In a land of dire need, Sathya Sai rides on a golden chariot

Sai Baba with his ritual priests - saving the world?

See how the current situation in India with its calamitous dollar-a-day poverty and vast and heinous social injustices demonstrates the utter failure of Sathya Sai Baba’s boast that he has come to set Indian right and then save the rest of the countries of the world – in short humanity itself! His famous assertion, made in the 1960s to Dr. John Hislop, that India is the engine that alone is capable of drawing all other countries after it towards a moral world is among the very least convincing of Sathya Sai Baba’s many wild prophesies. It smacks strongly of  a chauvinistic nationalism that might be characterised ‘Indien Uber Alles’. Absurdly enough, Sai Baba blames the current decline in India and the world as based wholly on the decline in the practices of sacred rituals (yagnas and yagas) as being the main cause of all the troubles of humanity!

Things in India are getting worse for the masses – who are yet further away from the conveniences that the top castes enjoy. Suicides of farmers in the thousands, unable to make ends meet. No social security or health care available to the vast majority – that means 800 million people. This (despite Sathya Sai Baba’s devotee-financed hospitals which seem to cater mostly for his devotees from India and abroad. Meanwhile he celebrates himself with the most lavish use of funds at every occasion, especially his birthdays and through museums devoted to his supposed  “glory”.

Take for example the following very recent ceremony where Sathya Sai Baba lorded it over all in a vastly ostentatious Golden Chariot (yet with his invalid chair on it) oversaw the ritual offerings of butter, gemstones etc. (yagnas) to the Gods (who are superfluous since he is all of them rolled into one, if his constant boasts are to be believed). The sickeningly absurd statements made about are exemplified by the following:-

Sai Baba yajna 17 Nov. 2008

“Going by the Hindu scripture, a human being crossing 83 years in his physical frame is a remarkably significant occasion. This occasion comes with a greater import when he is supposedly sighting the moon the 1000th time during his physical sojourn. For the mortals it entails a greater significance. But, how does it signify, when it comes to The One who is credited with the onus of entire creation? An answer to this would come when Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, the Lord walking on two feet is crossing this humanly attributed mile stone, as His physical frame is touching the 83rd year of His glorious sojourn on planet earth.”

See ‘Rich and Poor In India’