Sathya Sai’s good works

Drumming up support

Good works there are, and all these are always financed and carried out by others than Sathya Sai Baba himself.  It is indisputable that Sathya Sai Baba has drummed up some enthusiasm about - and sometimes partly overseen - numerous social projects in India that are of considerable value to whoever can benefit from them, and he has apparently motivated many people here and there to try to do good works in their own countries. This kind of inspiration and results are not as unique and world-beating as he and his staff make it out to be. We live in a world where good works have every been done selflessly and are still to the fore in millions of people’s daily lives, but this is not a theme Sai Baba takes up, for it is really only his own works that he praises. The big problem about the Sathya Sai Baba service work remains, that it is done in the name of a person who has told many outright lies (see just a few examples  here, here, here, here), has behaved fraudulently with sleight-of-hand on many occasions, and is widely and credibly accused of many sexual abuses and of being an accomplice to a murder cover-up.

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The Cultish Sai movement
Those who are members in his Organization must believe that Sathya Sai Baba alone is God Incarnate, here and now, and openly to criticise Sai Baba is taboo and leads directly to expulsion from the organisation. This is the first mark of any cult… the utter supremacy of the leader! The Sai Baba movement as a whole is increasing its cult status by ignoring massive evidence and protecting an accused sexual abuser and suspected accomplice to murder from any form of investigation or indictment. This complicity is often conscious - but also often unwitting - being based on the out-of-hand rejection of any criticism of any kind against the guru figure in advance of considering the evidence, all in accordance with his teaching about himself.

As is well known, Sathya Sai claims to be behind all things that happens, so - by the same preposterous claim - he is necessarily to blame for everything that is wrong. The responsibility can’t be shoved onto us, as he nevertheless does, with his Janus faced teaching, when he turns around and says all that is bad is due only to human actions, not his! None of these assertions are ever properly explained by him. Instead, he continually makes use of these claims in subtly devious ways to control others. The un-indoctrinated and the de-programmed devotees can observe how it all functions to increase his status in the eyes of believers and add to his fortune, fame and name at their expense. One would expect God Almighty to be a lot more convincing than this!

Sai Baba miracles

Sai Baba slammed in Newsweek
from Newsweek’s  ’The God Debate’ April 9, 2007 - see on page three

• Author Sam HARRIS: Let’s go back to the Bible. The reason you believe that Jesus is the son of God is because you believe that the Gospel is a valid account of the miracles of Jesus.

• Pastor Rick WARREN: It’s one of the reasons.

• Sam HARRIS: Yeah. It’s one of the reasons. Now, there are many testimonials about miracles, every bit as amazing as the miracles of Jesus, in other literature of the world’s religions. Even contemporary miracles. There are millions of people who believe that Sathya Sai Baba, the south Indian guru, was born of a virgin, has raised the dead and materializes objects. I mean, you can watch some of his miracles on YouTube. Prepare to be underwhelmed. He’s a stage magician. As a Christian, you can say Sathya Sai Baba’s miracle stories are not interesting, let’s not pay attention to them, but if you set them within the prescientific religious milieu of the first-century Roman Empire, suddenly miracle stories become especially compelling.

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The above exchange serves to emphasize the fact that there are countless accounts of miracles in history, actually going right back to the time when primitive tribal mankind believed rain, thunder, floods, quakes and just about anything they were unable to explain was therefore ‘a miracle’.

The many sciences have already explained a vast amount of phenomena which were formerly ‘believed’ to be miraculous - that is, without rational or demonstrable explanation. A considerable number of the supposed ‘miracles’ of Sathya Sai Baba (those which could be filmed or observed by critical thinkers) have been exposed as legerdemain - and many devotees have admitted that they have seen him faking the ‘materialisation’ of rings, lockets and other small objects - firstly taking them from behind his body in his chair in the interview room. One really need say no more as to the credibility of Sai baba’s supposed miracles than that… except that one cannot actually expose definitively anything which is known about only though second- and third-hand accounts - often by local villagers and other full believers in Sai Baba’s many claims about himself and his powers. 

Sai Baba’s fame and name

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“Detach yourself from the craving for fame…” (Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 8, p.235)

“Every act should be done sincerely, with no yearning for acquiring personal profit, fame or benefit.”
(Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12., p. 246)

“Desire [kaama] is the lust for physical pleasure, for power, for fame, for wealth…”
(Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 13., p.169)

Sai Baba has many times disparaged most strongly those who seek or value name & fame! He said they are “as disgusting as spittle” (p. 147, Sanathana Sarathi May 1987), that world-fame for Sai by publicity is without value (p. 193, My Baba & I, Dr. John Hislop) and has often ridiculed other gurus who seek name and fame (for example p 75, Prema Vahini).

Sathya Sai Baba has also said in a discourse, “I will do anything, even sacrifice my name and fame, if it will lead one devotee towards liberation.” This statement makes it evident that he values his name and fame above all else. He’d “even sacrifice my name and fame“! How transparently self-obsessed can a person get? If name and fame are “as spittle”, what is so huge about this huge sacrifice of his name and fame Sathya Sai Baba would make? The degree of audacious mendacity to which Sathya Sai Baba goes is almost astonishing, but yet more so is the literal acceptance of all he says on this and dozens of other matters by so many followers. How can any of the much-exaggerated good he does cancel or ameliorate the great infamies of which he stands accused by so many young men and other witnesses?

Most people in the Sai movement take all this unquestioningly and for granted! Sathya Sai Baba has condemned himself with his own words time and again, such as when  If Sathya Sai Baba has no need to seek fame (see p. 64, Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 11 new ed.), why then does he allow his discourses to be broadcast on digital radio world-wide… or build massively-costly huge buildings in his name, some devoted entirely to spreading his name and fame?

“Every man should show his sense of gratitude to society by rendering selfless service. It was for this purpose that the Seva Organization was started. But even here the Seva Organizarions are being used to promote one’s name and fame and not to render service for its own sake.” (Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 30., p. 122).

The Sathya Sai Organisation worldwide, however, puts great effort into spreading the name and fame of Sathya Sai. Just witness the number of websites extolling him by official Sathya Sai Organisation centres! Virtually all group meetings are primarily for praising Sathya Sai through devotional singing (bhajans) and talking about him to newcomers, holding public meetings to spread his name and his word! The inevitable conclusion is that it is Sathya Sai baba above all others who uses the Sathya Sai Organisation to promote his name and fame!

Sai Propaganda Floods Onwards

 

Public works done with full publicity

All publicity about the service works of the various Sathya Sai Baba organisations or institutions is specifically formulated so as to try to enhance his name and fame. The works in India and the input of all the genuine workers involved are certainly valuable contributions to a population which is overwhelmingly poor and without a small fraction of the public services available in most countries of the world today. Though these Sai service workers labour under the illusion that it is Sai Baba who is the real ‘doer’ of the work and that they are merely his instruments, without them it is clear that absolutely zero work would be done!

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What deserves criticism here is the way in which Sathya Sai Baba, who is known to be a major deceiver of his followers, takes all credits and trumpets himself through everything he can! One is left without a shred of doubt as to who is supposedly the main benefactor. For example, the hospital in Puttaparthi has been publicized for all it is worth in every video allowed by the Sai authorities for years, where huge portraits of Sai Baba are seen everywhere and the commentaries drip with condensed sugar water when mentioning him. But it was the US owner of Hard Rock Café, Isaac Tigrett - but he is now not mentioned officially. This is probably due to the intense jealousy he has described from Indian Sai officials when he was put in charge of hospital planning by Sai Baba. Tigrett’s name has even been completely removed from the reprinted discourses in the Sathya Sai Speaks series, though his name was included when they were originally published in Sanathana Sarathi.. [His donation of US$49 million made it all possible (while $15 million 'disappeared' according to what Tigrett told David Bailey when they were still both devotees! Note also that Isaac Tigrett has continued his devotion to Sai Baba and declared on the BBC film that he believes the sex abuse allegations are true and it would not matter to him if Sai were to go out and murder someone!]

If there should be no publicity, why do so many officially blessed and widely advertised Sai videos contain long sequences of Sai Baba feeding the poor, marrying off poor people, giving away hand-driven tricycles to the handicapped, sewing machines to women and so on. They never were his property to give, if we are to believe his claims to non-ownership of anything. The video ‘Song of Service’ is one example and another such is ‘Sai Baba as in a mirror’. These are sold world-wide and, from the central leadership, efforts are urged from devotees to bring such public works to the attention of broadcasters and the media.In 2001, the Sai Central Trust took a double page spread in a Bangalore newspaper to promote the SSSS Hospital there. (The hospital was not even mentioned editorially by the newspaper, however).

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Sai Baba’s teaching that service (seva) is of no spiritual value if it seeks the limelight just does not fit with such publicity. For example, In Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 28, p. 341, Sai Baba says one should not do service to impress. In Vol. 1 he deplores”the egoism and poisons the Seva of even veterans in the field, who go about extolling themselves as founders and promoters” (p.97) Does he not extol himself as a founder and promoter? In a book he wrote - Jnana Vahini - Sai Baba criticises “self-aggrandisement; when self holds sway over the heart, no deed worthy to be styled Service can emanate.” (p.34).

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So what about Sai Baba’s self-aggrandisement?
Compare the unlimited self-centeredness of what Sai Baba calls ‘My’ water projects and his repeated detailing of how ‘He’ did it with, say, Bob Geldof’s world-famous Food for Ethiopia projects and his praise of all the donors and taking no credit other than ‘it was my good luck to be there at the right time and place’! Does it become ‘The’ God avatar constantly to put himself on a mighty pedestal and take all the credit for everything good, while denying any of his demonstrable —failings? Sai Baba’s continued declarations and clear directives insist that the Sathya Sai Organization is not to seek publicity other than through the example of the good behaviour and selfless work done by the devotees who are its members. He has time and again insisted that any kind of self-advertising is entirely foreign to the true spirit of selfless service. But he is the greatest sinner as to putting himself forward as the greatest selfless helper of mankind… this is the narcissistic blindness and unquestioned self-righteous yet self-defeating rubbish that only a ruler totally isolated within a court of spineless sychophants can achieve!

Visitors to Sai Baba’s ashrams (4)

Ashram security and secret surveillance for whom?

All who visit any of Sathya Sai Baba’s ashrams well know from experience how security checks with metal detectors are made on every person, and how every smallest item (however private) is checked and how even the smallest items that could in the wild fantasies be used as a weapon (eg. even computer diskettes, thick cushions etc!) must be deposited elsewhere before one is allowed into ‘the compound’. Anyone can see that there are armed guards with Kalashnikov or Uzi machine guns ready to deploy close to Sai Baba at short notice. To be used against whom? The one who claims that everyone in the world loves him?

Few who visit, however, are aware that they are under constant surveillance by numerous paid undercover agents, employed by the ashram and paid from the apparently bottomless funds available through the Central Trust. Almost anything one says anywhere in the ashram (or even outside it) that can be picked up can be - if at all suspicious - be reported by snoopers, and by the average of 500 unpaid volunteers for the Seva Dal who also to partake in surveillance precautions since the 1993 grand slaughter in Sai’s own bedroom. They come in groups for a one or two week tour of guard and similar duties, usually for 12 hours of each day, organised on a rotating basis between the states of India. They are brought in shifts from all over India continually to guard Prashanthi Nilayam and now function as a backup to this security system, whether they quite realise their role or not. It is hard to see what kind of ‘Supreme Peace’ (i.e. ‘Prashanthi’) this may speak.

Who is the target of the feared attacks and why assume that there is reason to attack anyone? I shall be detailing these events that are the main turning point in the fortunes of Sai Baba and the reader can investigate my findings and then draw her/his own conclusions! Sathya Sai has many times proclaimed that no one and nothing can harm him. He named his ashram ‘The Abode of Supreme Peace’ (Prashanthi Nilayam). In numerous books blessed by Baba it is stated that visitors to Prashanthi are under the protection of Sai Baba, no harm can befall them etc. The Sathya sai Organization encourages its members to visit the ashrams, often arranging group visits and making their travel arrangements. The information given in advance to newcomers is, in all permitted literature and in talks given about conditions there is seriously lacking in frankness as to certain dangers that can be met, even within the ashrams. All information about deaths therein, murders, suicides, fatal accidents and other untoward incidents is suppressed. Those who have found out, usually by chance or private contacts about such events, have had to rationalise hard to sustain belief in all that Sai promises about his protection and with his much-publicised motto ‘Why fear when I am here?’

In my diary/notebook covering my visit to Puttaparthi in 1995/6, I wrote what V.K. Narasimhan told me on 1/1/1996 exactly as follows: “Sai is spending 50 lakhs a month on his own protection, with 50 private security men in plain clothes in the ashram and within his building, says Narasimhan. Why, if nothing can harm him? Sathya Sai said it was for the benefit of devotees. Why did Sai announce in an interview that he would be killed during an attempt in October 1995?”

The official line, of course, parrots Sai Baba’s sly claim that the massive security is for the protection of devotees… a convenient rebuff to those who begin to ask why the invincible Avatar of the Kali Age might need such excessive protection. Oddly, however, few of the most hardened believers actually deny that it is for protecting Sathya Sai himself, at least since the alleged assassination attempt on him (which he has publicly denied was against him).

VISITORS TO SAI BABA ASHRAMS (3)

View of ’roundhouses’ and accommodation ’sheds’ Prashanthi Nilayam (from 1987)

All is not as it seems outwardly!
The Vigilance Officer who informed me much about the behind-the-scenes goings-on at the Sathya Sai Baba ashrams, Mr. V. Ramnath, knew a lot about certain people around Sathya Sai Baba. The ashram is run,  he said, mostly by financial crooks and virtual ‘goondas’. He had known Vijay Prabhu for years before the June 1993 ‘incident’ he supposedly master-minded’). He told me that Prabhu had been a most devoted ’seva’ worker and subsequently security chief of the ashram - which he was when the fatal intrusion and six murders took place. Vijay Prabhu told Ramnath of brothels in Puttaparthi used by ashram staff, and also of staff alcohol abuse. Ramnath made efforts to cross-check this and found it to be a fact. Incidentally, when investigators had descended en masse after the June 1993 murders and executions, various journalists reported that drink, including bottles of rum, were turned up within the ashram. Not so surprising, really, but not what one is misled to believe, or would wish to think, about ‘Prashanthi Nilayam’.

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How murder haunted the ‘Abode of Supreme Peace’ (’Prashanthi Nilayam’)
Vijay Prabhu, my informant said, was an honest man but he got overheated about the corruption… and Sai Baba “seems to have used him as a broom to sweep up some of the dirt in the ashram”, by giving hints to support his attempt to remove the current administration. (Sai Baba’s closest and power-broking valet Radhakrishnan and his sidekick Mahajan were killed, though probably the conflict and knife fight was an unexpected, unwanted conflict for the intruders). Sai Baba had told Prabhu, said my informant, that as long as the world does not change outside the ashram, nothing would change inside either… and there was nothing that he (Sai Baba) could do about it himself.  [A glaring contradiction to Sai Baba's repeated claims that he is omnipotent and come to save mankind from destruction etc. etc.!] This was also the core of Vijay Prabhu’s statement to the police when he gave himself up months after the incident to a neutral police force outside the Puttaparthi area.  He chose that other police force to surrender to because - as head of security at Prashanthi Nilayam - he knew all too well the murderousness of the totally corrupted Puttaparthi police chief (who was blackmailed into executing the four assailant devotees by Sai Baba’s younger brother Janakiramian and Co. ). Vijay Prabhu’s life was - and those of his family and various associates were - ruined by all this (not least since his brother, S.S. Prabhu was one of the four executed in Sai Baba’s bedroom see here) . Some who were well known to my informant were persecuted badly by the powerful clique that remained, including Mrs Dolly Saxena of the Delhi Customs and Excise Dept. and her son, who even had to flee India due to persecution by the ashram for being known to Vijay Prabhu. (Incidentally, Vijay Prabhu was also firmly convinced that 90% of Sai Baba students did not believe that Sai Baba to be the avatar he claims to be!)

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Tax-free and largely unaccountable Sathya Sai Central Trust Fund
As is known to informed persons in India, like Mr. V. Ramnath, the core of the whole Sathya Sai organisation, being registered as a charitable Trust Fund, is not legally required to have any rules or guidelines. Sai Baba delegates authority, and also changes the rules and sometimes the personnel, when he sees fit. So there is no structure or defined way of dealing with matters. (In 1995 he ’sacked’ Col. Joga Rao for taking kickbacks from Tubro & Larsen and having bought an apartment block in Delhi he could not explain, and the previous head of the PN ashram, Narayanan, for financing a luxury villa in Bangalore with embezzled money). One asks, would omniscient and righteous God let a servant embezzle us all for so long and so much? If so, what kind of example does this set? These are the facts behind the colourful and deceptive facade of Sai Baba ashrams.

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The fate of sacking awaited Nataraj, head of the accommodation office and Mr. P. Suri of the Sathya Sai Books and Publications Trust, both of whom had been milking the system for years. In 1993, Suri was found with 25 lakhs of rupees in his room which he could not explain, he could produce no accounts whatever for the Trust of which he was the Convenor! Both were ’sacked’ by Sai Baba in due course, but after their rascally practices had long been fairly common knowledge. Mr. Suri received 900 copies of the 1st ed. of my book, which was sold from the Prashanti bookshop for Rs. 50.- per copy (in 1994), for which no accounts were presented to me or anyone else! Al Drucker, Rita Bruce, Mr. Taylor (publisher of the ‘Gufa Narayana Ashram’ books) all suffered similar or worse extravagances from Mr. Suri. The same practices apparently continue under Mr. Rajan, who has the profitable business now. One notable fact about the methods used is that, if you pay in too large a sum of money by mistake (as my wife unthinkingly did in 1998, due to a fault by the clerk who calculated wrongly and overcharged by hundreds of rupess!). They would not refund the difference even five minutes after payment! They have an iron rule, they said, to pay out nothing whatever. Instead the difference had to be placed in an account with them. Any money you have on account with them you can never recoup, but they may sometimes send on some unwanted, unreadable trash books that they can’t sell to make up for the amount!

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Not everyone is aware that the head of the PN ashram from about 2000, a Mr. Chackravati, the former chief of the water project as appointed by Sai Baba and subsequently Head of the Prashanthi Nilayam Ashram, was previously sacked from his government post for major embezzlement! This was common knowledge in the IAS and to discerning Indian newspaper readers.

VISITING SAI BABA ASHRAMS (2)

Newcomers who have read some of the many gushing, over-rosy books about Sai Baba’s supposed perfection, purity and total overview and divine control of his ashrams and the intimate detail of everyone’s lives, expect ‘The Abode of Supreme Peace’ to be either a paradise or at least a place where people are more virtuous, kind, fair and civil than elsewhere. Many devotees from abroad who live long-term or permanently at Sai Baba develop a noticeable ‘residential patina’ which seems to serve as protection against all the abrasions and scours that they receive regularly from the native powers-that-be, from members of the Seva Dal, other residents, visitors and the inevitable low caste workers of all kinds. Particularly vintage ashram ladies have this veneer, along with carefully adopted Indian traits like perfect use of saris, outwardly condescending attitudes towards newcomers. I have never seen or heard of more than an exception few of these people doing anything except take care of their own quotidian affairs… no service work, no proper study or self-discipline… just following the routines, always knowing how to ‘cut corners’ and generally get ahead of others. The experience of many followers who I have accompanied to Prashanthi Nilayam as group leader was that very few people there - foreigners included - are at all helpful in giving a helping hand to newcomers.

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From public discourses by Sathya Sai we learn: ‘Residents of ashram have derived little benefit’ Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 27, p. 78: ‘Residents at ashram who have aged but not grown’ Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 10, p. 28: and ‘Seniority imagined by long-term residents’ Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 5, p. 306).

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A Vigilance Officer - a government official in a the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) - Mr. V. Ramnath, who moved about in India (eg. Madras, Coorg, Bangalore, Delhi) - himself a Sai follower - told me many of his experiences of people around Sthya Sai Baba. These included a variety of close Sai Baba-devotees who were friends or relatives of his (some of whom I met)- including high officials in the Indian administration and in Sai institutions and ashrams. He said that people really believe that, once they have a place at Puttaparthi or Whitefield so they can spend their time near Sai Baba at darshan etc., they have done everything required for salvation! Because being within the area of ‘divine vibration’ ensures their spiritual development. They proceed to live lives empty of social or other useful meaning, waiting for heaven to fall into their laps like ripe fruit through gratuitous grace. In the rat-race to ‘Swami’s feet’, otherwise fairly virtuous persons there become as vicious as piranhas, very jealous of those who get interviews or other ‘grace’, whom they defame through back-biting. (This view is supported by many talks Sai Baba has held, both in public and not least in very strict correctives to the assembles Seva Dal in the various ashrams.

VISITING SAI BABA ASHRAMS (1)

Unofficial but true information for persons considering visiting Sai Baba ashrams
It is important that someone with personal experience and confidential contacts, at least, presents some of the many undisclosed facts about Sathya Sai Baba’s ashrams, where the control of public information is very tight, well-censored and is maintained by insidiously strong social taboos on what can and can’t be said or told. Since I have had plenty of personal experience of the life of the ashrams and knew some very well-informed confidential contacts, besides keeping copious notes every day, I try to do my share. I leave the rosy writings to others now, having done too much more than a bit on that front before I became disillusioned!I was once mislead badly enough to believe that Sai Baba would never have a deceitful washerwoman or coolie in the ashram… they would all be spiritual due to their proximity to God Himself! When several pieces of my clothing has been stolen by a washerwoman, I carefully inquired of the public relations officials. They told me that all the washerwomen and coolies are thieves and liars! As time went on I learned that the proclaimed policy of ‘first come, first served’ is not practiced. There are many people who obtain privileges of many kinds… to jump queues, obtaining chits for a special place at darshan, obtaining favoured accommodation, often in return for favours to staff (including bribery). The so called ’special guests’, referred to generally and treated as ‘VIPs’ can walk to the front of food queues ahead of cripples and the blind, and they use this privilege constantly, though there seldom any reason for their haste. This is a cause for envy in many, but this is not at all what motivates this account! I mention this because Sai Baba-devotees believe that all who criticise Sai Baba are merely envious, jealous etc., as Sai Baba himself insists! (Presumably he imagines - or even hopes - that all are envious of his blessings!).

The pleading faces and begging postures of devotees - not least Westerners and a number of the VIPs themselves - shows how true after all were Sai Baba’s words about the majority of people coming for something they want from him. Some have gained favours by sitting inordinate lengths of time in the ‘lines’ before darshan to get a prominent place (regardless of others whom they thereby displace) month after month until Sai Baba could hardly fail to reward them without seeming very hard-hearted to all those who observe these sad cases. The thousands of hours of discomfort they undergo - and their blank faces or often piteous expressions in front of Sai Baba - says at least as much about their level of desperation and dependency as their faith. They continue this behaviour when they are made VIPs too! The fixation one observes in them and others shows what a personality cult the Sai Baba movement really is. Those who strive in all ways to become important in the movement are mostly self-important, self-seeking and often uncivil persons who I would definitely have avoided entirely had I not then been a devotee… they mostly recall the phrase, ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’.

BLAZONING SAI SERVICE AROUND

“Sathya Sai Organization abhors campaigns and advertisements. It does not function for the sake of advertisement. It is only Love that should bind us as one. It is our service activity that will broadcast our ideals, not advertisements.” (from Sathya Sai Baba’s 1999 Yugadi Discourse).Despite Sathya Sai Baba’s words, Sathya Sai Organisation (SSO) leaders exert increasing pressure on members to contribute to spreading news of the SSO via the media. That true service of mankind is a private concern between oneself and God is evidently no longer to be much observed.For example, photos of service work are frequently called for to mount exhibitions at the ashram for various festivals and conferences, or travelling showpieces of the SSO’s work! In 2000, each country was instructed by the leaders of the International SSO to “take action to project awareness” of Sathya Sai Baba by organising publication of articles, special supplements in the local press, talks, shows on local TV etc., in which Sathya Sai Baba’s service activity and his contributions to society were to be prominent.

Perhaps one should not be surprised at the Sathya Sai Organisation, for they are but following Sathya Sai Baba’s actual example! In discourse after discourse, however, Sathya Sai Baba himself praises to the skies the various projects for which bear his name (schools, colleges, hospitals, water scheme etc.), saying that no one does one thousandth of what he does and there is nothing like his free schools & hospitals anywhere else in the world! In his demonstrated ignorance of Western society, welfare state education and health, or of the world’s many charitable NGO’s and voluntary organisations, he claims that his projects are unique in human experience because they offer free education and free health services! Clearly, he follows a different ideal of publicity to what he preaches.

It is claimed that Sathya Sai Baba does much for the poor…

In the run up to his 70th birthday, one could actually see Sai Baba give away a number of hand-driven tricycles to cripples, and he presented so-so many sewing machines to needy job-seekers, and some 3-wheeler tempos to unemployed young men. He also married 70 poor couples, for whom all the necessary was provided. The film of this was distributed throughout the world. But Sai Baba teaches that ostentatious service is completely worthless,  is just showing off and has no spiritual value whatever! Now, if I were to give away a number of things, I would not want it done to celebrate me, or the number of my years on earth. Sathya Sai says: ‘My Life is My Message?’, and then walks about figuratively naked among the crowds, while blind believers all say ‘See what a wonderful suit the Lord has!’ But, as a clear eye can see, it is only his ‘birthday suit’.

Rationalising advertising/publicity in the media

Some excerpts from a document circulated to groups and centres in 1985 by the Europe Group 1 Coordinating Committee show the peculiar self-contradiction that operated w.r.t. publicity in the Sathya Sai Organization generally:

“The question of public meetings with audiovisual aids (information-meetings) has been brought up time and time again by various centres and groups. We are all well aware that we are not to mission in any way, but rather to spread the Divine teachings through our example as an inspiration to others. However, rules are that we should conduct regular public meetings in our centres/groups… Such meetings should contain information on Sathya Sai Baba (who is He?), His teachings, the meaning of His miracles (inner significance), the Organisation (why an Organisation?) the activities and the work of the Organisation emphasizing Seva (esp. Group Community Sadhana), Bal Vikas and EHV.”

Then the text soon also declares:“When others arrange public meetings or in connection with radio/TV, we should not participate, if other religious organisations participate, as we want to avoid discussions and polarization. However, in connection with radio/TV and other public media, we may participate, if we have separate features, where the sterling worth of the teachings/message can be safeguarded beforehand.”
And later “…but we should be prepared to go to schools, companies/firms, public institutions & the like when requested and if this locally is considered right.”

In short, after lip service to the way Sai Baba would “spread the Divine teachings through our example as an inspiration to others”, something close to a carte blanche is given for spreading publicity. The above example is but one of many such subsequent attempts to rationalize the increasingly organized publicity for Sathya Sai Baba, the Sathya Sai Organisation etc.

SATHYA SAI ORGANIZATION - FALSE PROPAGANDA

 

One glaring instance of false publicity

Following Sathya Sai Baba’s example again, the Sathya Sai Organization does not correct wrong information circulated about it by itself or other that would seem to put it in a good light, nor does it ever present any negative news about projects that failed or were flawed. All is presented as being divine perfection itself! Facts about itself, some of its projects and events that take place are constantly misrepresented by the Organisation, while all information is clinically censored to cover-up all ills. I have received testimony for all this from V.K. Narasimhan, a one-time investigative journalist of great experience, who was highly percipient and frank in correcting some of my mistaken impressions and opinions of how the organisation is run and what has been done by it.

Nonexistent villages project publicised:

One example of long-uncorrected publicity is about Sai Baba’s organisation having adopted 6000 villages (some quote it as 60,000 villages mentioned - perhaps only yet another unhappy Indian misprint?). In response to previous calls for village regeneration from Sai Baba, the project was instigated by Indulal Shah for the 60th birthday.

No one I contacted in the SSO had any information on the project beyond what is in the 1985 publication from the Sathya Sai Baba Publications Trust bookshop, The Beacon - a book about Sai Baba and his doings consisting in brief texts with photos. About 1 1/2 pages of text make up the section entitled “All India Exhibition - Depicting Seva Activities in 4,200 Adopted Villages In Different States of India”. It shows the model village built for this exhibition at Prashanthi Nilayam. One picture is of Shah taking Baba around it. It was inaugurated in Nov. 1984 by S.B. Chavan, the Home Minister later behind the quashing of murder investigations at Prashanthi Nilayam in 1993. 

“The programme planners had decided to adopt 6,000 villages, leaving the choice to the state units. They had all been cautioned earlier by Sri Baba what ‘adoption’ meant. The villages are to be regarded as near and dear as the child you adopt.”The text also claims:”Nearly 5000 of the targeted 6000 villages have been brought under the welfare plan already. The rest are to be covered within the time set for them….”

This project would require a large staff to be at all effective or develop - even as a shoestring affair, but no such staff has ever been seen or heard of. Therefore I asked V.K. Narasimhan about this. He told me that the project was “a washout and was dropped within the first year of its inception in 1985. The main event had been an invitation via the SSO to send persons to visit Prashanti Nilayam and hear Baba give instructions on village improvement. At least several hundred persons came as village representatives from all around India, to whom the ashram offered free transport, free meals, Sai ‘darshans’ and other benefits. Laudable as this attempt to help India’s poverty-stricken and declining villages was, the activities dwindled rapidly down - after the small bonanza - to a handful of individuals here and there, as V.K. Narasimhan informed me and as the least investigative digging will bear out!

The project is even now sometimes referred to in various Sathya Sai Book Trust publications and brochures as if it were continuing , since its demise has evidently been kept secret. Village uplift has continued on a much smaller scale locally since then, mainly by occasional Seva Dal or student village help projects, mainly within Sathya Sai Taluk close to Prashanthi Nilayam.

SAI BABA’S INSULATION FROM PEOPLE

More ‘omniscient ignorance’ and bombast from Sathya Sai Baba

Sai Baba also pretends to be able to do the impossible, making the most unfulfillable promises (so as to get cheers from his audience?), as in his discourse 11/8/2001:
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“Unfortunately today in this country there are many fatherless and motherless children in great distress. My resolve is to help such children by providing them proper amenities by way of houses, education etc., and mould them into ideal citizens (cheers). I have spoken about this to the local District Collector. He has agreed to help and has allocated some land for this purpose. The construction has to be commenced shortly. There is nothing hidden in My actions. My nature is not to amass riches but to help all the extent possible. Bring to My notice any such deserving orphan or fatherless child. If the mother is alive, I shall arrange to allocate one lakh rupees in her name to be kept in fixed deposit for the upbringing of the children until they are able to support themselves.”

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For this self-proclaimed ‘omniscient God’, he should know a whole lot better! He is surrounded by luxury and the well-to-do, who he has cultivated with gifts of cheap false ‘diamond rings’ etc. for decades. But he is evidently in blissful ignorance of the constantly prevailing conditions of massive poverty, malnutrition and hunger in India, as the following words of his make crystal clear:
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“I came across a tragic incident in a newspaper. It was about an uneducated and helpless mother and her three children. They were in such a pathetic state of poverty that the mother had to starve herself in order to feed her children. As their situation worsened, she took to the extreme step of committing suicide after poisoning her children. It’s a shame on the Bharatiyas! Can we Bharatiyas be so stone-hearted and cruel as to allow such a painful event to take place?” -
Considering the number of orphans in India, can Sai Baba’s boast be other than hypocrisy? In 2002, the World Bank estimated that India is facing an accelerating threat from HIV which greatly impacts the social fabric, especially though the unprecedented number of orphans left with little or no adult protection. (See here)

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Sathya Sai does not know the basic facts about his own country. Yet he entertains and blesses all his nation’s corrupt and nest-feathering politicians as soon as they pop up at his ashrams. According to UN statistics, there are 20 million child labourers in sweatshops and mines who get no education. Indian government extrapolations of this 1981 data place the current number of child labourers at between seventeen and twenty million (Human Rights Watch 1996, 122). This extrapolation seems highly unlikely as: “The Official National Sample Survey of 1983 [of India] reports 17.4 million child labourers, while a study . . . sponsored by the Labour Ministry, concluded that the child-labour force was 44 million” (Weiner 1991, 20-21). UNICEF “cites figures ranging from seventy-five to ninety million child laborers under the age of fourteen” (Human Rights Watch 1996, 122). A universal difficulty in obtaining accurate data may be that individuals fail to report child labour participation during surveys, for fear of persecution. (see here). UN statistics shows that there are 4 million suffering HIV/AIDS in India, of which 170,000 are children! (See here) . Further, 400,000 children and women in India are subjected to commercial sexual exploitation - see here. -
Though Sai Baba in his bullet- and bomb-proof limousine and in his secretly commando-defended private apartments may be unaware of the extent of it, the world in general knows that India is still full of the homeless, of slum cities, beggars of every kind and the land where the degradation of human beings exceeds all limits. Most ‘Bharitayas’ (i.e. Indians) are inured to it, on the pavements they daily step across limbless mendicants deformed horribly in childhood into broken-legged ’spidermen’ and head-narrowed ‘rat-headed children’ and other pitiful shapes and forms - for the purposes of begging. Many who give some pittance to them do so because it supposedly engenders good karma for themselves! Is the problem that no one is left around him with the guts to bring anything untoward to the attention of the imperious, conceited Sathya Sai?

Sathya Sai Baba and the Duke of Edinburgh Award

Sathya Sai Baba boasts about ’his’ mission and achievements more than any previous figure of the kind he wishes to be recognised as - holy and selfless. The wannabe Nobel Laureate is still also wishing to have his name associated with that of the Duke of Edinburgh! Any kind of association will do to draw the wool over his devotees’ eyes, it seems! His publicists (with Dr. G. Venkataraman as chief spin doctor) have claimed that he was awarded the Duke of Edinburgh Award - which is a blatant lie, even though a certificate was made out in his name by a youth in UK who partook in the award scheme (thousands are awarded this certificate anyhow). The matter was raised with the Duke of Edinburgh’s staff and they demanded that the Sathya Sai authorities removed this false publicity from their website. They did so, but have reintroduced it in publishing on their official website the edition of ‘Sanathana Sarathi’ containing announcement of the award to Sri Sathya Sai! They have to sneak in this way to make Sai Baba to appear to have won even such a commonly given youth award!  At an official dinner after the furore, the Duke of Edinburgh’s top executive assured our contact there that no such further mistake will ever be made! The issue of false representation was covered internationally in the press, after an article appeared in The Guardian (see here).

That the award is given most liberally to participants in the vast Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme is shown by the fact that there is now an official website called “Find old friends from The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award with Friends Reunited“. However, Sathya sai Baba has not been listed there - and we can safely say a registration on his behalf will not be accepted.

This is only another move in Sathya Sai Baba’s totally immodest attempts to become world famous and recognised by the high and mighty of this world. The materials proving this is very considerable - see here and here and here

Baba Brag

In 1997 Sai Baba boasted, “From My earliest years I have been concerned about providing three primary requisites for our people: Free education, free medical aid and free basic amenities like drinking water.” (Sathya Sai Speaks Vol 30, p. 247) Is this perhaps not self-publicity too?

In Sanathana Sarathi September, 2001, p. 264, we read: “… the level of free health care and education can be maintained.” - “…I have never asked anyone for help. My hand is always above (giving) and never below (receiving) (prolonged loud applause)”

What does he mean, one wonders… for he gets donations for which he has assured us that he signs every cheque personally? He has asked for donations to his hospitals and the local water project in public and these requests have been published in Sanathana Sarathi too! Meanwhile, many others around the world providing free services never solicit for donations but receive them in plenty.

Is the Good Sai Baba blazons around true service? While Sathya Sai Baba urges people to do good things, and is the willing figurehead of numerous good works (actually financed and carried out by others than himself), his inordinate self-publicity  in direct contradiction to his claims that true service is only that which is done with completely selfless motives and without fanfares. Yet he has cawed enormously for years, as in the following quotations from his infamous Christmas Discourse in 2000:“Is there any government that is giving free medical care? People don’t even think about the sanctity behind it. Most of the educated have become so low and mean minded. Is there anyone who is doing even one thousandth of this work ? No, no. It is only Sathya Sai Baba, who is doing this selflessly, always for the welfare of others.”

Is he so ignorant as not even to know about the welfare states of Europe where free medical care is guaranteed to entire populations on an egalitarian basis as part of national insurance? His hospitals give free treatment, but to whom? Besides, it is all paid for by all of those of us who have donated sizeable sums to the Central Trust and persons who work there voluntarily or for a low wage. If the hospitals were free for all, there would be a free for all in poor India, where the statistics prove the vast gap between need and medical care available. Yet his hospitals never have a crowd milling at their gates and seem to be half-empty buildings to visitors. One can but wonder why! Actual admission criteria are a guarded secret and names of patients are not released. What proportion of them are privileged Sai devotees or people of influence in India?

Many, many other people are doing much more than one thousandth of the work Sai Baba does, who does not work in the normal meaning of the word. How much could he personally do, even if he actually worked a 14-hour day? And what kind of ‘work’ is it? Holdings talks, giving doubtful blessing and accepting adulation from others most of the day. Or is he exhausting himself with heavy work on astral planes, perhaps? He personally could not possibly do even one-thousandth of what ‘His’ various institutions are reported to undertake under his compromised name. That 99% plus of the work is done by followers and 100% of the money comes from them, he always ignores in his self-glorifying ‘discourses’ (i.e his Sai personality-boosting public relations exercises). There is the huge Imran Khan cancer hospital which provides free medical service in Pakistan, and the Swami Rama foundation’s free hospital. There are a vast number of other people making sacrifices for the poor and needy, not only in India, but all around the globe. Many governments provide national health services with largely free medical care, while his devotees run a government that ignores the poor totally… it won’t even provide toilet or water facilities for millions, while these politicians live in super luxury, even greater than Sai Baba lives in! While 800 million Indians still live on less than $2 a day. There are also thousands of schools providing free education in the world, and innumerable voluntary social and educational projects around the world. “Sathya Sai Baba is rendering selfless service to humanity because he is selfless from top to toe. Are people with brains not able to understand even such a thing ? Why do people publicise? Such bad publicity is done for the sake of money alone.”

This was a veiled reference to those who many have accused him of various sexual abuses. But it is still a bare-faced lie that they received or receive money for this, and he knows it!

No one who has Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed or other great humble figures of history as a model could accept Sathya Sai Baba’s continual self-praise and inordinate and wholly unreasonable boasting about various of ‘his’ achievements. This self-righteousness about his charitable work creates the illusion that it is not shared in by anyone - while in reality it is only other persons who carry out these works in practice or contribute financially with their time, energy and savings.

Sai Propaganda

The Sai Baba Propaganda machine is very large and increasing 

Under the heading ‘Give Help Without Publicity’ in Sanathana Sarathi October 2003, p. 295), Sathya Sai Baba said in a discourse after an earlier speaker had spoken extensively about the achievements of the Sai hospital: “I always advise the doctors not to publicise what we do in the hospital. There are several wonderful things that are happening.” [All Sai Baba's words are in italics]

Whereupon he goes on at great length about supposedly marvellous achievements of the hospital in two individual cases! This yet again shows the complete discrepancy between Sai Baba’s word and deed within the space of two sentences. He knew too that this went out through huge loudspeakers set all around the ashram, and that it would be printed and air-mailed to tens of thousands, posted on various of his official websites and also sent out repeatedly on his own world-wide radio! What a pathetic parody of true spirituality! His wily chutzpah, evident to the level-headed, does not penetrate the thick cocoons of blind faith in which so many devotees imagine themselves protected from untruth. ‘Give Help Without Publicity’  is completely hollow hypocrisy.

Sai Baba’s feats of braggaddocio about his selfless service and marvellous achievements for other people fill his ‘discourses’! His Sathya Sai Organisation copies him to the hilt, in tons of books, dozens of websites, in films (often exhibiting Sai service), in photo exhibitions (to which all centres must contribute pictures of service projects), in constant self-serving radio broadcasts (Radio Sai) and in hiring the most expensive of venues in big cities (New York, San Francisco, London, Melbourne etc.) to propagate and propagandise about service and Sai Baba.

In his discourse, Sai Baba also found the opportunity to slip in a damage-limiting disclaimer about boys sharing his actual bedroom, as he has previously stated definitively they did - which is also common knowledge to ashram residents and regulars. He said: “These boys from the hospital sleep on the ground floor while I stay on the first floor. They discuss hospital related matters. I keep telling them, ‘Do not speak about them anywhere outside’. ” Yet he had just sat uncomplainingly through one of these boy’s extensive accounts of the achievements of the hospital! This brazen duplicity which also illustrates Sai Baba’s strong desire to have information about ‘his’ hospitals publicity trumpeted loud and far. The official Radio Sai website - run on his permission by his trusted follower - Dr. G. Venkataraman - blazons such facts continuously.

In the same discourse, Sai Baba waxed large about having personally allowed the use of an injection costing Rs. 80,000.- to save a patient’s life. He said, “Any amount should be spent to save the life of the patient. I shall bear the expenses…” Can anyone credit it, he will pay out of his own pocket? He who has no pocket! Besides, this use of huge sums for single injections is as a direct affront to the millions of poor in India who can’t even afford simple medicines or treatments. His super-expensive and over-opulent hospital buildings are pretty much of the same ilk.

He also said: “One patient from Nepal had his heart on his right side! Our doctors have shifted it back to the correct location. I told the doctors that no one needed to be informed about this. People may accuse us of praising ourselves.” But it is he who praises himself and informs about it as publicly as he can! Can hypocrisy get more transparent?

Further: “Thousands of students have received education in our university totally free of cost. But we have never publicised the fact.” Thereby he brazenly publicised the fact! And it is NOT true that he has not publicised this before.

More on this soon…

Sai Name & Fame

This year the prominent journals Science and Nature have received the Prince of Asturias Foundation award Compare the quality, outreach and depth of research and understanding in these journals with that exhibited by Sathya Sai Baba’s monthly journal ‘Sanathana Sarathi‘, which is packed full of his handed-down superstitions, endlessly repetitive religious mythology in Sai Baba’s self-promoting and strongly moralising rants (i.e. he calls them ‘discourses’!). Sai Baba’s fantastic claims and predictions (http://home.no.net/abacusa/SaiBaba.htm) are as much an international laughing-stock as in any other fundamentalist cultist teaching (see here). What an enormous difference in lucidity, factuality, usefulness, openness, intelligence, testability and critical thinking between this and almost any international science or cultural journal!

While I was a follower and before I became aware of the huge deceits being practiced by Sai Baba and his inner circle, both the editor of Sanathana Sarathi - V.K. Narasimhan - and I were aware of the low quality of the discourses. The numerous problems posed by Sai Baba’s teachings, his self-contradictory words, factual inaccuracy and major blunders, caused Narasimhan to keep asking me to interpret some to reconcile them with one another. I therefore wrote numerous articles there - mea culpa.

Now, the Asturias awards promote a very different standard of achievement to that of Sai Baba’s uneducated preaching ‘teaching’, as the following indicates well enough, I submit:-
Conferred annually since 1981 the awards are intended to acknowledge scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanitarian work carried out internationally by individuals, groups or organisations in the following eight categories: communication and humanities, social sciences, arts, letters, scientific and technical research, international cooperation, concord and sports - has never been given to Sathya Sai Baba or any of his followers. Instead it has gone to writers such as Álvaro Mutis, Francisco Umbral, Mario Vargas Llosa, Camilo José Cela, Günter Grass, Doris Lessing, Arthur Miller or Claudio Magris; politicians such as Václav Havel, Jacques Delors, Adolfo Suárez, Mijail Gorbachov, Nelson Mandela, Isaac Rabin, H.M. King Hussein of Jordan or Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; institutions such as the United Nation´s High Commission for Refugees, Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Movement), Médicos Sin Fronteras (Doctors without Borders) and Medicus Mundi, the Sephardic Community, the American Foundation for Aids Research (founded and led by Elizabeth Taylor) and CNN; scientists such as Stephen Hawking, the Atapuerca Research Team, Santiago Grisolía, Guido Münch, Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier, the human world´s leading research teams in the field of the human genome, the fathers of Internet or Jane Goodall; historians such as John Elliott or Julio Caro Baroja, intellectuals such as Julián Marías, Indro Montanelli, George Steiner, Umberto Eco, Hans M. Enzensberger or Jürgen Habermas; artists such as Antoni Tàpies, Óscar Niemeyer, Joaquín Rodrigo, Vittorio Gassmann, Barbara Hendricks, Woody Allen and Miquel Barceló.

Sathya Sai Baba has never won any international award we can discover. Nonetheless, it was made known that his ‘holy’ name was actually submitted by the Vajpayee Indian Government for the Nobel Peace Prize (such wishful and politically naive thinking!). For Sathya Sai Baba supports the vastly increasing militarism and nuclear arsenal of the Indian Government through patronising the designer of atomic weapons (Dr. Bhagavantam, deceased) and hobnobbing in friendly fashion in public with the designer of the latest nuclear delivery missiles - President Kalam.  Despite this, some inconsequential relative of Alfred Nobel (who thus bears the same surname) has pronounced that Sai Baba ought to get the Nobel Prize, which suggestion followers trumpeted to the firmament repeatedly. A pathetic attempt to draw attention to their self-proclaimed God Incarnate, who - despite all the billions of dollars in hand - has not made one inch of progress in getting international recognition from any serious institutions. UNESCO has - as is well known - washed its hands of him and has since it posted its advisory on him never accepted invitations to partake in his self-glorifying ‘conferences on education’.

The human values and moral standing of anyone who is seriously considered for the Nobel peace Prize must be impeccable. However, Sathya Sai Baba has been more widely accused of sexual abuses in public than any comparable figure, but the Indian Government, being led by devotees of Sai Baba, has successfully quashed all court petitions against him - so far! Moreover, he was present to the murder of six of his devotees within his private apartment in June, 1993 and the case has never been cleared up, no court proceedings and politically quashed CBI investigations! The Nobel Committee has been fully apprised of these facts and - even were it to regard Sathya Sai Baba as having done anything to forward peace in the world other than to preach - the unresolved murders and uninvestigated sexual abuses would sink his candidature in advance. Then there was his warm appreciation of Dictator Idi Ami… just the ticket for a Nobel Peace Prize winner?