Tulasi Srinivas and her research into Sathya Sai Baba issues

An academic professor, Tulasi Srinivas, has published a book about Sathya Sai Baba and his influence on reviving religious faith on a global basis.  (Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization and Religious Pluralism through the Sathya Sai Movement (Columbia University Press, 2010). This book attempts to present what one would expect from a serious researcher, an independent and  balanced view of the matter. In this respect, Srinivas has made a greater attempt to include the sphere of facts and discussions that many other academic works have avoided (making them peripheral and weak as guides to the true nature of Sai Baba’s doctrines, organizations and activities). She has at least taken up the major issues of some of the infamous murders in Sai Baba’s rooms and allegations of sexual abuse from young men all around the world. Under typical academic and publishing restraints, however, Srinivas has erred rather on the side of undue caution about these two major crises for Sathya Sai Baba’s reputation and import in spiritual matters. Her subject matter has originally come to her through friends who were Sai devotees and she was clearly attracted by the promise of a major spiritual renewal that many people – including myself – thought he represented. She admits of being naive at the outset of her researches in that she did not realize the complex nature of the movement – the cult of secrecy, hierarchy and tensions within it, especially within the institutions – the Sai Organization, the Sai Central Trust and other bodies. Though she has been given much information from Sai movement insiders – including myself. She refers to my writings in an acceptable manner… though ignoring a great deal of what I have exposed, probably through fear of legal retribution from the powerful and super-rich Trust and ashrams. Besides, I am a dissident who sacrificed nearly two decades of my life to working for Sathya Sai Baba and Co., and – unlike her – I am now less of an academic than an activist with a duty to refute my former well-intended positive writings and therefore must disregard the norms of not saying what one knows and speaking my mind clearly and frankly. Note further that, despite Srinivas’ hasty interview rather over-endorsing the man and his movement after his controversial illness and death; Srinivas’ appreciation of the whole history is out-dated. The recent revelations of hoarding of private wealth on a huge scale by Sai Baba when his apartments were opened, the bitter battles over ‘succession’ and the huge wealth involved, the police investigations of the secreting of massive funds from Puttaparthi in vans and buses where members of the supposedly impeccable Trust were involved, and public allegations that the Sai Trust murdered Sathya Sai Baba, put it all in a more open and different light to the formerly unchallenged propaganda by his minions. 

Tulasi Srinivas evidently did not make a very serious study of the infamous murders incident in Sathya Sai Baba’s apartment in 1993 (as I have done), though she chose to present her own view of the matter, clearly only a personal and poorly documented opinion based on a narrow segment of the available materials. For a start, she writes:-

“They knifed Mr. Radhakrishnan who was in a room nearby, as well as another close devotee, Mr. Mahajan (who survived) and ran to an inner room and bolted themselves in.”

Nothing could be clearer from the documents that Mahajan did NOT survive the attack, so Srinivas made a major and revealing error, one of many similar in her book. Tulias Srinivas does not consider the massed evidence collected by the national award-winning sceptic, Basava Premanand, such as in his very voluminous book ‘Murders in Sai Baba’s Bedroom’, nor his other clarificatory writings. She does not refer to what was revealed to me by V.K. Narasimhan, the editor of Sai Babas’s journal and a very close servitor about the role of Sai Baba’s younger brother (Janakiramiah) in causing and endorsing the police executions, not of his complicity with the then Indian Home Minister (S.B. Chavan) nor take any notice of his frenetic activities in dealing with the issue – frequent flights to Sai Baba to confer with him, as recorded throughout the Indian press in dozens of articles (see some here - India’s Home Minister could not avoid investigation by CBI, but quashed it later) The quashing of the entire case, after maximum confusion had been created by the involved parties, including Sai Baba himself who was never questioned. Nor does she address Sai Baba’s own inconsistencies and rumour-spreading in his subsequent discourse some weeks later.

Continuing in her inaccurate style, Srinivas writes: “Former devotee Tal Brooke tested out several possible gurus –  living and dead – including Sri Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, Paramahamsa Yogananda, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He then traveled to India in 1969 and, in January 1970, encountered Sathya Sai Baba and became a devotee/disciple, writing several books…. One could argue that Tal Brooke was a spiritual tourist for the twenty-odd years he was a Sathya Sai devotee.” (Chapter 2 – footnote 5) Firstly, since his first book exposing Sai Baba including his sexual exploits with followers was published in 1975, he was NOT a devotee for twenty-odd years, but only 14 years at most and secondly, his involvement with the teachings of other gurus preceded his time with Sathya Sai Baba. Very sloppy handling of facts by Srinivas again. Further more far-reaching criticism of ‘Winged Faith’ has already been posted at: Kevin R.D. Shepherd on biased research by academic Tulasi Srinivas