very women who live this tradition and culture were largely missing from the debate. And that is why she said, “Yet again, patriarchy has won,” because once again, others decided to speak for women instead of listening to them.