Sai Baba’s failing health

On this photo from a year or so ago, there is already a decidedly ga-ga look on Sai Baba’s face. Instead of the usual, where he cuts the ribbons, he is ‘assisted’ (he is actually holding onto the hand of his helper!). Likewise, videos also show him unable to cut his birthday cakes any longer.  Rumours that he is non compos mentis have become yet more persistent, having begun with accounts of his apparently senile behaviour already three years ago (including one from a recently-disaffected US resident in India who had been editing some of the Puttaparthi magazine ‘Sai Impressions’). He was heard to be giving instructions about events that were not scheduled and never took place, talking confusedly and sometimes garbling his words. It is Mrs. Geetha Reddu, the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Minister who is doing the honours of inaugurating the tourist complex in the above photo. No longer is Sai Baba against ’spiritual tourism’ – as was so strongly formerly – and is even for out-and-out tourism and thus now also for his own direct involvement in Indian politics (see Sai Baba Sparks Political Furore)

It is his powerful money and power instinct at work, no doubt! See this excerpt from an official Sai baba webpage which shows how Puttaparthi is being made a money earner through massive injection of public funds:-

In the light of the likelihood that he is losing his marbles and may therefore be declared too unfit to give evidence, he may escape justice and having to face an Indian court for the allegations of child abuse, widespread sexual abuses, corruption and murder cover-up before his death. In any case, he has the full weight of the Indian government behind him, with devotees in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and India’s President, Patil as the last in a long line of such luminaries who worship him. Among his most excessive aberrations from science and reason, Sai Baba believes in black magic (see here), spreads many fantastic rumours about his supposed miraculous powers (far exceeding anything heard of except from the Superman comics) and much else besides.