And of course this is relevant not just to the 'Indian concepts' debate. It's highly relevant to the Jagdeo affair.

Even Glen Whittaker, who hasn't strayed from the reservation in 30 years, believes Maharaji's refusal to deal with the Jagdeo's sexual abuses years ago - when he was given the opportunity - was a grave miscalculation. Both he and Mark Winter are very pissed at M for this, as they had to pick up the PR mess years down the track - a mess M could have prevented by exercising some responsibility several years ago.

Running an 'apologise and explain' PR exercise for a master who shelters a child molester is hardly the kind of dream service for which these extremely sincere guys joined up at the start of the 1970s.

I've known Glen since the early 1970s, and he is a decent, friendly guy. He'll probably be manning the bridge on the good ship EV as it sinks beneath the waves in about 2005, such is his loyalty to M. But he is nevertheless disappointed with M over this affair. And if Glen's disappointed, you can imagine how others feel.

Glen believes that Jagdeo did commit the sexual abuse he is accused of - though he personally didn't know about it before the revelations of the last two years.

Others did, however. Jagdeo's crimes have been known about within EV, and by Maharaji, for more than 20 years. For instance there was a high-level meeting about Jagdeo's sexual abuse of children in 1980. Jagdeo appeared to have abused the child of a premie (a woman) then living in Florida. The woman was extremely wound up about it, and the instructor Maria Isabella - among others - was brought in to try and deal with her.

Then as now, Maharaji had a very direct control, and a very thorough knowledge, of the activities of his instructors. In fact he controlled this aspect of his organisation more closely than any other. It's inconceivable that Maharaji was not aware of Jagdeo's activities then. But he chose not to act, beyond having the matter hushed up.

The seachange finally took place when the revelations on EPO became too hard to ignore - especially in the UK. On January 22, 2000, Glen Whittaker wrote an official EV UK communication to Deepak (DUO India chief), informing him of the basic facts, and inquiring as to Jagdeo's whereabouts. It was realised that the Jagdeo 'problem' had the potential for unraveling things badly in the UK, because Maharaji's fingerprints were all over the cover-up.

The revelations on EPO and the forum re Jagdeo's sexual abuse were the PR emergency of the decade for EV. I think what's happened since then is fairly well-known by people here. I'm fairly sure the civil action in India was devised as a 'blind' - to pacify critics with the appearance of action, and to reduce the chances of Jagdeo ever having to appear in a British courtroom.

Glen wasn't involved in having the Jagdeo story suppressed in the Express - though he wasn't exactly on the side of the angels either. (When others found out about what Maharaji had permitted to happen, they left the cult - they didn't stay on to defend the indefensible.)

EV's current read on the evil exes is that a kind of impasse has been reached: damage has been done, but there's not much more they can do, with Jagdeo in India. He'll never be allowed to set foot in the West again of course.