Sai Baba’s very close confidante V.K. Narasimhan

It is necessary once more to restate certain facts I have publicised earlier, but which newcomers to the Sathya Sai Baba movement will not be told and may never discover. I concentrate on all the negative facts – and they are facts too – because I gave far to much of my life to promoting Sathya Sathya Sai Baba when he was deceiving me and everyone around him in the most demeaning manner. The massive positive propaganda for Sai Baba across the entire Internet and the major slur campaign against critics needs to be consistently countered. It is a matter of protection of the innocent and the vulnerable.

VKN and Priddy

After 15 years of regular visits to Sathya Sai Baba, countless ‘darshans‘, five long interviews, I know with certainty that most of Sai Baba’s activities are kept strictly secret, except to a handful of his inner circle of attendants. The top leaders in his Sathya Sai Organisation (both Indians and foreign) are unable to scrutinize more than a tiny fraction of his activities, they must wait on his beck and call and do what they are told. This was often said to me by one of his close attendants, the famous newspaper editor, V.K. Narasimhan, with whom I had a long and deep friendship (see here)

Known as ‘VKN’ or Narasimhan deceased in March 2000) who lived his retirement at Sai Baba’s ashram where he edited the monthly journal of the movement. VKN confided to me experiences and facts known to insiders of the ashram but which he was unable, not least for reasons of his own and others’ security, to speak openly about there. I am fortunately able to present much evidence of this in the form of scans of notebooks pages from the extensive diary and notes, which I kept every day at the ashrams through 9 long visits.  I was deceived and led into self-censorship not to question much most of that time – like all devotees, I was rationalising everything untoward to make it all fit the Procrustean bed of Sathya Sai Baba’s claims about himself, his work and ‘mission’. Narasimhan was decisively instrumental in putting an end to all of that for me.

Since he gave up his Madras house and, at the wish of his Sai-devoted wife, took up residence at Sai Baba’s ashrams,  VKN fell gradually more and more under the charm offensive Sai Baba directed at him .. He was impressed by Sai Baba’s accumulated social influence and movement because it was at least achieving some improvement in the area, providing education where there was none before, and some measure of social support and care.He became a follower despite lifelong scepticism towards gurus and swamis. He told me that throughout his life he had seen the incomprehensible ills and horrors that plague India amid the wall-to-wall corruption of Indian politicians and their scandalous neglect of the poor and suffering and it was because Sai Baba was stimulating people to social involvement that he got involved.

When first I met him he was frankly cynical about all Sai Baba’s claims to miraculous divine powers like  omnipotence… not least after spending being for many hours almost every week in Sai Baba’s close proximity. He did come to consider the widespread belief in his supposed miracles to be important for the cause in that it encouraged donations and such like. As time went by and he learned more about the people involved and their manipulations and embezzlements, he became increasingly critical to many of the social projects as falling short of the claims made for them. Since had already become very dependent on the ashram, he was unable to voice his true opinions in public – though he did to so various people in private and even sometimes in lectures for foreigners. He told me occasionally that he would never have ended up there but for his his wife’s religious devotion to Sai Baba, which he lost shortly thereafter), he grew more and more frail and relied on the care he received from a devotee relative (Usha) others there, so escape from the place was no longer a realistic option and he had no similar place to retire to. However, he did leave the ashram for a spiritual retreat just after the sex allegations against Sai Baba became public, some month or more after he became mortally ill in late 1999.