Sathya Sai Baba and AIDS

Sai Baba always claims to be reviving the Indian nation to its former alleged greatness. However, in 2007, the estimated number of people (Avert.org and WHO) with AIDS in India was 2.3 million. The highest HIV prevalence rates are found in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the south, where HIV is primarily spread through heterosexual contact. This is Sai Baba’s home area… but he has said and done nothing to help this situation. Many infections are found amongst injecting drug users (IDUs) and sex workers. There are currently 2.1 million children in forced prostitution (sex slavery) in India. Though the rate of infections has dropped considerably in recent years, it is a vast number of the population who are still affected by AIDS.  

Sathya Sai Baba never Speaks Up on India’s Worst Sufferings: One of mankind’s most basic needs and drives is virtually unmentionable by the supposed ‘world universal teacher’ Though he avoids all subjects like birth control, condoms, AIDS and other sex-related issues like the plague (except in the privacy of the interview room or with close confidantes), he has once shown in public that is more Catholic than the present Pope. He has nothing whatever to advise but abstention from sexual behaviour. He religiously avoids talking about the widespread endorsement by Hindu temples of devadasis – temple prostitutes. That Sathya Sai Baba steers clear of the sex discussion strongly suggests that his real views would awaken astonishment and would cause many to fall away from his movement and might also draw more attention to his own widely reported sexual proclivities and preferences. He lists lust as one of the seven or cardinal sins, without explaining what kind of lust even, though he always claims to have no bodily desires. However, many factual and convincing accounts by a wide variety of young men indicate clearly that Sai Baba has tried to change young men into homosexuals and for his own gratification!

Since the sexual impulse is so fundamental and is the source of so many personal, social and other problems in the world, one might have expected some more enlightened talk about it than preaching monastic and repressive ideals. What a parody of spiritual guidance to mankind! There is nothing whatever ‘spiritual’ about avoiding the issues connected with sexuality. In contrast to Sai Baba’s secrecy and his attitude that strongly suggests guilt and shame feelings about sexuality, the great Sufi mystic and famous  poet, Rumi, regarded sexual desires in youth as ‘letting one’s feathers grow out’, without which dangerous problems can be caused later. (The Essential Rumi, p. 64). This is definitely an enlightened attitude and is favoured by an increasing majority in most modern countries nowadays. (So much for the cherished belief among devotees that Sai Baba will rule the world (or frequently it is said that he already does so – such as by the mad psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Sandweiss who believes that he alone has brought an era of global peace!). Sai Baba’s own deranged and megalomaniac claims that the whole world will be in his organisation and what newspapers in India reported he told Singhai: The World to be unified under Hinduism by 2030. 

AIDS treatment with retroviral drugs: The tiniest percentage of Indians with AIDS could afford retroviral medicines until the Government took a lead in National AIDS Council (NAC) in 2006. The problem of access to retroviral drugs is still intense, however. Recently an appeal was made to Manmohan Singh to address the urgent need to rollout second-line anti-retroviral drugs in India. Not until July 2003, did the largely puritan-minded Indian Government at long last officially recognise the threat as an official figure of 4/5 million AIDS sufferers in India was published, while the hidden figure was said by other observers probably far greater. Most Indians never use condoms. Over half of all AIDS sufferers are women, but the vast majority of Indian women cannot even raise the question of this with their husbands. Ignorance about AIDS is still widespread due to traditional taboos about sex, and Sathya Sai Baba’s very puritan influence has increased these taboos. Open and informed discussion of sexual problems has long been limited largely to the small English-speaking minority. In 2002, when Bianca Jagger returned from a tour of India to study the problems of AIDS there on behalf of Christian Aid, she was interviewed on BBC World Service (4-12-’02). We were informed that Indian has the most rapid rate of AIDS infections of all countries in the world bar South Africa. The situation worsened in that the wild superstition that sex with children and even babies can cure AIDS also developed in India.

See also Sleeping with the Goddess
Rescuing girls from temple prostitution

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Please read about the Public Petition for Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization,  You can see a selected list of prominent signers of the Petition here.