When Indian Media Coat Tails Foreign Media. Did Freedom Happen?

Leaving aside, of course, the occasional exception like the mass circulation magazine India Today, when it acted on submissions from networked former devotees in a number of countries, we have not had much joy from the Indian media.  See: 

Exposure of Sathya Sai Baba. Media Source List 

A further breakthrough of sorts occurred when the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) likewise took seriously our work in regard to the Duke of Edinburgh Awards-Sathya Sai Baba connection.  See:

A Duke Stops An Emperor. Edinburgh Routs Sai Baba

Would that IANS had been on the scene when the range and penetration of its services might have got more news to India of the BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ (2004). Its own self-perception is that it is: “an independent and integrated media company with no affiliation with any major business house, political or ideological group”. And that it breaks “through the often cliched and stereotyped reporting about India with objective and unbiased news, views and analyses that portray the country, and the region, in a global perspective”.

IANS certainly broke through to many Indian media that had long refused to run with our stories in regard to the Sai Baba cult (whether Indian or international).

Overseas Indians (NRI’s) Can Get News Strongly Suppressed In Indian Media

The situation has long been fraught with irony. We have been able to get so many major quality international media interested in our accounts, while India maintained a steep wall of censorship, so that non-resident Indians (NRI’s) around the world were able to access other points of view about Sathya Sai Baba, and their kindred in India were not .

It scarcely reflects well on an Indian media that only when, for example, a major newspaper like The Guardian ran Paul Lewis’s story The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards that there was a response. One had thought a modicum of self-respect had been gained as a result of India’s struggle for freedom.

But, then, we know that royalty sells. Just like sex. Perhaps it was simply an unbeatable combination.

The British Empire fell. But will that of Sathya Sai Baba? See:

The Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire

A Top Indian Editor Says:  Sai Baba Too Powerful To Take On

Like media barons anywhere, Indian media proprietors frequently have the sharpest eye for sales.  This factor is more pronounced in developing countries like India, where corruption and lack of proper regulation are so rife.   An editor of one of India’s top handful of newspapers, who knew of my work, told me privately that Sathya Sai Baba and his people were far too powerful to do anything about. Indeed, his own newspaper had Sai Baba people in plenteous supply from top to bottom, including a Sai Baba power wielder. Of course, he might just as easily have named not a few other powerfully influential gurus to whom the power brokers of India have so chronically and for so long run. Travel anywhere in India and you find, when you get into frank conversation, that many Indians despair of the grip of these endemic, nepotistic, quite often overtly or covertly caste-ridden power blocs. See:

CNN-IBN Reports Action On Corrupt Indian Gurus

Super Cool Indian Gurus Under Fire

Indian Gurus Stifle India’s Chance To Excel

India A Mature Democracy? BBC Probes

Tony Blair Was to Visit Sai Baba. Blair Canceled

To see how a government in Great Britain, not to mention other countries – in the turning of diplomatic blind eyes – cede to corrupt absurdities within India, see articles below:   

Nonetheless, it was possible for well-wishers of our movement of exposure to get Tony Blair cancel his visit to see Sathya Sai Baba at his Whitefield (near Bangalore). See: 

Flag Follows Trade Abetting Indian Government Corruption

British Labour and Tory Whips Suppressed Motion On Sai Baba

Tony Blair Was to Visit Sai Baba. Plan Thwarted

Ashok Bhagani – Footsying With Top Blair Minister?