Sai Baba Cricket Match International? Claim Was False

I was present at Sathya Sai Baba’s falsely-billed ‘international’ cricket match in December 1997, and taking photos for the magazine ‘Spiritual Impressions’, on which I was soon to take some key editorial duties. It is published and distributed in many countries round the world.

Given that vast sums of money are now being poured into the Sathya Sai International Sports Centre at Puttaparthi, an older article of mine - Sai Baba Vs Kerry Packer - still assumes relevance, if we are to trace conceptual developments in which Sai Baba makes use of sport in his attempt to project himself to as much of the world as he can.

Sai Baba Has Eye On The World

It is, after all, the world that he says that he will save absolutely - having cleaned up India in the last quadrant of his lifetime. He is now well into that - and indeed can be irrefutably documented as doddering, issuing extraordinarily inane instructions (See:  Sai Baba To Be Seen In Moon? But Where Was Moon?), waxing warmly about one of the world’s most horendous dictators, the late Ugandan ruler Idi Amin (See, Sathya Sai Baba’s Deputy Head, Dr G. Venkataraman, Speaks of “Mr Idi Amin”), and so on. But he has, does he not?, a mite of cleaning still to do? Perhaps he will be clean bowled before attempting the job.

Sri Sathya Sai International Sports Centre. Purely-movitated or a stunt? - everything else having failed - to draw international attention to the (so-called) ‘Avatar of all Avatars’.

I quote below from the article just referred to, entitled:  Sai Baba Vs Kerry Packer

In referring to Sunil Gavaskar, I do not, as it were, ’sledge’ a magnificently great cricketer and Captain, but it is important that we look at facts, and that we all of us be accountable.

Gavaskar Bowled Out In A Fabrication

Sunil Gavaskar, the great former Indian Test captain and long-time devotee of Sai Baba, maintained a bare-faced fiction about the match being genuinely international. On a piece for Sathya Sai Baba’s official website, he said:

“So, the Unity Cup was played with players from all over the world including Pakistan”:
http://saibaba.ws/experiences1/
realisingsupremebeatitude.htm

How impressive it sounds - “from all over the world”. Pieces like this are all grist for the ceaselessly grinding mill of Dr G.Venkataraman, Sai Baba’s Dr Joseph Goebbels, who, with his team at Radio Sai, is going all out promote Sai Baba with satellite radio, Sai Global Harmony, beamed to every possible corner of the globe via the WorldSpace Corporation.

Hardly Any Nations Turned Up

The match failed to fetch players from West Indies, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, New Zealand, Australia, and any of the scores of nations where cricket is taken seriously. The ridiculously named ‘world XI’ was captained by Sri Lanka’s Arjuna Ranatunga.  Sachin Tendulkar captained for India. England was slenderly represented by Doug Brown in what otherwise remained a game of Indians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans. Pakistan sent a few players, including ‘Boom Boom’ Shahid Afridi (players from the past Hanif Mohamed and Zaheer Abbas were non-playing Pakistani guests). Sri Lanka provided six players. Former Test captain Clive Lloyd presented the trophy. India’s national broadcaster Doordarshan televised the match. In the commentator’s box was ‘Kiri’, Syed Kirmani, often hailed as India’s best ever wicket keeper, who became a Chairman of Selectors for India. He was no doubt well ’selected’ for the day’s job at the Sri Sathya Sai Unity Cup, since he quite often dropped all objective commentary of the match being played, instead indulging in rhapsodic eulogies on Sai Baba. I saw the Doordarshan producer repeatedly directing attention of the camera crew to features of the grandiose architecture like Sai Baba’s university, the Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning. Segments of the game were telecast round the world, including Great Britain.

India - or rather, one should say, Sai Baba’s propaganda machine - won the day.

Related Reading

International Cricket And The Secret Swami

Champion Tennis At Top Indian Guru’s Ashram

International Cricket And The Secret Swami

One of the biggest rows in cricket history has afflicted the present Test series between India and Australia.

But what instructiveness might a Test cricket series in Australia have in relation to the call from former Sathya Sai Baba followers in many countries for media and government investigation of their former teacher, who is arguably the most powerful and controversial guru in history?

The Sai Baba-India Cricket Nexus 

After all, it is not Sathya Sai Baba but Sharad Pawar who promptly threatened to cancel further games in the series.  Pawar is the powerful head of the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India). He is also being touted as the next ICC (International Cricket Council president). As well a having been Governor of the State of Maharashtra, he was earlier on a short list of three or four for the Indian prime minstership. (There was another recent high profile candidate who has been pushed hard for by many close to Sai Baba - Shashi Tharoor, for the succession of of Kofi Annan as Secretary General of the United Nations.  Part of a strikeback to our successful efforts to bring accusations against Sai Baba and his global cult the Sathya Sai Organization to international attention, Tharoor wrote an article supporting Sai Baba in the International Herald Times). See Here.

Calmer reasoning set in, but Pawer’s reaction inflamed rather than cooled an already anguished situation in the last week. Perhaps, being ever the politician, he wanted to show tough in front of all those crying out about India’s honor. However, a great many in India (where with deep fulfilment I lived for several years working among the poor alongside fine fellow workers of diverse beliefs) respect proper processes of enquiry and dispute resolution and care to see justice for all sides. There was not from Pawar a call for a strong mediation process. Or an immediate reminder to all that excellent and prompt judicial processes can be drawn upon. Provision of these was a later development.

Sharad Pawar - Or Sai Baba Power?

Pawar’s hyper reactive responses do not bode well when one considers the deep link between top level Indian cricket and Sai Baba. One also has to consider that India has an almost unimaginable power (or should that be Pawar?) over world cricket, and is THE top money roller. In India television audiences of around 200 million and sometimes 400 million, watch cricket on television.

In the meantime, despite the many and serious worldwide allegations against Sai Baba, the BCCI does not cut off its close ties with Sai Baba, and alarming numbers of Indian cricket authorities and Test cricketers are either his devotees or, along with them, actively cooperate in his cricketing plans.

Sai Baba’s Agenda to Use Top Level International Sport

Sai Baba is raising an enormously costly international sports centre at Puttaparthi, and making a run for a powerful influence of several major sports, including at Olympic standard. See, Champion Tennis At Top Indian Guru’s Ashram

He has already had Indian, Sri Lankan and Pakistan Test players and one UK player play at Puttaparthi on his world class pitch. See, Sai Baba Vs Kerry Packer.

Given worldwide allegations against Sai Baba, it is clear that Sharad Pawar, the BCCI and players themselves - not to mention the highly culpable Manmohan Singh government - who have shown themselves so partial to Sai Baba, have some explaining to do. Is it appropriate that a great Indian flagship to the world be used to further the well-known agenda of Sathya Sai Baba to reveal himself to the world as God fully incarnate? Is there any other nation which would support - much less profoundly support, as successive Indian governments have done - an individual who makes such extraordinary claims?

Indian Cricket Players - Playthings of Sathya Sai Baba?

Why would they not want to heed a call for media and government investigation of these many allegations, which include (but go far beyond) wide-scale serial sexual abuse of boys and young men from India and many other countries, implication in and cover up of killings in his bedroom in June 1993, massive deployment of multi billions of international funds to erect lavish buildings far exceed good works like hospitals but which flashily glorify him as God on earth. See, Sai Baba Exchequer Worth Billions. Many Countries Donate, and Sai Baba, Kubla Khan, Citizen Kane, Bill Gates et alia.

The Status of Witnesses Who Claim Abuse By Sai Baba

Former Baba devotees who make the allegations have been taken seriously at the most senior levels by UNESCO, Interpol, FBI, Australian Federal Police, German Chief Prosecutor’s Office, French National Police (which are all hamstrung by lack of cooperation by the Indian Police) and by major reputed media in several countries, as well as very noted public institutions who, having been granted access to high level information, have severed their ties with Sai Baba’s Internation Sathya Sai Organization. These include BBC, DR (Denmark), AZUL (Argentina), CBC (Canada), ABC,  SBS (Australia), and in the press - India Today, Times of London, Telegraph, Guardian, Age, Australian Financial Times, and newspapers in several parts of Europe, Canada, Latin America, and elsewhere. See, Exposure of Sathya Sai Baba. Media Source List

For the Time Being, Judicial Processes. But Will Pawar’s Threats Return Sooner or Later? 

Sharad Pawar’s threat tactic later acceded (or has at least for the while) to a judicial process, which is normally 7 days but with provision for extension. New Zealand judge John Hansen has been made commissioner for the Indian player Harbhajan Singh’s appeal against a complaint that he made a racist comment during the second Test in Sydney just over a week ago. The ICC (International Cricket Council) match referee, Mike Proctor, had upheld Australian captain Ricky Ponting’s formal complaint that Singh had called Australian player Andrew Symons a “big monkey” and that this was racist. A 3-match ban was imposed on Singh. Three month’s previously, Indian cricket crowds had chanted “monkey” at Symonds during a match in Mumbai as recently as October 2007. Not least in fueling bad feelings in the present series in Australia were several indisputable bad umpiring decisions by Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson. When the problems became known, there was across India a spree in which Ponting, Bucknor and Benson were burnt in effigy.

Neither the angry mobs in the Indian streets nor Pawar displayed the confidence, which would have been so richly justified, that the Indian team did, at least in a number of serious issues, indeed have the moral highground, and could have drawn on world (and indeed Australian) disgust that there had been poor calls as well as Australian player spirit and conduct.

Top-flight Indian lawyers, Arun Jaitley, Sashank Manohar and N. Srinivasan are to support Harbhajan Singh who, in the meantime, has been permitted to play pending the verdict of the appeal. How sensible. A mediator highly regarded by all cricketing countries Ranjan Madugalle, from Sri Lanka, has been sent in as peace broker. Even more sensible. Still better, in the future, will be, if professionalism prevails, best practice cultural sensitivity (not damned lectures!) training, and other forms of handling personal pressure, animosity, and so on.

And What Of The Honor Of Grieving Former Sai Baba Devotees Worldwide?

But a judicial process or mediation is far more than Indian authorities have been prepared to do for the grieving families in India and far beyond who accuse Sai Baba of badly sexually abusing their young males. See, Corrupt Judges Stonewall Case Vs Sai Baba

For an example - which never fails to appal my legal friends! - of how a kangaroo court of Sai Baba partial judges in the Supreme Court of India can thwart some of India’s best legal talent (in Kamani Jaiswal and her team), see the notes of the case, whose provenance I am happy to disclose to reputable media and other genuine investigators, HERE. See also the article on P.N. Bhagwati, ex-Chief Justice of India that gravely questions his protection of Sai Baba, HERE

What then of India’s honor that is currently being shouted out across India?

Is Pawar a BCCI “Secret Swami” Man?

And what might we expect if Pawar assumes presidency of the ICC? Secrecy? Cover up? Refusal to be challenged on the Sai Baba nexus?

With the BBC terming Sai Baba as ‘the secret swami’, can we expect Pawar and the BCCI to maintain the secrecy surrounding Sai Baba and his intentions for international Indian cricket? The international media needs to question him hard on this, for most Indian newspaper proprietors have been too fearful to take on Sai Baba - although, since the excellent work of IANS (Indo Asian News Service) and repeated attention by major foreign media, this powerful censorship wall may be starting to crack. Perhaps India’s media proprietors begin to see how absurd it is for Non Resident Indians to freely read foreign media articles adverse to Sai Baba and yet there be, with an honorable exception like India Today, an almost total ban inside India on articles seriously critical of him. See, Indian Media’s Reticence on Top Guru, Sathya Sai Baba, Weakens.

Two India’s

This effigy-burning aspect of India relates to that part of India that is so ridden by anarchy, political manipulation of mobs, poverty, crime, corruption, nepotism, and casteism, and so often pretendedly democratic. It is the India which long ago Sai Baba promised to bring to ways of peace (shanti) and non-violence (ahimsa), before he left for other countries around the world, saying that he would first “clean up (his) own backyard”. Yet as recently February 16, 2007, in a so-called ‘divine discourse’, Sai Baba said, “I intend to undertake a world tour, shortly.” See, Wealthy Americans Prepare Mansions For “God’s” Visit

Sharad Pawar and his Board want his team’s word of honor to be taken. But - if sauce for both goose and gander - do not other countries wish their player’s word to be respected? If there is lying and false witness among players, then proper processes need to be convened. Pawar also wants to preside over world cricket. He needs, then, to be asked some hard questions about his and many of his team’s affiliations with Sathya Sai Baba and that guru’s own bid for world supremacy - not only in Sport but, with a devious sport’s stepping stone, to posturing himself to the world as its Savior of all Saviors who have ever visited the earth.

As unexpectedly caught by BBC camera which was shooting for its documentary The Secret Swami (2004)

Further Reading

Sai Baba Vs Kerry Packer

Champion Tennis At Top Indian Guru’s Ashram

The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ - A Revision

Exposure of Sathya Sai Baba. Media Source List

Indian Media’s Reticence On Top Guru Weakens

The Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire

Has ‘World Saviour’ Missed His Plane?

Wealthy Americans Prepare Mansions For “God’s Visit”

Challenging Historic Deification

Sai Baba - Miraculous or Disastrous?

Film Footage

The Secret Swami (BBC Television)
(80 MB, Broadband). The Secret Swami (23.3 MB, Modem)

Seduced (DR, Danish Broadcasting, Denmark’s national television and radio broadcaster):
(80 MB, Broadband). Seduced (21 MB, Modem)
 

Champion Tennis At Top Indian Guru’s Ashram

After Sai Baba’s great white elephant, Hillview stadium, has lain virtually dormant for nearly a decade, another Sai Baba involvement in topline sport has just been announced. In December 1997, it was cricket. In January 2008, it is tennis.

 From The Hindu Online. Wednesday, January 2, 2008.

India to play two Tests against the Philippines

NEW DELHI: India will play two Test matches in tennis against the Philippines on January 12 and 14.

The Indian challenge will be led by the National grass court champion Vishnu Vardhan and the National hard court champion Ashutosh Singh. The other member will be Divij Sharan.

The Philippines will have a two-member team of Patrick John Tierro and Johnny Arcilla.

The Tests, to be played at the Sri Sathya Sai Baba Ashram at Puttaparthi and the DLTA Complex in Delhi, will feature two singles and a doubles each. — Special Correspondent

John McEnroe Faces Mafia, But Can He Slam Sai Baba?

A brief aside. Great Tennis ace John McEnroe has raised questions about the Russian mafia and tennis. Perhaps he and other influential tennis greats may like to make some enquiries into Sai Baba, whom the BBC has called ‘The Secret Swami’. (See, Yahoo news report McEnroe fears mafia infiltrating tennis)

The gentle McEnroe may like to have a loud word in the ears of players such as: Vishnu Vardhan, Ashutosh Singh, Divij Sharan, Patrick John Tierro and Johnny Arcilla.

Of course, McEnroe’s fearsome displays are nothing compared to those of Sai Baba and his world Chairman, Dr Michael Goldstein, as captured - looking like a balled-up mafia bully boy - by BBC hidden camera for The Secret Swami:

Sai Baba Would Put New Meaning to ‘Love All’

But tennis players might not come to love his serve! Do the International Tennis Authority, the All India Tennis Association and these players think that it is some joke that arguably history’s most famous and controversial guru is to be host to high profile tennis? One who faces worldwide allegations of wide-scale, serial sexual abuse of boys and young men, implication in local police killings in his bedroom on June 6, 1993, and other gravely serious crimes that India’s often corrupt system, and its huge numbers across the entire power echelon who are devotees of Sai Baba, have ensured do not get to the courts, even in the hands of fearless top attorneys Kamini Jaiswal? See, Corrupt Indian Judges Stonewall case Vs Sai Baba.

An Opulence No Tennis Super Stars Could Afford

Will it matter to tennis players and authorities that Sai Baba raises to his own self-glory - much due to the billions that pour into his Sathya Sai Central Trust from countries around the world -  vast, flashy and costly buildings, not all of them for good reasons like hospitals? See article and incredibly revealing photos in Sai Baba, Kubla Khan, Citizen Kane, Bill Gates et alia

Left, ‘God’ loves golden panoply. Right, Sai Baba’s ‘twin’ palaces, fit for the Lord of Lords, whom he proclaims himself to be.

When the golden cup Runneth Not Over - Anyone for Tennis?

Although a golden opportunity for some publicity like a big tennis tournament might be spun. And start the gold coming in again, especially after some disastrous leave-takings by many well-respected members of his Sathya Sai Organization, an adverse major media in a number of countries, and desperate attempts by his organization to recruit in highly costly venues, where the rich and powerful can feel comfortable.

UNESCO Media Advisory Contra Sai Baba and Organizers

Will it concern them that Sai Baba is the guru from whose major education conference at Puttaparthi whom UNESCO withdrew in September 2001? See, Media Advisory, which fortunately neither the Government of India nor Sai Baba’s powerful devotees worldwide have been able to get removed from the Internet Wayback machine. (If it disappears, please email me bpittard (at) optusnet.com.au, and I shall inform our lawyers). This UNESCO action and document followed representations made by highly-credentialed individuals from around the world. After the cancellation by UNESCO and the University of Flinders, South Australia, the Indian government, for the while, successfully pressured the UN body to suppress the Advisory from its records. However, UNESCO reconfirmed to the BBC in mid 2004 that it did not now resile from the terms of its original Advisory. The BBC, which extracted UNESCO’s embarrassing backflip, was investigating in preparation for its indicting documentary on Sai Baba The Secret Swami (first screened, June 2004). See also, The Case of Unesco’s Missing Media Advisory

US State Department Travel Warning

Will it it matter to tennis authorities and players that the US State Department confirmed to the BBC that Sai Baba was the individual it had been seriously investigating, but whom it had not (ed., no doubt for legalistic reasons) named in its travel warning to US citizens travelling in Andhra Pradesh, the locality of Sai Baba’s Puttaparthi ashram?

Is Sai Baba More Than A Match For World Tennis?

Questions will certainly be asked of Indian and world tennis authorities. Presented with the facts, they, along with players and members of the tennis-loving public, may not wish tennis to be associated with Sai Baba. 

(NOTE: this is to advise tennis authorities, media, law firms and any genuine, bona fide investigators that there are from several countries and cultures individuals of outstanding integrity in their own professions and communities who are prepared to share their witness accounts of shocking levels of young male sexual abuse at the hands of Sathya Sai Baba, and other grave abuses).

Is too late for cancellation? Is it ever too late to cancel conscience? Is it ever too late for Sai Baba to stop proclaiming that he is Lord of Lords, the Father of Jesus Christ, the One who sent the Prophet of Islam, Buddha, and so on?

At the very least, those lending their good names to this tennis event need to ensure that Sai Baba does not in future use tennis for propagandistic purposes. They may prefer not to allow the glamour of tennis to aid and abet the forces of corruption in India and the thwarting of profoundly proper police and judicial proceedures. They may like to see the provisions expected in countries with viable democratic processes. At least Russia, unlike India, does not pretend to democracy.

Will Sai Baba Propaganda History Repeat Itself?

If tennis authorities and players continue to involve themselves, they may expect the sort of extraordinarily untruthful spin (no pun intended) that occurred in the case of Sai Baba’s cricket match in December 1997 (which I saw). The fact is that only India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka (and the UK, if we must include one player, Doug Brown) played at that match. (See my article, Sai Baba Vs Kerry Packer). At lunch, E.A.S. Prasanna, India’s former great spin bowler, told me that his fellow organizers had tried to get Sir Donald Bradman (ed., the greatest cricket legend of all time) to attend the match but he was in ill health. (No wonder, our late national treasure was was already 90! and died in February 2001).

How Gavaskar Lost Some Lustre

Sunil Gavaskar, one of the great Indian cricketing legends, wrote an article for Sai Baba’s promotion people in which he stated an absolute fiction. Can Gavaskar, gripped by emotion, have forgotten to state a glaring fact? Having lived in India - a land of unusual piety - for several years, I know that sometimes excess of intense devotional fervour can carry devotees quite away. Perhaps - away from the cricket field - poor Gavaskar, in the grip of his guru’s quest for world supremacy as the God who will save the whole world by circa AD 2022, was - well, being carried quite away.

“So, the Unity Cup was played with players from all over the world including Pakistan”:
http://saibaba.ws/experiences1/
realisingsupremebeatitude.htm

A Cautionary Tale

Tennis fraternity, be aware, if you will, of a famous sportsman who becomes inveigled in the much-vaunted ‘Glory of Puttaparthi’. Here is just a little of the long, guru-all-hailing Sunil Gavaskar article, posted by Sai Baba’s propaganda supremo, head of Sai Global Radio via Worldspace International Satellite Radio Service and vice chairman of the International Sathya Sai Organization, Dr G. Venkataraman, Realizing Supreme Beatitude:

“I was privileged to arrange the players for the Unity Cup Cricket Match. Swami has always said, “Life is a game. Play it.”. Bhagavan wanted to show that there could be unity among different countries, cultures and communities through sports. So, the Unity Cup was played with players from all over the world including Pakistan.
Several senior retired players were honoured and had the good fortune to be blessed by Bhagavan. Who can forget Bhagavan patting Sachin Tendulkar on the back and telling him, “I am with you!” What a season Sachin had after that as he virtually single-handedly demolished World Champion Australia with his batting that seemed to be of a totally different dimension after that pat from Bhagavan!
Devotees who have had Swami’s Darshan even from afar know how it becomes a craving and if Swami even glances at you fleetingly, you feel an incredible joy that cannot be described in words”.

Video Resources

The Secret Swami (BBC Television)
(80 MB, Broadband)

The Secret Swami

(23.3 MB, Modem)

Seduced (80 MB, Broadband)

Seduced (21 MB, Modem)

DR, Danish Broadcasting, Denmark’s national television and radio broadcaster). Shown in an English version by SBS in Australia as Seduced by Sai Baba, February  12, 2004. Like other major media in the world, SBS refused to be intimidated by legal or other threats by the Sathya Sai Organization. Staffs of every media or institution who have dealt with them have soon realized that former devotee witnesses from many countries are individuals of good repute in their communities, professions, etc., and are being badly slandered by Sai Baba and those who defend him.

Video clip of Mark Roche interview from The Secret Swami, BBC 2, This World, first screened, Thursday 17, 2004. See article on this, BBC’s ‘Secret Swami’ Clip. Man Claims Abuse When Young. Quote from article: 

“Mark Roche (California, USA) was deeply devoted to Sai Baba from 1969. Among Sai devotees, former devotees and in his wider community, he has long been regarded as a man of decency, compassion and integrity. Revealingly, it is frequently only after former devotees leave Sai Baba (often after decades of great service and devotion) that Sai Baba and Sai Baba protagonists ‘convert’ them - in their own minds - into “demons”, “cawing crows”, “Judases”, etc”.

Media investigation/coverage

Sai Baba has been increasingly exposed to the world on television. E.g., by the BBC, DR (Denmark), AZUL (Argentina), CBC (Canada), ABC, SBS (Australia), and in the press - India Today, Times of London, Telegraph, Guardian, Age, Australian Financial Times, and newspapers in several parts of Europe, Canada, and elsewhere. There were many top reviews of the BBC’s The Secret Swami.

Surprising openings in a long-muzzled Indian media occurred November 2006, when Paul Lewis’s story broke in The Guardian (UK) - The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards. It raised concerns about the nexus between the Duke of Edinburgh Awards and the UK Sai youth, on their way in large numbers to see Sai Baba.

Sai Baba, Kubla Khan, Citizen Kane, Bill Gates et alia

For more lavish pics of Sai Baba’s Imperial splendour, see below. (Are we seeing the rise or decline of the Showman Empire?)

In the director-writer-actor Orson Welles’s great movie classic Citizen Kane, one can, it is true, note certain differences between the U.S. newspaper proprietor William Randolf Hearst

and Welles’s and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s creation Charles Foster Kane. For decades, the differences have been fought over - fiercely. Nonetheless, both were fabulously wealthy, gigantically egocentric - and corrupt. They splurged incredibly on their domiciles

(Microsoft founder, Bill Gates’s little shack - dubbed by some wag as: Xanadu 2.0.  No zoo there as yet, but who knows? - with the true coming-of-age of Robotics something cyber-’animal’ might be managed)

In naming the fictive Kane’s dream home on sprawling acres, Xanadu, Welles-Mankiewicz thought - perhaps inevitably - of the fabulous city of the 13th Century Mongolian emperor, Kubla Khan (see portrait above) and of the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s fittingly eccentric and exotic poem known to millions, whose first line runs:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
   Down to a sunless sea

Today’s Emperor of India

Kane in Florida, like Hearst at San Simeon in California, was absolute King of his castle. But there is a virtual Emperor in India - Sathya Sai Baba. 

Even Randolph Hearst (as perhaps a modern day media buccaneer Rupert Murdoch) might have blushed for shame to hold such sway with the big end of town as Sai Baba has long done with India’s power brokers, irrespective of what political party is in power. Sai Baba, who long ago learnt not to blush, is arguably India’s and history’s most famous - and infamous - guru. So too - well may these other extravagant castle owners blanch at being so dwarfed by this Kubla Khan who Lords it over the, in many ways, tragically poor India. How the stupendous splurger Sai Baba can ever say the name of Mahatma Gandhi, modern India’s wonderfully humble ‘father’, without blushing is one of his greatest miracles. 

Much less Microsoft founder Bill Gate’s with his mansion, featuring every technological wizardry. Or Michael Jackson (said to have had his own connections with Sai Baba, and certainly both have had to face repeated allegations of sexual molestation of young males) with his weird parody of Disneyland, the Neverland Ranch. (Interestingly, Hearst would refer to his establishment as “the ranch”). Or Hugh Heffner, the ’soft’ pornography magnate, with the Playboy Mansion, of which  John Marshal has written that  driving through its gates is “like being misdirected into the back entrance of a public zoo”. The zoo atmospheric reminds that Hearst’s estate included a zoo then the world’s largest. The narrator in Citizen Kane speaks of Kane having the largest zoo since Noah. See USA Weekend LINK.

India’s Fabulous Top Guru Sai Baba. More Emperor Than King

One wonders why Sai Baba has not included a wizzo zoo. Perhaps it would be a counter-distraction, because everybody is supposed to have their eyes trained on Sai Baba (it is called ‘darshan’, and his devotees spell it with a capital ‘D’. Instead of gazing at one’s navel, one gazes at the guru). However, one Indian man sitting next to me at a Sai Baba ‘darshan’ described Sai Baba’s setup to me as “a national circus”. So at least, something of the zoological atmospheric may be in the air. 

Vastly Costly Monuments Glorifying Sai Baba

His splashy-colored and sometimes vast buildings rise up at enormous cost. Sathya Sai Baba’s exchequer owes to vast donations to his Central Trust via his powerful organisation spanning more than 150 countries, and not least to the donations of the extremely wealthy - like James Sinclair, the Canadian cable and minerals magnate, Isaac Tigrett the American founder of the Hard Rock Café and House of Blues, the Rai family in India in steel and technology, and an astounding number of other hugely wealthy and influential individuals and families from many countries. Rediff News, July 06, 2005, reported:

“The Andhra Pradesh-based Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust is the largest recipient of foreign contributions. The Sathya Sai Trust received Rs 95 crore (Rs 950 million) during 2003-04″.

This figure - which is well over US $20 million - is but the officially-declared one and does not account for contributions of those foreigners who donate when they are in India. One can observe how at Sai Baba’s establishments at Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, and Whitefield, Karnataka, in South India, the Indian and foreign mega business fraternity swap business cards - within what devotees regard as the so-called Holiest of Holy precincts! - and thereafter mutually thrive. At the Puttaparthi temple, on June 6, 1993) police executions took place in Sai Baba’s bedroom, with his close proximity and command of the situation. See my article, at LINK, which contains a further link to a video clip of the BBC The Secret Swami television interview with former Andhra Pradesh Home Secretary V.P.B. Nair saying that the slaying was “absolute cold-blooded murder”). 

It is easy to see that far wider national and international economic and political forces are at play, and that it is little wonder how successive Indian governments both State and Central have been loathe to ‘kill’ a goose that lays an incredible number of golden eggs.

Efforts to Globalize Sai Baba withWorld Radio Station

Sai Baba controls with an iron hand the international Sathya Sai Organization. This powerful cult has been found by some of the world’s top media like the BBC, Times of London, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and in other countries, as well as UNESCO, the U.S. State Department and other institutions to be extremely hard to investigate or act against. His second most senior aide is its deputy chairman, who, as head of Sai Global Harmony, is his ‘minister of propaganda’, Dr G. Venkataraman, one of the progenitors of India’s atomic bomb, as was Sai Baba’s previous close aide, the late Dr S. Bhagavantam - sometimes called ‘the father of the Indian atomic bomb’ - as was his present staunch devotee, the President of India, Dr A.J. P. Kalam, who writes flowery  panegyrics to Sai Baba, as did the last Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. 

Sai Global Harmony broadcasts, in affiliation with WorldSpace International Satellite Radio Service, 24/7 to many countries. With a behind-the-scenes corporate-style, assisted by the billions of funds that pour from many countries into the Sathya Sai Central Trust, the declared aim is to penetrate to every corner of the globe.

Government Inaction on Powerful Cults

A vital question will be whether politicians in democratic countries will be capable of distinguishing between the issue of freedom of religion and the issue of cults that decidedly do not, whatever may be their rhetoric, respect democracy.

Followers Believe Sai Baba Will Rule World

Former monstrous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (about whom Sai Baba and G. Venkatarman have warmly recollected, See LINK) only imagined himself to be the ‘Last King of Scotland’ but Sai Baba takes all India for his domain, not to mention the world, which he has long said (it is one of his myriad of broken promises) he will travel to and bring to his feet, after he has “set (his) own back yard (India) in order” and before he dies in AD 2022. Given India’s enduring tragedy - despite her superpower aspirations - he had better get a bit of a wriggle on!

Poor Hearst, Jackson, Gates, Murdoch, et alia! For Sai Baba is an Emperor, who has Indian power brokers in his thrall irrespective of their party or religious affliation. None - except a rare and tremendously courageous individual like B. Premanand, India’s famous “guru buster” - dare  take him on in India. See BBC story HERE.

For Successive Indian Governments, Sai Baba Is ‘goose that lays the golden eggs’

Indian local, central and state governments, often incredibly corrupt and incompetent, are able to watch while the more efficient Sai Baba and his massive organization get social welfare projects done. Drawn out of donations from some 150 foreign countries, his revenue is prodigious. India’s profoundly compromized ruling elites would no more sneeze at that country’s donations from Bill Gates, yet another of history’s outstanding buccaneers, than it would at the taxable revenue pouring into the Sathya Sai Central Trust.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

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The shadow of the dome of pleasure
  Floated midway on the waves ;
  Where was heard the mingled measure
  From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice ! …..

….. That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Sai Baba Vs Kerry Packer

The late Kerry Packer, Australia’s richest man, who redefined cricket forever, has a contender in Sathya Sai Baba of South India.

One of a slew of Sai Baba propagandist ploys to gain international attention has been to create a world-class cricket pitch in Puttaparthi. Planners were former Indian cricket greats like Sunil Gavaskar and E.A.S. Prasanna. The inaugural event was a cricket match played at Sai Baba’s Hill View Stadium on December 30, 1997, billed as the Sri Sathya Sai Unity Cup. The trophy itself was a huge - and very real- gold cup. The international engineering giant Larsen & Toubro, with inputs from famous Indian cricketing experts, prepared the grounds, a short walk from Sai Baba’s ashram. (On the day, I was taking photos for the internationally distributed Spiritual Impressions, a magazine which I was editing along with the owner, R. Padmanaban).

Such A Thing As A Free Lunch - And Breakfast?

Somewhat like the Roman ‘pompa’, the game opened with a ‘grand’ parade. There was a brass band composed of Sai Baba’s university students. Thousands of villagers spectated from the surrounding hill. Sai Baba’s caparisoned elephant led flag-bearing devotees from many different countries from around the world, who marched around one side of the arena, coming to lay their flags at Sai Baba’s ‘feet’ in the presence of the Indian Prime Minister, I.K. Gujral, and other high government and other dignitaries. The Indian national broadcaster Doordarshan televised the match throughout, and images of the event went later to many different countries, including Great Britain via the BBC. There was free breakfast and lunch for all.

Caught and Bowled By Sai Baba

Surely there had to be a catch. But who was caught? Who was bowled? All of us - who were blinded by the pomp and ceremony created to hide the corruption. Like the Puttaparthi cover-up concerning the police killings in Sai Baba’s bedroom in June 1993. Like the serial sexual abuse of boys and young men by Sai Baba and other accomplices. Like the frequent faking of miracles. Like his forever uneventuating promised cures for dread diseases. Like the many failed predictions. Like the shameless scams practised down the years by his administration - and realised by many devotees! - relating to the purchase of apartments at his ashrams. Like the vast unaccountability of some of the billions in many currencies that flow from many countries to the Sathya Sai Central Trust.

Caught and bowled - all of us who thought what we called ‘the Sai Revolution’ - one of truth, goodness, peace and love - was ready to transform the world. Who else? The Indian people. Unutterably sad, that. Those who, in short, treated me with almost unimaginable and exquisite kindness in the years I lived in that country, so great in its cultural treasures, so bravely served in her fight for Independence, so profoundly betrayed by so many of her politicians. That beautiful people - but many of whom are still terribly prone to worship as demigods their cricketing greats, film stars, etc., with no less hysteria than they worship gurus, many of whom, like Sai Baba himself, prove to have feet of clay.

I saw many women, no less than the men, crazed with adulation for the Indian cricketers whose bus somehow, at a snail’s pace at times, had to chug its way out of Puttaparthi. I may add, from an impeccable source with close connections to Sai Baba’s Security Wing, that the news of those killed and injured in the immense crushes was able to be suppressed by the ashram authorities.

Attempt to Fetch Nonagenarian Sir Donald Bradman

Sai Baba’s objective - about which little if anything has flourished since - was to get the world’s top cricketers to play there. At Puttaparthi close to the time of the December 1997 match, I was at the same lunch table in the canteen as Prasanna. Hearing that I was Australian, he told me that they had asked Sir Donald Bradman to attend a match but that he declined on the grounds of ill-health. Bradman, far more the icon of Australia than Sai Baba is or ever will be of India, was the world’s greatest cricket player and died aged 92 in February 2001. The effort to draw world attention to the match was obvious. The organizers were able to go so far as to attempt to bring the terribly aged and already ailing Bradman - then in his 90’s! - to travel to India, despite all the health crises that can strike foreigners not used to its water, food, climate and so on. ‘Puttaparthi belly’ could have finished him off in a trice.

Gavaskar Bowled Out In A Fabrication

Sunil Gavaskar, the great former Indian Test captain and long-time devotee of Sai Baba, maintained a bare-faced fiction about the match being genuinely international. On a piece for Sai Baba’s official website, he said:

“So, the Unity Cup was played with players from all over the world including Pakistan”:
http://saibaba.ws/experiences1/
realisingsupremebeatitude.htm

How impressive it sounds - “from all over the world”. Pieces like this are all grist for the ceaselessly grinding mill of Dr G.Venkataraman, Sai Baba’s Dr Joseph Goebbels, who, with his team at Radio Sai, is going all out promote Sai Baba with satellite radio, Sai Global Harmony, beamed to every possible corner of the globe via the WorldSpace Corporation.

Hardly Any Nations Turned Up

The match failed to fetch players from West Indies, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, New Zealand, Australia, and any of the scores of nations where cricket is taken seriously. The ridiculously named ‘world XI’ was captained by Sri Lanka’s Arjuna Ranatunga. The Indian team’s captain was Sachin Tendulkar. England was slenderly represented by Doug Brown in what otherwise remained a game of Indians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans. Pakistan sent a few players, including ‘Boom Boom’ Shahid Afridi (players from the past Hanif Mohamed and Zaheer Abbas were non-playing Pakistani guests). Sri Lanka provided six players. Former Test captain Clive Lloyd presented the trophy. India’s national broadcaster Doordarshan televised the match. In the commentator’s box was ‘Kiri’, Syed Kirmani, often hailed as India’s best ever wicket keeper, who became a Chairman of Selectors for India. He was no doubt well ’selected’ for the day’s job at the Sri Sathya Sai Unity Cup, since he quite often dropped all objective commentary of the match being played, instead indulging in rhapsodic eulogies on Sai Baba. I saw the Doordarshan producer repeatedly directing attention of the camera crew to features of the grandiose architecture like Sai Baba’s university, the Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning. Segments of the game were telecast round the world, including Great Britain.

India - or rather, one should say, Sai Baba’s propaganda machine - won the day.

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