Sathya Sai Baba’s influence on the Indian Judiciary

Basava Premanand probed deeply into various claims by devotees that Sathya Sai Baba had ‘fixed’ the judiciary to protect them. His voluminous correspondence with court authorities at all levels show how he was given a pathetic run-around and that his questions were never answered by anyone, but referred to others. In no remotely democratic judiciary would this be tolerated. But then, everyone knows that the Indian courts are among the worst in the world for doing justice – or even allowing petitions to be heard. T.N. Seshan himself complained of the undemocratic state of affairs in India when he was Chief Election Commissioner Failings in Indian Justice – by ex-Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan, though he admitted it had improved somewhat later on. Meanwhile, many other level-headed observers and academics in India deplore the judiciary, the red tape, the corruption (paying to jump the endless queue of cases and much more). It is widely proven that corruption flourishes at most levels in the Indian administration, and not least at the very top!

DID SATYA SAI BABA INFLUENCE THE JUDICIARY? (by Basava Premanand)

In 1981 I came across the 48th divine dawn Birthday Number of the News Chronicle dated 23.11.1973 so also the souvenir published by Sri Satya Sai Seva Samithi, Bombay titled “AT THE LOTUS FEET 1968”.

The article “Those early years” authored by Y.R. Ghorpade, EX Maharaja of Sandur attracted my attention as it contained a defamatory sentence defaming our Judiciary.

“BEFORE I COULD MENTION THIS PROBLEM TO BABA HE SAID THAT I NEED NOT WORRY ABOUT THE SUPREME COURT CASE AS HE WOULD SEE THAT THE CASE IS DECIDED IN MY FAVOUR. AND, SURE ENOUGH IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS I HEARD THAT WE HAD WON IN THE SUPREME COURT.”

To get the details of the case I wrote to the Ex Maharaja of Sandur and though he kept mum on the case advised me to write to Sri Sathya Sai Books & Publications, Prasanthinilayam.

From his silence on my questions, I knew that there was something interesting in the case and I started searching for the case in the Supreme Court Law Journals and I succeeded in my search in 1984. The said judgement was given on 6.5.1966 by Justices K.N.Wanchoo, J.C,Shah and S.M.Sikri in civil appeal Nos. 1l33 & 1134. Hon.J.C.Shah gave a dissenting judgment dismissing the petitions of Y.R. Ghorpade while other two Hon.Justices allowed the appeals with costs at Supreme Court and the High Court.

When I went through the magazines published by Satya Sai Baba, it was found that YR. Ghorpade and his wife did visit Puttaparthi in October 1965.

As a person interested in the welfare of the Judiciary,I wrote to the Hon’ble Chief Justice of India to give me the names of the Hon.Justices of the Supreme Court and the High Courts and the addresses of the High Courts in India, so that I could write to them to know their reactions in this matter individually and collectively. The Asst. Registrar of the Hon. Supreme Court rejected my request.

After collecting the names of the Hon’ble Justices from the Law Journals, a petition was sent to the Hon’ble Chief Justice of India and the Companion Justices of the Hon. Supreme Court on 2.2.1985 for answers to the following questions and the reply was that “no action can be taken on the papers sent by me as such the same have been lodged”!

Can a person like Satya Sai Baba who proclaims himself to be the reborn Shirdi Sai Baba and Sarva Daivatva Swaroopa -the god of all the gods by showing some tricks as miracles without ‘permitting investigations to the truthfulness of his miracles influence the Hon.Justices in Supreme Court to favour the persons whom they want?

2. what is the part played by Satya Sai Baba and through whom, in seeing that this case is decided in favour of YR. Ghorpade?

3. Have the Hon. Justices, gone against Law and Justice while the case was decided in favour of YR. Ghorpade?

4. If what is narrated in the article is false what action the Hon. Supreme Court would take against Y.R. Ghorpade and News Chronicle, Ludhiana for publishing this article?

It is now for the Lawyers, Jurists, Judiciary etc., to find if Sathya Sai Baba had influenced the Hon.Supreme Court to get the case decided in favour of Y.R.Ghorpade, and if not to take contempt of court action against YR.Ghorpade. Or if the Hon. Justices have been influenced then to pass necessary orders in this respect so that people of ‘India have confidence in the Judiciary.

It was surprising that one of the Hon.Justices met Sai Baba ‘when this case was pending and later Sikri &Co., appointed as Lawyers of Y.R. Ghorpade and his business empire. (p. 74-5)

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Did Sathya Sai Baba influence the judiciary? Full coverage of this issue with documentation (scans of documents etc.)

The Supreme Court engaged in and illegal act – see here Supreme Court of India cover-up: petition ad Sathya Sai Baba rejected

Indian police get away with murder – outrage in India

Sathya Sai Baba and Indian dignitaries

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Sathya Sai Baba descended to ‘save India’

So far the self-proclaimed avatar of Vishnu, Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, cannot be seen to have done more than a minimal amount to save India and uplift her poor and their vast sufferings, as he has promised long since. Only then, he has proclaimed, will he proceed to save the rest of humanity from world disaster (so THAT will have to wait a LONG time, it appears).

Quotation of [prediction made by Sathya Sai Baba to John Hislop

Let us glance briefly at how current events illustrate the on-going failure to save the poor of India from disasters. With all the excitement in Indian about recent economic growth and the production of the world’s cheapest car, the  Nano by Tata Industries, the continuing calamitous state of India’s masses tends to be overlooked. Currently there are the worst known floods in India in Bihar (note: Sai Baba claims to be able to turn back floods and rain) – as well as serious  religious conflicts with killings (East India) and a state of unrest and violence in Kashmir again.

Economic boom no benefit to millions of poor: The very prominent Indian journalist and Executive Editor of the critical Tekelka weekly, Sankarshan Thakur, was interviewed on BBC World News, 3/9/2008. He was asked if the Indian economic boom and globalization were helping raise the poor of India, which he denied, saying that nothing of the Indian economic boom has filtered down to the poor. He adds that politicians in India are never held to account for their mistakes

Thakur is known for incisive reporting and is considered by some Indian journalists to be one of the finest exponents of print journalism in the country and an expert on backward Bihar State. He is the author of “The Making of Laloo Yadav, The Unmaking of Bihar”, where he showed incisively how thousands of crores of central government development funds directed to Bihar are unused, year after year. The comptroller and auditor general of India laments this as criminal, but nobody could do a thing. The poor, unlettered and backward citizens of Bihar [there are 100 million Biharis in India] are being kept in primitive agricultural poverty without development or progress in technological benefits.

My purpose here is not to descry the various benefits that have accrued to the Indian poor and suffering, nor even to rich Indians, for that matter, through donations to the Sathya Sai Central Trust (mostly foreign). My point is entirely to show that the monstrous claims of being the returning Avatar of Vishnu, Rama and Krishna come to save humanity and transform India and the world is entirely bogus to the point of absurdity, when the facts about how limited are the improvements due to Sathya Sai Baba’s movement. I am not beguiled by vast flights of fancy so common among devotees about what Sai Baba may or may not perhaps be doing on supposed ‘astral levels’ or miraculously far beyond the ken of human minds. I refer to demonstrable benefits (even when disregarding the damage he has done to very many persons who have left him contacted me, or whose personal accounts I have read).

See also  ‘Has World Saviour Missed the Plane?’

As to religious differences in India, see here

Failed Clandestine Political Lobbying by the Prashanthi Council

The Argentinian journalist and TV director Alejandro Agostinelli wrote: “Goldstein read a letter in which Sri Athal Bihari Vajpayee, Prime Minister of India, manifested being hurt by “the wild, reckless and concocted accusations made by certain vested interests and people against Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba … [who] is revered globally as an embodiment of love and selfless service to humanity.” Goldstein refused to give copies of the letter to the press. “We are still waiting for it to be subscribed by dignitaries of the whole world,” he said. They were to get signatures from the President of El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as Al Gore, former vice-president of the United States.” [Translated from: “Gatopardo” Magazine
Feb 2002 No. 21 Yr XX – PP. 44-61 & 120-121, http://www.gatopardo.com]
The Failure of the Lobbying of Dignitaries: The dignitaries of the whole world” were very prominent by their total absence from the signatories on the Indian PM’s letter! Al Gore was then running for the Presidency of the US, so he was very wise to keep his hands clean. he has continued to do so, even though a former school friend of his – Isaac Tigrett (former Hard Rock Cafe Owner) has tried to convince him of Sai Baba’s alleged Godhood. The Presidents of El Salvador and Guatemala did not sign, not any other foreign dignatory. However, there is no doubt that a major campaign to get such persons to sign was undertaken… but it failed completely.
One notable fact about the letter from Vajpayee – it was not based on any evidence whatsoever. It has been challenged through the Freedom of Information Act by Basava Premanand, and the result is that no evidence of the former Prime Minister having investigated the allegations in any way is forthcoming. Instead the authorities gave Premanand the bureaucratic run-around in a transparent cover-up attempt, a telling, indelible blot on the claim to democratic openness of the Indian Government. (See documentation here).The head of the International Sathya Sai Organization, Dr. M. Goldstein, together with Dr. William Harvey, flew to Argentina to partake in a follow-up TV programme to one where sexual abuse by Sathya Sai Baba was testified by three former devotees (Zona de Investigacion, Azul TV – Read the full account by Alejandro Agostinelli here .

Secret Lobbying of prominent people to gain influence and respectability
Drs. Goldstein and Harvey are both members of the so-called ‘Prashanthi Council’, a body of confirmed total believers chosen by Sai Baba to promote him wherever and whenever they can. This ‘Prashanthi Council’ is a clandestine affair, which contacts professors, politicians and the rich and famous in the attempt to induce them to attend the various propaganda meetings held by the Sathya Sai Organization and – if possible – to get them to visit Sathya Sai Baba. This council does not respond to any mails asking valid questions about Sathya Sai Baba, such as the formal appeal sent by the JuST Group (see here). It maintains a regular ‘muerta’ – a wall of silence. The reason for this is not least that in October 1999, Sai Baba said “Anyone found talking in the Verandah should be sent out immediately, whosoever it may be. …I will never call such people for interview again. Only those who observe silence are good people. Silence fosters purity. Therefore observe silence at all times.”

Many attempts have been made to induce prominent political personages to visit Sathya Sai Baba, former PM of the UK, Tony Blair, was invited to visit Sai Baba [http://www.exbaba.com/blairbaba.html] by the Sathya Sai Organization of UK (see here), but he turned down the offer, as a letter of his proves. A group of UK Conservative politicians visiting India were sidetracked and railroaded to Prashanthi Nilayam without realising what it was all about. Rumours that Hilary Clinton was to visit spread when she travelled from Madras to Bangalore in 19 , but she never did. Former International Chairman of the Sathya Sai Organization, Indulal Shah, managed to arrange a presentation at the White House (weird attempt to induce Bush to support Sai Baba?).

Prime Ministers and some Presidents from states like Nepal, Sri Lanka, Mauritius have visited Sai Baba, as well as the infamous former Italian PM, Craxi, and the Duchess of York known as ‘Fergie’. Even Charles, the Prince of Wales and a chief target of many attempts even since the 1960s to get him to recognise Sai Baba, formerly expressed to Sai officials – including V.K. Narasimhan by letter – his desire to visit, but this never happened. Since the exposure from 2000 onwards, Prince Charles cannot ever afford any kind of public association with such a controversial and suspect figure as Sathya Sai Baba. The list of partly successful and also numerous failed attempts to hi-jack dignitaries could be extended considerably… but enough for now. Sathya Sai Baba has reportedly said he will rule the world for 48 hours, and has in a public discourse announced that the Sathya Sai Organisation will contain the entire world! This is certainly the intention, at least…

See also Public Petition for Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and his Worldwide Organization
(Spanish version PETICIÓNPÚBLICA PARA INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES

Sathya Sai Baba and the exploitation of women

Sathya Sai Baba makes some extraordinary claims here. Bharat (i.e. India) was safe from two world wars simply because of its virtuous women? Firstly, not all India’s women were virtuous, it would seem, since prostitution was very widespread during both world wars and has increased continually since then. Now there is a massive AIDS crisis which also involves women, of course. Secondly, the greatness of Bharat… there is a suggestion here of India’s former supposed glories. India’s greatness today – whatever it consists in – does not exceed that of other countries surely? It’s glory is harder to discover nowadays, even with all due respects.One can applaud the sentiment to respect women and make them happy… but Sathya Sai Baba is known for preferring men to women on all occasions… he spends far more time on the male side during darshan and is always surrounded only by male attendants. In his ashrams – at conferences and festivals – women are relegated to sit on the ground, while important men occupy chairs. After many decades, Sai Baba agreed to have a “Ladies day” once a year. (the remaining 364 days are actually Men’s days).

Lacking democracy and ‘rights’ for women
Sai Baba does not allow women on his Sathya Sai Central Trust, nor can more than a very few ever be seen in leadership positions in his organization, especially in India. See this quotation too:

“Women too are doing all jobs equal to men. In fact, women do work more sincerely with dedication… …They have the work culture better than men.” (Sai Echoes from Kodai Hills, 1998, p. 48-9)This is true enough, and well-deserved praise generally, and especially for dedication at such tedious and unchanging tasks as telephone exchanges offered. Yet it is noteworthy that Sai Baba nowhere has deemed to mention that women in India are very largely much underpaid compared to men, vastly overworked – and those who have to labour also have to run the home and take care of the children almost entirely in India’s male-dominated culture. Sai Baba confirms this himself and would reinforce this double burden on women, as in:-

“Women should realise that, irrespective of their education or position, their foremost obligation is to protect the home. For Indian (Bharatiya) women, the first duty is to reform the home and run it along ideal lines!” Sai Baba at Prashanthi Nilayam on `Ladies day` 19/10/1996. (Sanathana Sarathi, Dec. 1996, p. 334)
More on Sai Baba’s confusion about women here

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Please go to the Public Petition for Official Investigations of Sathya (or Satya) Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

 

India and Pakistan celebrate independence, still at stalemate

This absurd and demeaning charade where Indian and Pakistani soldiers must strut like adversarial fighting cocks formalises the impossible stalemate situation sustained throughout by the governments and backed respectively by Muslim and Hindu religious leaders – despite the horrific massacres of Partition, two wars and a most terrible regular death toll in Kashmir. The conflict has led to the ever-increasing militarization of both countries and even a nuclear arms race.

Religious strife was the key to Partition.
Religious differences remain the scourge of the Indian sub-continent. It is mainly a Hindu-Muslim issue, though Sikhs and other denominations are party to the issues. Pamela Mountbatten, daughter of Lord Mountbatten, interviewed on BBC World (Hard Talk) this week, was asked what her father would have thought of India since Partition. She expressed the opinion that he would have deplored two things above all else: the sheer betrayal of constitutional promises to the rajputs, maharajas and independent states by Indira Gandhi during the 1970s Emergency and the Hinduization of the Indian Government, contrary to both the letter and spirit of the Constitution. In short, India is only a secular state on paper, but is dominated almost totally by Hindus, who suppress all religious, tribal and other non-Hindu minorities in every way they see fit.

Sathya Sai Baba shows he is powerless to intervene
One may ask why has Sathya Sai Baba – who claims to be all-powerful and all-knowing – never visited Pakistan?  He has annexed to himself the name of the saint (Sai Baba) of Shirdi, who always made great efforts – often successful – to remove strife and create unity between Hindus and Muslims. Sathya Sai talks glibly of unity of faiths but is himself the epitome of a Hindu guru – claiming to be God Incarnate and an avatar. Sathya Sai Baba has often demonstrated his ignorance of the tenets of other world faiths, and he does so most grandly as to Islam. No orthodox Muslim can ever accept an avatar or God Incarnate, for it breaks with the most fundamental tenet of their faith – that Allah is beyond all forms and can never be incarnated or even represented in a human form. No wonder that Sai Baba has but a small handful of followers who (confusedly) claim to be Muslims. Yet the Indian Government embraces him and totes him to surrounding nations as their ‘national treasure’! Sathya Sai is worshipped as the embodiment of all the Hindu deities and is overwhelmingly surrounded by Hindus and Hindu ceremonials and cultural traditions. How can he ever have been so ill-advised as to claim he would rule the world one day?

‘God’ patronising the poor in India?

WHO IS SURROUNDED BY POMP?
Note that Sathya Sai Baba is ever surrounded by material comforts and has had to do nothing whatever for himself for his entire adult life. This is in total contrast the lot of the vast population. Rather, Sathya Sai Baba speaks a great deal about the need to regenerate India’s faith in it’s glorious past, religious culture and to reform the country entirely. Now, the glory of the past is a miasma, unsupported by historical research. But Sai Baba is right about the need for an entire reform, if dissatisfaction with the system by more than half its population is anything to go by. However, the authoritarian guru-ridden religious and otherworldly undemocratic culture Sai Baba stands for is probably the last thing that would create a humanitarian and caring society… for both religious faith and superstition of the Sai Baba type – throughout India’s caste-ridden and violent past – have failed signally so far.

While many Indian gurus and swamis like Maharishi, Maharaji, Osho Rajneesh, Ravi Shankar etc. travel abroad to seek followers and financial fortunes – Sai Baba does not need to travel as the money flows in from abroad after four decades plus of intense proselytizing to foreigners. This comes not least from his original claims not to ask for anything, not to accept or own money, but purely to heal and bless, teach and give. At first he lived what appeared to be a life of considerable renunciation and the ashrams to which he invited foreigners were very Spartan and tough going… which he recommended as a cure for the soft life. All that has changed completely. The ashrams and surroundings at Puttaparthi and Whitefield have undergone a sea change – top class hotels, a gigantic property boom and higher and higher standards. The Indian middle classes were long the mainstay of Sai Baba, and their standards have prevailed. Sai Baba is known to all to favour the rich, speak more to those ladies with very luxurious saris. And to foreigners whose qualifications and riches are known to (and carefully monitored) by his staff. No one has seen a ragged and truly poor person enter his interview room for decades.

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Public Petition for Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and his Worldwide Organization
View ex-follower signatures
(Spanish version PETICIÓNPÚBLICA PARA INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES)

Is India a Moral Engine and Social Ideal to Emulate?

     

The statement that Bharat (i.e India) is the engine that alone is capable of drawing all other countries after it towards a moral world is among the least convincing of Sathya Sai Baba’s many wild prophesies. It expresses a chauvinistic nationalism of a kind like ‘India Uber Alles’, but it absurdly bases this (in the above quotation) entirely on the fact that the decline in the practices of sacred rituals (yagnas and yagas) is the main cause of all the troubles of humanity. Anyone can see that this is definitely not a winning formula, not least because surely at least 90% of the world’s population who are not very traditional Hindus will simply ignore it. To emphasize strictly Hindu rituals as the key to world regeneration is hardly a way to spread ‘universal religion’, as Sathya Sai claims to do. On this day, the 60th anniversary of Partition, Muslims can hardly be enthused by this religiously-divisive claim, which may well have contributed ideologically to the eventual tearing down of the Ayodhya mosque and the agitation to replace it with a Hindu temple.

How could a Country with so many well-known social and ethical failings guide the world?
For decades I admired much about India and its people, which I still partly do. But I became more and more aware – through personal experience and learning about India that I had been badly misled by all the propaganda of its rulers and politicians, and not least also that spread by Sai Baba as a confidence builder for India (in which I rather wanted to believe and hoped was true). I now say that, had India been the original home of democracy, human rights, women’s rights, social justice, equality, fraternity and liberty, then this would have been credible. But it is falling down on every one of these precepts. The non-violence movement of Mahatma Gandhi was truly admirable, but it was a flash in the pan which passed away with him while millions of Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other in the late 40s. The intensity and number of massive wars of the most brutal and destructive nature which India has undergone speaks against the claim that it has ever been any kind of Utopia. This is known to have been so ever since the time of Krishna, when the Mahabharata war was no picnic but a vast killing field. There were gigantic ravages under Emperor Ashok – literal mass genocide until there was hardly anyone left to kill. India was then subject to the ghastly horrors of the Mughal invasion which destroyed much Hindu culture in the north. In the wake of all this, wars between local kingdoms continued until the British subjugated much of the sub-continent. From Independence onwards, India has fought wars against Pakistan (also China and Tamils) and there had been continuous internal strife between Hindus and Muslims, the State and indigenous peoples and minorities of all kinds to this day. As almost every visitor to India soon discovers, criminality and corruption are rife today, which is often so in societies where there is large scale extreme poverty.

Yagnas and yagas have so far failed India
India has evidently not improved because of the practice of ritual prayer and offerings (Yagnas and Yagas…). It is generally regarded today the world over as a mad idea of fanatical religionists that a countries’ ills are due to non-observance of Divine will, prayers and sacrifices etc.!  India has declined morally, according to Sathya Sai Baba’s repeated harangues in many discourses. He sets up the same old story of India having been the cradle of mankind as a place of harmony and light (indicated by the ancient name ‘Bharat’).  But there is simply no evidence of there having been a ‘Golden Age’ in India, except in the imaginings of priests and moralists and in texts similar to the Bible’s Garden of Eden myth. That India once was the perfect spiritual land – a moral paradise – as Sai Baba preaches – is a kind of deception based on wishful thinking more than any historical fact that has survived. India has no doubt ever had all the problems that have plagued humanity since time immemorial, but which modern civilisation has at last begun to defeat.

It can be confidently concluded that Sathya Sai Baba suffers from a variant of serious cognitive derangement that can fitly be called ‘mythomania’. As to the current state of affairs on humanitarian morals in India, I have already briefly summarised some of the dire calamities which prevail there. (See here)

Super-Rich Indian Gurus who don’t deliver what they promise

Billionaire Non-delivering ‘Spiritual gurus’ The ‘many-billion dollar question’ is not really so much how Sai Baba has generated such huge coffers, for this is almost ‘par for the course’ for Swamis, gurus and temples in India. Tirupathi is reckoned to be the most fabulous as to wealth, and the Puri Temple of Jagannath is not far behind. Sathya Sai Baba may still not have become top of the ‘national treasure’ pile yet. The self-entitled ‘Baghwan’ Sri Rajneesh (aka Osho) had vast sums before he was indicted by the US Government on so many criminal charges that he had to sell of cheaply his 84 tax-evasion Rolls Royces to a second-hand car dealer in Texas and flee justice, yet he still could lord it over most Indians financially when he settled in Pune. The sect of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is likewise in the money beyond any accounting, his people even having taken over an African state’s economy more or less! [One may pause to wonder whether all this – with the massed chanting of mantras etc. – has stopped drug taking, urban violence, terrorism and brought about peaceful communities and a better world, as the Maharishi has many times guaranteed it would? I’d say no more than Sathya Sai Baba’s promises that India would be transformed by now (due to his 1960s students’ taking over important positions) and become the moral and spiritual engine of the world in a Golden Age (which is long overdue after repeated but unacknowledged ‘postponements’ .

No, the question without a price tag is still why Sathya Sai Baba, who vociferously disdains ownership and filthy lucre, should be one of the richest persons and biggest property owners in that land of such poverties and sufferings? That he claims to own nothing is just a front for the gullible and his trusting followers, for it is a mere technicality. It is the Sathya Sai Central Trust and he rules over it totally, even signing every cheque, so he has stated himself in 1993. The tax-free charitable Central Trust remains essentially behind closed doors, no minutes revealed and no accountability for the expenditure. Is it’s wealth being properly used? Or squandered on too great a scale to build yet more temples and white elephant ‘spiritual museums’, all clearly designed and decorated so as to trumpet the name and fame of Sai Baba himself. Questions as to the misuse of funds expended in building an isolated Super-Speciality Hospital is cogently discussed in Serguei Badaev’s overview of the Sai Baba Super Speciality Hospitals’ wastefulness. If this had not been so, the answer would have been clear and acceptable.

The putative fact remains, Sai Baba’s monies are also used for gaining influence and political power, and without any visible beneficial effects on politics or politicians. The current state of political dishonesty, disinterest for the poor of India, and scams at all levels in India suggest nothing is changing, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer (certainly relative to each other and to the basic cost of living). Sathya Sai’s much heralded “Divine Plan” for changing India – promised to be soon even in the 1960s to Dr. J. Hislop in the well-known interviews he published is not a fact, but a vehicle of falsehoods and foolishly placed faith. See also ‘How far is it to dharma?‘ Ask devotees about it all and they will tell you “Baba has divinely good plans that no one but He can fathom. We are all but puny minds, how can we possibly know?” That is a great conversation stopper to end on!

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Please go to the Public Petition for Official Investigations of Sathya (or Satya) Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

 

India – God-driven or God-forsaken?

The words “God Lives in India” have been bandied about by numerous people, always referring to Sathya Sai Baba (who has proclaimed himself as God, Deity of All Deities). It is a film title, a song title, a book title and so on. Sai Baba has stated that God never incarnates as the Full Avatar anywhere else but in India and then only after many thousands of years, and now he has come as a triple incarnation in this disastrous Kali Age so as to save humanity. The implication – drawn firmly by Sathya Sai Baba himself, is that India is the only world culture to which God would deign to ‘descend’ because it is the ‘most spiritual’ and is the only country in which all genuine and full incarnations of God have ever incarnated (from Vishnu on through Krishna, Rama etc. etc.).

This kind of ‘God claim’ may make many Indians – even its lowly peasants – proud of their country – which possibility is not ignored by vote-hungry politicians and their supporters. It also underpins the absurd extreme nationalism of the Indian rulers, as witnessed in the utterly childish daily face-offs supported by the authorities for decades at the border vis-a-vis Pakistan, just for a start. Meanwhile, much of the callous and grasping ruling class are content to allow huge parts of all cities to be vast and growing slums, and the dwellers are treated by police and the law if they had no rights (which is often the case legally). Consequently, the mafias are often their only remaining line of defense against summary eviction.

In support of a rising New India, with genuine equality rather than bogus spirituality!I write this blog not least in support of the majority population of India, that is, the dispossessed majority of over 600 million of its inhabitants who lack social justice and even have no real equality before the law, being entrapped within a corrupt system, – and I do NOT to support the many corrupted and self-seeking ruling politicians and privileged castes. That India is a land of “the direst calamities” is a fact pointed out even by Sathya Sai Baba (from his insulated luxury fortress-palaces and the benefits of his money-laden tax-free Sathya Sai Central Trust). Sathya Sai Baba’s still far too neglected ‘backyard’ is a ‘flawed democracy’ (as a ‘Times’ of India editorial names it – see here) from which Sai Baba recently stated that he is minded to travel on tour abroad, breaking his oft-repeated promise to clean things up in India before setting foot anywhere else! Such are most of the promises he makes and the otherworldly and moralistic ‘spirituality’ he mostly promotes!

Is [traditional] India a spiritual country?
Judging by the state of human rights and its decadent social practices, corrupt political decision-making and huge injustices and inequalities, India is not a spiritual country at all. It is also plagued by the old guard’s vast militaristic spending, far from Gandhi’s peaceful ideals.  ‘Spirituality’ is meaningless it it is not practiced in daily living and embedded in a society’s practices and practical values in real life. India is rather an overwhelmingly religiously superstitious country in which the goodwill and relative ignorance and powerlessness of the lowly is exploited to the extreme though widespread political and business corruption. This is part of India’s traditional caste-ridden way of life! The violent and consistent suppression of minorities, Muslims, Dalits, indigenous native populations, hiras, bonded labourers, and many other minorities is sustained by callous impassivity and top-down corruption in much of the police, judiciary and governing bodies. Indian leaders, in the main (with a minority of honourable and courageous exceptions), have the most hardened consciences towards the gigantic number of poor and suffering and their crying needs (over 40% being officially regarded by UNO as living below the poverty line). The gap between India’s rich and poor is mind-boggling!

As to ‘spirituality’, while India’s millions are worshipful and passive, this is also a land of frequent communal carnage (eg. Hindus vs. Muslims) and bomb blasts galore, massive female infanticide, religious killings (of Christians), extreme beggary, horrific mutilations of babies to make them into beggars (as ‘rat children’, ‘spidermen’, diverse amputees) major human organ theft, literal ‘witch-hunts’ and black magic killings, physical and sexual child abuse on a massive scale, millions of children labouring under dreadful condition, and enormous health problems, utter discrimination against widows and many more ills that no truly democratic country wouldcountenance. The seriousness is still very widely denied by Indian politicians, despite many and constant international studies and warnings. Even worse, most of the sufferers are treated as total outcasts by most Indian communities (AIDs, lepers. polio sufferers and many other diseases largely eradicated elsewhere), not least because of the heartless ideas so widely held there about divine retribution as ‘karma’ for sins in past lives. Above all, Sathya Sai Baba has never confronted any of these issues or spoken up to defend the victims or attack the perpetrators!