Zee Media Bureau/Ritesh K Srivastava
Bangalore: The Art of Living (AOL) founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has alleged that his faculty members and volunteers in Pakistan have been receiving threats from Pakistan Taliban, who wants them to leave their country at the earliest.
The Bangalore-based AOL founder claimed that his staff and volunteers have been getting warning letters and calls from the Pakistan Taliban for over two months.
The Pakistan Taliban accuses the AOL staff and volunteers of "conspiring against Islam".
Sri Sri, however, said that the authorities in Pakistan have been informed about the threats theAOL members have received from the militant organisation.
The calls first began after March 8 when 15 gunmen vandalised and set on fire the AOL centre in Bani-Gala on the outskirts of Islamabad, a statement from his ashram said.
The statement also said, for the last 13 years, stress management techniques, breathing and yoga exercises were being taught as part of the programmmes, "purely secular in nature", by AOL, which has 10,000 members in Pakistan.
The Art of Living has been "extremely sensitive" of religious sentiments in Pakistan and other Islamic countries while taking these programmes and majority of Muslims have no objection to this, it said.
Many Pakistanis have been visiting the Art of Living centre in India regularly and good-will delegations from both countries have visited each other as part of AOL`s efforts to bring the people of Pakistan and India closer and to create a peace building process between the two countries, it said.
