Upaya wrote:1970's London was a time of the punk revolution ... and social turmoil... were there Punk BK's and Celtic Druid Mystics among the students
I can only think of two people in the UK, & hence probably the world, who might have been described as ex-punks, & I was one of them! (
I saw most of the first tours of all the original bands like The Damned, Clash, Jam, Buzzcocks, Ramones etc ... basically everyone except the Pistols as they couldn't get gigs outside of London). However, Punk & New Wave moved through society at a lightning speed, & was an underground. It probably only lasted 18 months at most, & effected a tiny percentage of the population. Not so much among the Willesden Green Hindi community.
To my embarassment now, I blush at the thought of it, I once even played a punk parody at some Xmas party &, no, the Hindis really did not get it!
Punk really wasn't the defining culture of the 1970s, it's had FAR more influence since. What is remarkable about the 1970s is how many musical or cultural influence raced through society; Prog, Glam, Disco, Funk, Rock, Reggae etc (on top of commercial pop) but, even then, you still had Rock'n'Roll (rockabilly/teddy boys) revivals present. I remember reading somewhere that Stiff Records, a huge influential punk/new wave label, only ever sold a total of 100,000 records, & you can be sure many were bought by the same people, i.e. total consumers in 5 figures.
I would have described myself, age-wise, as among the "second generation" of Western BKs, as in the first to be taught by the "first generation" of Western BKs, rather than directly by the Indian BKs &, truth be, the majority of Western BKs coming in were surprising "straight" & older. More in the line of square pegs, cranks & odd balls.
Pink, I think, has the right to call himself the older "first generation BK" & can comment but I'd say there was a higher proportion of post-hippy/long hair traveller types among them, i.e. they encountered BKism while traveling in India.
There were literally a handful of Celts but none I'd describe as natural mystics, & BKism doesn't -
& did not much less so at that time - tolerate non-BK spirituality. It was all just "Bhakti", & condemned as "stumbling in darkness"; useless, valueless, & pointless. There was one Germanic Steiner-influenced type. The leadership were really keen to straighten us up even more; e.g. cut hair, shave beards, wear suits or Indian pyjamas. They wanted to make us look respectable, largely to impress other Indians (White man Ju-Ju ... "Look, even Westerners follow up"), & often exaggerated our status to do so, e.g. a hospital porter became a "doctor", a high school teacher, an "educationalist".
They certainly did not tolerate drop outs or alternative lifestyles.
Around the same time, the BKs did have a tense relationship with the "Mind, Body, & Spirit" or New Age movement - & gradually its influence seemed in, e.g. New Age or ambient music instead of not just Bollywood music, but 1930s Bollywood music that was Lekhraj Kirpalani's favourite, & defied by them (it was deemed special because it reminded the old ones of their days in Om Mandli & the Sindi but it sounded like a drunk, out of tune, brass band being kicked down a flight of stairs. Not what you'd want to try meditating too). The New Age crowd was a key target market for the BKs but they had a hard time with all their "hippy hugging" etc.
BKism did, however, get it's first public opportunities from the spiritualist movement in the UK, e.g. mediums & spirits type.
It took a long, slow, incrimental battle for all the cool, Western "angelic" influences to seep in.