3HO (Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization), also known as Sikh Dharma of the Western Hemisphere or Sikh Dharma International, is a controversial American organization founded in 1969 by Harbhajan Singh Khalsa, also called "Yogi Bhajan". Its adherents are called the Sikh Dharma Brotherhood.
Practices
The 3HO movement is known for including some practices found in certain Dharmic traditions such as meditation, vegetarianism, and yoga, particularly Kundalini yoga. Both men and women wear turbans and often wear white clothes. The use of alcohol, recreational drugs, and tobacco is forbidden.
Condemnation by SGPC and Akal Takht
In 1977, Gurucharan Singh Tohra, former President of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), stated that Harbhajan Singh was not the leader of Sikhism in the Western World as he claimed and denied Singh's claim that the SGPC had given him the title of Siri Singh Sahib.
Sikh High Priest Jaswant Singh stated that he and his council professed to be "shocked" at Bhajan's "fantastic theories." Yoga, Tantrism, and the "sexual practices" taught by Bhajan, the council declared, are "forbidden and immoral."
Sexual abuse allegations
In January of 2020, Yogi Bhajan's former secretary Pamela Saharah Dyson (f.k.a. Premka) published her memoir Premka: White Bird in a Golden Cage: My Life with Yogi Bhajan, detailing the intimate non-professional, sexual relationships she and other women had with Harbhajan Singh. The release of this memoir prompted allegations of sexual, financial, and emotional abuse on the part of Yogi Bhajan and people close to him. These allegations culminated in a civil lawsuit in the city of Los Angeles against Bhajan and members of his circle. In response to the allegations 3HO hired An Olive Branch, a consultancy specializing in addressing misconduct in spiritual communities, to conduct a third-party investigation. Their report, compiled through extensive interviewing and research, determined that it was "more likely than not that Yogi Bhajan engaged in several types of sexual misconduct and abused his power as a spiritual leader."
Scholars' views on 3HO and Yogi Bhajan
Scholars including Verne A. Dusenbery and Pashaura Singh have concurred that Harbhajan Singh's introduction of Sikh teachings into the West helped identify Sikhism as a world religion while at the same time creating a compelling counter-narrative to that which identified Sikhs solely as a race with a shared history in India.
Sikh historian Trilochan Singh offered a contrasting perspective in his critical work entitled "Sikhism and Tantric Yoga." "I am extremely worried about the manner in which Yogi Bhajan teaches Sikhism to American young men and women whose sincerity, nobility of purpose, and rare passion for oriental wisdom and genuine mystical experiences is unquestionably unique. I do not care what fantastic interpretations of Kundalini Yoga he gives, the like of which I have never read in any Tantra text, nor known from any living Tantric scholar. I am not prepared to take seriously his newly invented Guru Yoga in which his pious and uncritical followers must concentrate on a particular picture of Yogi Bhajan, which practice is called mental beaming."
Philip Deslippe, a historian of American religion, wrote a 2012 article, "From Maharaj to Mahan Tantric: The Construction of Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga", using 3HO source archive material and news articles to reveal how Harbhajan Singh recreated his own story after his first trip back to India: