Why Indians Need a Guru / Religious Leader / Spiritual Guide / Cult Figure
Indian ancestors figured out one thing for sure about themselves, we lack emotional honesty.
And in the interest of future generations, they decided this weakness needed to be taken care of by someone Indians can’t shut down.
Hence, the creation of gurus.
Now please don’t confuse these with the actual enlightened gurus, the ones who guide you toward God.
The gurus I’m talking about are those modern-day leaders who basically do the job of a therapist, tackling issues most Indians still fail to acknowledge as basic human needs:
respect, trust, emotional safety.
In India, there’s a deep-rooted belief that anything related to mental or emotional health should be hidden.
Admitting it means you’re weak.
We are masters at dissociation, denial, and drama, anything but having a calm, honest conversation to actually solve a problem.
We play hide and seek with emotional wounds, thinking if we ignore them long enough, they’ll fix themselves.
Our families live by an internalised rule:
Stay in survival mode.
True happiness doesn’t exist , only endless sadness, which (hopefully) death or pseudo-devotion to God might one day relieve.
We’ve normalised sulking and complaining.
We complain to each other, to ourselves, to the divine.
We are a nation of issue-makers, not issue-solvers.
Offer someone a solution, and they’ll reject it saying, “But it’s always been like this.”
If someone dares to introduce a new mindset or healthier patterns, suddenly their dopamine crashes and cortisol dries up because where will they get the stress now to wake up at 4 a.m. and complain about how little they slept?
Enter: the guru (read: thought leader / cult leader / religious mentor / spiritual coach).
This person becomes your emotional spokesperson.
They do the “difficult conversations” for you.
They validate or invalidate your feelings.
They might make you feel like the ultimate victim, or like a fool for being you.
Either way, they often come with zero real solutions, just recycled wisdom, detachment sermons, and vague inspiration.
In an ideal world, a true guru would help you navigate personal relationships, family matters, business dilemmas.
Keep you aligned to dharma, kindness, ethics, and gently remind you to be a good human to others, animals, and yourself. They’d help you walk your path with peace and purpose.
Sounds beautiful.
But here’s the problem: most new-age gurus need help themselves.
They aren’t therapists.
Maybe they know scripture, sure, but that doesn’t mean they understand trauma, emotional safety, attachment wounds, or the complexity of human relationships today.
They don’t push people to grow emotionally.
They offer band-aid advice, spiritual distractions, and avoidance tactics wrapped in fancy language.
This not only stalls real growth, it actively damages relationships, and worse breaks people’s faith in both spirituality and common sense.
People start to believe:
“If even this wise person can’t understand me,
then neither can my family, nor God.”
The guru becomes a tool to bypass accountability.
Parents use the guru to avoid answering their children’s questions.
Spouses use the guru to avoid owning up to their role in conflict.
But here’s the truth:
Children don’t need gurus. They need emotionally available parents.
And no matter how old you get, you remain God-like to your child.
So don’t run from that responsibility.
But what happens is, as parents age, they declare that “God is all that matters now.”
Why?
Because they avoided emotional healing all their lives and now feel it’s too late.
So instead of trying to grow or make amends, they hide behind spiritual jargon and dump their mistakes on the guru’s feet.
They call it maya and move on.
And in doing so, either get emotionally abandoned by their children or continue to hurt them.
The toxic cycle goes on.
This isn’t limited to parent-child dynamics.
Husband-wife relationships suffer too.
Instead of talking to each other, people run to third parties who don’t have the emotional intelligence or context to truly help and end up complicating everything further.
The result?
Indirect WhatsApp statuses.
Passive-aggressive Instagram stories.
Cryptic posts about “being misunderstood.”
A generation of dissociated, hurt, vulnerable people
who don’t know how or where to ask for real help.
How to end this loop of helplessness?
Parents, adults, please get used to having difficult conversations.
That’s what being human means.
It’s okay if someone tells you, “You hurt me.”
It’s okay to say, “I’m sorry, how can we fix this?”
It’s okay to not know what to say, but at least stay.
If it feels too hard to sit with your emotions, please seek therapy.
Individual, couple, family, whatever fits.
There’s nothing wrong with learning how to navigate emotions.
It’s a life skill.
And no, we don’t just “figure it out”. We learn it, like anything else.
The point of life is to live happily, as much as we can, without hurting others in the process.
And that happiness takes work. It takes mutual learning, deep listening, and real effort.
But it’s worth it.
Because it brings peace.
And isn’t that what we’re all ultimately chasing?