Can new generations in India’s ruling elites meaningfully rid from their lives the powerful and corrupt gurus who have for so long brought her into disrepute?
Can India find a solution to the embarrassment that attends the spectacle of a great many foreigners – especially Westerners – drawn to her shores in search of replacement for their own abandoned belief systems, and, often, being profoundly misled?
The extreme grip of the gerontocratic, nepotistic and corrupt political old guard in India (and other power sectors) is, only because nature herself would have it, dying out – not without some far-echoing would-be recrudescent croaks and death-throes.
It does not matter which party or coalition of parties rules – there has long been the obsequious running to highly flawed gurus and astrologers (constantly far-out in their predictions) – and especially to Sathya Sai Baba, as we have seen in the case of a veritable procession of low-prostrating highly-placatory Indian Prime Ministers, Deputy Prime Ministers, Presidents and Vice Presidents. Manmohan Singh, the current Prime Minister, is no exception. Neither was Atal Behari Vajpayee.
One wonders where is their pride at being Indian, when they bend over deep for the sake of the literally billions of dollars, over time, that Sai Baba and they suck in from foreign sources.
See:
Indian Minister Shields Sai Baba on BBC television and
Flag Follows Trade. Abetting Indian Government Corruption
Fmr Indian PM Vajpayee. Sathya Sai Baba devotee. Our Indian sources who were then at the power hub inform: Then Deputy PM Lal Krishna Advani outlined to Vajpayee the case against Sai Baba in relation to wide-scale serial sexual molestation of boys and young men, but Vajpayee became distressed, and, heedless, wrote flowery 'poetry' in praise of Sathya Sai Baba. Advani himself continued to visit Sathya Sai Baba when he wanted some advantage or other.
India’s Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh dressed up by Sathya Sai Baba for a glittering parade, not disimilar to Imperial notions of ‘bread and the games of the circus’ of ancient Rome
- Former Indian President Shankar Dayal Sharma. Also dressed to the nines to please Puttaparthi Baba
President Pratibha Devisingh Patil
Her mentor was the exceptionally powerful late S.B. Chavan, the former Home Minister who presided over the profound cover up of attempted police and media investigations of the April 6, 1993 police killings in Sathya Sai Baba’s bedroom.
Only feebleness and death release the claw-like deadly hands of State. Their talented heirs (often the children and relatives of the old guard) and aspirants of a younger generation increasingly make their run to assert a modernity. See:
Indian Gurus Stifle India’s Chance To Excel and
The Guru Trap. Will India Be Forever Trapped?
But at their backs they always hear the old-timers’ blinking chariots hurrying near (if I may twist to haplessness the English poet Andrew Marvell).
Will a somewhat younger India come to evince an efficient modernity, and be much less corrupt ? We shall learn soon enough.
Some Resources
Sai Baba’s Birthday. Vast, Costly Pomp and Ceremony
India’s Painful Experience of Corrupt Leadership
Sathya Sai Baba’s Promise To “Clean Up” His “Own Back Yard (India) Unfulfilled
CNN-IBN Reports Action On Corrupt Indian Gurus
General
- Allegations concerning Sathya Sai Baba
- Call For Media and Government Investigation
- Conny Larsson’s website
- Extensive information on Sathya Sai Baba
- Kevin R.D. Shepherd on Sai Baba issues
- Kevin Shepherd – Citizen Initiative
- Major Sathya Sai Baba exposé website
- Public Petition for Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba
- Sathya Sai Baba – word and action
- Sathya Sai myths, stories, deceits
- Sathya Sai Photo Gallery
