Rajneesh Movement - Current Status

Current Status

The movement has survived Osho's death. The Osho International Foundation (OIF), the successor to the Neo-Sannyas International Foundation, now propagates his views, operating once more out of the Pune ashram in India, and the movement has begun to communicate on the Internet.

Urban has commented that the most surprising feature of the Osho phenomenon lies in Osho's "remarkable apotheosis upon his return to India", which resulted in his achieving even more success in his homeland than before. According to Urban, Osho's followers had succeeded in portraying him as a martyr, promoting the view that the Ranch "was crushed from without by the Attorney General's office ... like the marines in Lebanon, the Ranch was hit by hardball opposition and driven out." Sociologist Stephen Hunt, on the other hand, writes in Alternative Religions (2003) that "the movement has declined since 1985, and some would argue it is now, for all intents and purposes, defunct."

After Osho's death, various disagreements ensued concerning his wishes and his legacy. This led to the formation of a number of rival collectives. One of the central disagreements related to OIF's copyright control over his works. One group, Osho Friends International, spent 10 years challenging the OIF's use of the title OSHO as an exclusive trademark. In the United States, on 13 January 2009, the exclusive rights that OIF held over the trademark were finally lost. OIF filed a Notice of Appeal on 12 March, but eventually filed for withdrawal in the Court of Appeals on 19 June, thus cancelling the trademarks of Osho in the US.