Chandraswami
Jet-setting tantric spiritual adviser and political fixer who was implicated in a string of scandals
CHANDRASWAMI, who has died aged 69, was a globetrotting Indian mystic who styled himself “Godman” and was regarded by his devotees as an avatar of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman; but to many others he was a modern-day Rasputin who exploited his role as a “spiritual adviser” to a host of international film stars, senior politicians and businessmen for financial gain and had a walk-on part in a string of scandals.
The bearded and portly holy man, addressed by his followers as “Your Holiness”, claimed miraculous tantric powers and was said to have dispensed spiritual advice to, among others, Elizabeth Taylor (who claimed he had brought her breast cancer under control), the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, the Sultan of Brunei, the presidents of Kenya and Zambia, Ferdinand Marcos (who credited him with once saving his life), and India’s former prime minister Narasimha Rao.
According to K Natwar Singh, a former Indian deputy high commissioner in London, Chandraswami even succeeded in negotiating a meeting with Margaret Thatcher in 1975, shortly after she had become leader of the Conservative Party. The swami, Singh recalled, “prophesied that she would be Prime Minister for nine, 11 or 13 years” and Mrs Thatcher “began to look at Chandraswami not as a fraud, but as a holy man”. When he took off his chappals and sat on the sofa in her Commons office in the lotus position, “Mrs Thatcher seemed to approve.”
But it was also Chandraswami who introduced Pamella Bordes, a former Miss India, to Adnan Khashoggi after she failed to qualify for the Miss Universe contest in 1982. Later on she gave an interview about her liaison with the arms dealer to the Daily Mail and hit the headlines when it was discovered that she was moonlighting as a call girl, seen on the arms of several public figures including the editors of two leading Sunday newspapers, while possessing a researcher’s security pass for the Commons arranged by two Tory MPS.
Chandraswami also played a shadowy role in the battle between Mohammed Al Fayed and Lonrho’s chief, “Tiny” Rowland, over the control of House of Fraser, owners of Harrods, during which he appears to have played both sides for financial gain. The circumstances remain murky, but according to Rowland, Fayed had told him that in 1984 he had paid Chandraswami $500,000 for an introduction to the Sultan of Brunei. A friendship resulted, and a business relationship.
Subsequently Chandraswami secretly recorded a conversation with Fayed which seemed to indicate that the money Fayed and his brothers had used to purchase Harrods in 1985 was really the Sultan’s. At the height of the row between Lonrho and the Fayeds over the takeover, Chandraswami sold the tapes to Rowland for somewhere between $2 and $3.75 million. The tapes became the basis of Rowland’s book about the Fayeds, A Hero from Zero (1988).
The Dti-commissioned report into the Harrods takeover, published in 1990, accepted the tapes as authentic and concluded that it was likely the Fayed brothers had used their association with the Sultan to raise funds towards the purchase of the department store chain. Mohammed Al Fayed has consistently denied that the tapes were genuine or that Chandraswami had introduced him to the Sultan.
In America, meanwhile, Chandraswami was implicated, with Adnan Khashoggi, as a middleman in the Iran-contra arms-running scandal.
Back in India, Chandraswami rose to prominence on the coat-tails of Narasimha Rao, who had served in various ministerial posts in the 1980s under Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, and who was sworn in as prime minister in 1991 on an auspicious date picked by Chandraswami.
Soon afterwards Chandraswami built a multi-storey ashram in New Delhi where he held court sitting on a large tiger-skin, and for the next five years he breezed in and out of the prime minister’s residence, becoming his chief astrologer, fund manager and power-broker. In 1994 an account in India Today described him “resplendent on a stage smothered with bouquets, his eight rings aglow”, celebrating his 46th birthday with a star-studded array of guests.
Chandraswami’s luck began to turn, however, in the run-up to the elections of 1996 when Rao was decisively defeated by the Right wing BJP. In 1995 the holy man’s followers were accused of orchestrating a wave of “miracles” as a distraction from investigations into the swami’s affairs, including several days in which statues of the elephant god Ganesh were believed to be “drinking” milk poured over them.
In 1996 he and Rao were arrested on charges of defrauding Lakhubhai Pathak, the British-based pickle manufacturer, who claimed that in 1983 Chandraswami had offered, for $100,000, to use his influence to get him a government contract for newsprint. Pathak claimed that Rao had also been present when the deal was done and he handed over the money. The contract did not materialise, however, and the money vanished. While Rao won bail, Chandraswami was forced to spend 10 months in jail. Pathak died before the case was concluded, and both Rao and Chandraswami were later acquitted by an Indian court.
Also in 1996 Chandraswami, Rao and others were accused of masterminding a 1989 scam intended to tarnish the reputation of VP Singh, who had quit as finance minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s Cabinet to re-emerge as Gandhi’s main political challenger.
Chandraswami and his co-accused were reported to have forged documents to show that Singh’s son Ajeya had deposited $21 million in a secret bank account on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, with his father as beneficiary. All the accused were later acquitted for lack of evidence.
In 1998 the Jain Commission report into the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi named Chandraswami as a possible suspect after Jayaram Ranganath, who had been convicted for sheltering the Tamil terrorist assassins, claimed that he had financed the killing. A former cabinet minister, Arif Mohammed Khan, also claimed (more implausibly) that the swami had tried to recruit an Israeli mercenary to have Rajiv Gandhi killed. The matter, the Jain Commission observed, “requires further probe”. While investigations continued, Chandraswami was banned from travelling abroad. The ban was eventually lifted in 2009.
Although most of those who had once queued up to touch his feet ended up giving Chandraswami a wide berth, he continued to make news. In 2008 he was reported to be facing trial in 11 cases of violation of the Indian Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. In 2011 the Indian Supreme Court fined him a sum of 90 million rupees (approximately £1.13 million) for violations of the act. In 2014 he was under investigation following claims by a businessman that he had been robbed of valuable gemstones at Chandraswami’s Delhi ashram.
The son of a moneylender, Chandraswami was born Nemi Chand Jain in November 1948 at Behror in Rajasthan. The family later moved to Hyderabad, though Chandraswami would claim that he had spent his youth meditating in the jungles of Bihar, where he had acquired “tantric” powers.
Little more is known of his life until the 1970s when he began reading the stars for Indian politicians and businessmen and emerged as a powerful political and financial fixer. “Religious people should not indulge in trade themselves,” he claimed. “But guiding traders and keeping contact with them is not wrong.”
As his fame grew Chandraswami was frequently seen in London, New York and at jet-set parties on the French Riviera.
In 1998, asked if he would keep silent over his past, he replied: “I have to. If I open my mouth, an earthquake will result.”
According to the Indian Express, after his death Chandraswami was cremated, “with little fanfare and no VIPS”.
Chandraswami, born November 1948, died May 23 2017