Kushwant Singh on Sai Baba and devotees

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Newspaper in Sri Lanka  (the SL Sunday Times  24 April, 2011) writes: “Famous Indian writer Kushwant Singh once referred in his column to an American friend who was a disciple of Sai Baba. The American (Tal Brooke) was later disillusioned by what happened in Sai Baba’s campus and published his memoirs titled Lord of the Air: Tales of a Modern Antichrist. “He mentioned the prevalence of homosexuality and extreme violence there. I reviewed the book in one of my columns and earned the disapproval of his followers,” Singh said. “One of his Sikh disciples, a retired colonel who lived in Puttaparthi for some years, often wrote to persuade me to join him in the worship of my long-dead parents in a jungle in Kerala. Apparently, my parents had pleaded with him to get me to worship Sai Baba. I wondered why my parents did not come to Delhi and talk to me directly.”

Under the title ‘Spiritual depths’, The Guardian (UK) wrote on Friday June 18, 2004 about Sathya Sai Baba and a ‘Hindu scholar’ (Kuswant Singh) as follows:- “BBC2’s This World strand last night gave us The Secret Swami, an entertaining hour that made a compelling case against Sai Baba, portraying him as a charlatan and an abuser. Young men who claimed to have been sexually abused by Sai Baba related hair-raising stories of “private interviews” in which the not-so-holy man pulled his skirt over his head and invited them to get down and dirty. Hilariously, one Hindu scholar reminded us that this is a practice sanctioned by neither scripture nor tradition. “Worship of the linga does not include doing the blow-job.”  [[NOTE. That  was the famous Kushwant Singh: See his fuller BBC Video clip HERE – 2.1MBS Quicktime movie]]

“What started out as a routine denunciation developed into something more sinister. Sadly, the moment I see a man in a dress surrounded by grinning worshippers, I’m looking for a catch – and it didn’t take much to prove that Sai Baba’s “miracles” were nothing more than a bit of old-fashioned sleight of hand. …But reporter Tanya Datta did her job properly, and went far beneath the surface of magic tricks and gaudy tat. She found that Sai Baba bought the eternal gratitude of rural Indian villagers by paying for clean water supplies, and that he caused a massive hospital to be built, funded by one of his followers, Isaac Tigrett (see BBC video clip), who co-founded the Hard Rock Cafe chain. She discovered also that the Indian government, rightly mindful of the rural vote, has turned a blind eye to claims of wrongdoing in the Baba camp. A government official got very shirty indeed with Ms Datta, shouting denials before he’d even heard the allegations. In these cases, “no” usually does mean “yes”.” [See ex-Minister Manmohan Joshi in brief BBC video clip here]”