Life and death of a utopia

Dark underhand activity at Rajneeshpuram descends into crime

Wild Wild Country is the title of a monumental six-part documentary series that has just opened on Netflix. In painstaking detail over six one-hour episodes it reconstructs the life and death of Rajneeshpuram, the 64,000-acre utopian commune Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh aka Osho and his orange-clad band of international sannyasins, created in the boondocks of Oregon between 1981 and 1985. 

I am neither an indiscriminate Netflix binge-viewer nor much of a Rajneesh-watcher, ever since I spent time reporting on this bearded, bulbous-eyed sermonising guru at his Pune ashram (“The Spiritual Supermarket”, India Today, July 31, 1979). So how watchable is this