Testimonial letter from Guido Martinotti

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This letter is one of a remarkable series of over 2650 letters amassed in 1983 to support Osho's attempt to get permanent resident status in the US at the time of the Oregon ranch. The image is reproduced here with the kind permission of The Oregon Historical Society. Information about their collection of these letters and other supporting material -- the "Jeffrey Noles Rajneesh Collection", named for Osho's immigration lawyer Jeffrey Noles, who compiled them in 1983 and donated them to the OHS -- can be found at this page. The wiki is grateful to the OHS for making access available for these documents. For more information and links to all the letters, see Testimonial letters.

This letter is from Guido Martinotti. It is "Exhibit A-359" in the Noles collection.

The text version below has been created by optical character recognition (OCR), from the images supplied by OHS. It has not been checked for errors but this process usually results in over 99% correct transcription. Most apparent "errors" are correct transcriptions of typos already in the original. The image on the right in the text box links to a pdf file of the original letter, it has one page.

GUIDO MARTINOTTI
via del Caravaggio, 5 - 20(?) Milano - tel. 435604
Milano, July 20th, 1983

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

I have been surprised in knowing that Mr. Bhagwan is being denied stable residence in the United States. Short of reviving the ancient outrage against Socrates, which has plagued philosophers ever since,I am not capable to understand in which way the peaceful and quieting wisdom of the neo-sannyasi movement could be threatening to anyone. In addition one would also recall the much too obvious remark that America is both a land of immigrants and of immigrants who searched there a place to reconstruct a more just and livable community. The enormous religious and existential pluralism of american society is undoubtedly one of its more characterising and more attracting traits. All thinkers who try to fathom the human mind and who try to extend their experience to disciples must to some degree go into the unconventional but what could not be tolerated in ancient Athens - and yet remained an historical dark spot on that civilization - certainly should be accepted by a society such as the american one in which unconventionality and pluralism are the basis of its national culture.

The writer is a professor of Sociology at the University of Pavia, he studied in the U.S. at Columbia and at the University of California, Berkeley in 1962-1964 and has ever since frequently come back for periods of research and teaching. The writer has been Secretary General of the International Sociological Association for several years and in this role has been active in international organizations as well as in academic circles around the world. As a scholar author of several essays and books, notably one on student movement and more recently coeditor of "Education in a changing society" (London, Sage, 1980) expresses his wishes that the request od Mr.Baghwan is accepted.

Guido Martinotti
[signed]


(Please note: We assume that the above letter is still copyrighted, but we regard its historical interest to constitute a Fair Use exception for publication in this wiki.)