Honest answers

They are right, and we agree with them.

The Devasthan is speaking about its own temple, and it is protecting devotees from sites that take money while claiming to act for Shingnapur. No such claim is ours to make. We have no association with the Devasthan, we are not authorised by them, and nothing we do happens at Shingnapur or on their behalf.

If you can travel to Shingnapur, go. Stand there yourself, pour the oil with your own hands. Nothing performed anywhere else is a substitute for that, and we will never tell you otherwise.

What we do is different in kind. Your seva is performed at our own centre in India, by our own team, with your name and gotra spoken in the sankalp. We tell you where it happens and who performs it, and we send you the recording so you can see it for yourself.

Yes, and this is older than any of us.

In Vedic ritual the one who receives the fruit of a rite and the one who performs it are already separate roles. The yajamana sponsors and receives; the ritvij performs on their behalf. When kings performed the Rajasuya or the Ashvamedha they engaged brahmanas as their ritviks, to do the yajna for them. The structure exists precisely for those who cannot stand in the fire themselves.

The mechanism is the sankalp. Before the rite begins, your name, your gotra and your intention are spoken aloud and the act is dedicated to you. That declaration is not paperwork. It is what makes the seva yours.

A priest making offerings still states today that he acts on behalf of a named client, giving their name, place and gotra. We have changed nothing about that. We have only made it reachable from where you are.

Because you watch it.

You receive a private recording of your seva. Your name is spoken in the sankalp on that recording, and a slip carrying your name sits beside the diya in the frame while the rite is performed.

You also receive an itemised Seva Record: the diya lit, the count of recitations kept, the til and oil offered, each one listed and checked by our own team.

This is the part a devotee is right to be sceptical about, so we have built the proof into the seva itself rather than asking you to take our word for it.

We will not tell you that, and you should be wary of anyone who does.

Shani Dev is Karmaphaladata. He gives the fruit of what has already been done. He holds an office under a higher authority, he cannot be bribed, and no payment to us or to anyone changes what has been earned.

The Chalisa itself prescribes only two remedies: water offered at the peepal on his day, and the giving of a lamp in charity. It attaches no promised outcome to a count of recitations, and neither do we.

What a seva is, is devotion offered faithfully and on time. That is worth doing for its own sake. Anyone selling you a guaranteed result is selling something the tradition never offered.

It is, and we would be poor guides if we let you think otherwise.

Shani Dev signifies labourers, servants, the aged, the disabled and the marginalised. Daan given to those people is the remedy the texts return to again and again. The ethical content is not decoration around the ritual. It is the remedy.

Our Saturday seva includes the observances that carry this: anna seva, feeding the ants, the black dog, the cow. But nothing we perform replaces what you give with your own hands, and we would rather say so plainly than let a purchase feel like a substitute for it.