I spent more than two months staying with Maharaji in his home in Dehra Dun in 1970, a year before he even came to the West, when he was just 12 years old.

He was very much his own person even then. He was independent, he knew exactly what he was doing, he considered himself the Perfect Master, the true guru (and by the way so did his elder brother Satpal!) and he was as responsible for what he thought and what he said as anyone ever is.

Yes, he was a product of his environment as much as we all are. But he was not manipulated by anyone - he found himself crowned Satguru by his mother and brothers when his father died in 1966, and he milked it for all it was worth - consciously and with skill.

Both then, and ever since, he has ignored or dealt very firmly with any would-be manipulator or influencer. This includes his own family, leaders of his variously-named organisations (Bob Mishler, Michael Dettmers etc), and anyone in fact who has presumed to tell him anything.

He may well be incompetent in many areas. But in the area of promoting himself as the one and only true guru, to whom one needs to dedicate one's life, he has never deviated.

If you, or any supposed academic, seek to excuse him because he was the victim of circumstances or cult manipulators, then you are making a mockery of human responsibility. In that case, no one is responsible for anything because we are all products of our upbringing, genes or environment; and no one should be in prison ever because they cannot be blamed for anything they did.

But if there are any people, anywhere, who should be held accountable for their actions, then Maharaji is among them.