Sadhguru

Jagadish Vasudev, known as Sadhguru, is a yoga teacher and author who founded the Isha Foundation at Coimbatore in 1992. Born in Mysore in 1957, he studied English literature at the University of Mysore and ran a poultry farm and then a construction business before closing them at 25 to travel and teach. He gave his first yoga class in Mysore in 1983, touring Karnataka and Hyderabad by motorcycle and passing on the money his students gave him. In 1994 he bought land at the foot of the Velliangiri hills and opened the Isha Yoga Center, which remains the base for the foundation's work; its activities are run largely by volunteers.

The foundation's social work has concentrated on rural education and on land and water. Isha Vidhya, its education arm, was set up to raise the standard of schooling available to rural children. Project GreenHands was launched to address soil and water depletion in Tamil Nadu through tree planting. Rally for Rivers, begun in 2017, campaigned for river revitalisation across India, and Cauvery Calling, launched in July 2019, sought to plant trees along a broad corridor of the Cauvery to restore river flow and groundwater. In 2022 Sadhguru rode a motorcycle from London to India over 100 days for the Journey to Save Soil campaign against soil degradation, and in May that year addressed delegates at the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. The soil campaign has drawn both institutional interest and criticism, with one environmental watchdog describing the approach as greenwashing; Sadhguru has also been criticised more generally for promoting pseudoscientific claims.

He received the Padma Vibhushan, India's second-highest civilian honour, in 2017, cited for contributions to spirituality and humanitarian service.[3]