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

The Guru Trap. Will India Be Forever Trapped?

Tehelka is regarded by many observers as one of few newspapers in India which can show some investigate clout and courage. It has sustained tremendous pressure by Indian governments and other power brokerage forces in India. Below is an excerpt from Tehelka, which points the need for India to come clean and act decisively about her frequent cultivation and protection of nefarious gurus. Sathya Sai Baba gets a reference.

Some Related articles at http://barrypittard.wordpress.com

Indian Gurus Stifle India’s Chance To Excel 

Why Might There Be Religious and Political Disconnects?

P.N. Bhagwati, India’s Ex-Chief Justice: Wild, Reckless Claims

Renowned Indian Editor VKN. Diary and Letter Scans Reveal

NOTE: The Tehelka article reference to UNESCO involvement, in which it, along with the University of Flinders, Australia, backed out of a major Sai Baba led international education conference, is available HERE, and related is my article: BBC Caught UNESCO Head Bowing To Indian Government

For the full story clink on the Tehelka story title:

THE HUB
 
Holy ghost! Unholy fathers
Three godmen in one month, charged for raping, killing. Gullible victims, a society steeped in spirituality. The gory trail.

By Chinmayee Manjunath

 In the past month, two godmen have been charged of sexual molestation. Swami Premananda in Tiruchi, Tamil Nadu has been accorded life imprisonment and Swami Gnyanachaitanya in Kottakal, Kerala was arrested and is now on bail. These are just additions to a list of famous names, accused of similar charges. Chandraswami. Sathya Sai Baba. Yet, in a society steeped in the spiritual, no amount of sordid cases seems to taint the lure of ochre ….

“There is no spirit of critical inquiry in our society,” says Sanal Edamaruku, president of the Indian Rationalists Association in New Delhi. “People want to surrender their problems to godmen and believe them to be supernatural. They don’t question them. There is an element of fear also.” Dr Mathew Chandrankunnel, Centre for Study of World Religions, Bangalore adds, “It’s the fatalistic attitude. People might be disturbed by what these swamis do but accept it as part of their fate” …..

The Sathya Sai Baba, despite sordid allegations of sexual abuse and a boycott by unesco, continues to have the powerful falling at his feet.

“When people need solace, they believe anything associated with spirituality,” says Edamaruku. This is, perhaps, linked with the mirage of instant gratification. Rising trp ratings of religious shows on TV are indicative of this. Praying to an unseen, silent god pales when compared to talking to a swami who can do something immediately.

World Gallup Poll. Muslim Project

One of the great attractions to Sathya Sai Baba felt by people from many countries has been his evangel of respect for the various faiths.

Has Sai Baba Kept Promise of Reaching Through to World Faiths?

One can search in vain for any decently researched examples that show any capacity by him or his global Sathya Sai Organization to succeed in interfaith outcomes. See my articles:  Muslim Leaders Initiative Bold. Sai Baba’s Efforts Fail and Will World Accept Sai Baba? He Says Yes. Very Soon).

From time to time, when Sai Baba attracts a prestigious Moslem, Jew, Christian, Buddhist, etc., this individual is keynoted and the impression given to audiences that to a significant degree Sai Baba’s “divine love” is making a significant impact around the world. It is not, as the media or anyone else can readily determine by asking the major international interfaith groups or the spokespersons of any of the world’s great faiths.

One naturally queries, then:  Where, if anywhere, is Sai Baba in the interfaith equation?  What, if any, distinctive contribution to interfaith conferences have Sai Baba and his Sathya Sai Organization made?

The Gallup Poll Project Among World Populations

One vast undertaking to obtain facts about the attitudes and values of people around the world is being undertaken by the Gallup Poll organization. Even one project such as this makes Sai Baba’s statements about creating understanding and unity among the various faiths pale by comparison. It is about practicality, not about preachments. It is also about letting people speak for themselves, instead of being dictated to, which is endemic to the authoritarian, unaccountable, Soviet-style Sathya Sai Baba cult.

“In the largest undertaking of its kind, Gallup will
measure the well-being of the world for the next
100 years, annually polling 95% of the Earth’s adult population. The Gallup World Poll is the largest available source of key world data, providing access to the voices, hearts, and minds of citizens in more than 130 countries and territories”. Source: The Gallup World Poll

Gallup Poll Muslim Project

Here, for example, are its aims for its project on Muslims:

“Gallup’s self-funded Poll of the Muslim World is conducted in 40 predominantly Muslim nations and among significant Muslim populations in the West. It is the first set of unified and scientifically representative views from 1.3 billion Muslims globally, and will provide the basis for the Center’s unique analytical perspective. The Poll of the Muslim World is part of Gallup’s larger World Poll, a self-funded effort aimed at consistently measuring the well-being of 6 billion world citizens (a sample representing 95% of the Earth’s population) on a wide range of topics for the next 100 years”.

Solvents For Dangerous Misconceptions

Here are but a few findings in relation to Muslim attitudes to 9/11, which should assist in clearing away a great deal of misunderstanding, a result that should obtain, too, as other major faith groups are polled:

“What we have here is the ability to get beyond the battle of the experts” and let “the data lead the discourse” on beliefs in the Muslim world” Source: John L. Esposito, a professor of international affairs and Islamic studies,  Georgetown University

• 93 percent - condemned the Sep 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. Substantial majorities in all Muslim countries said they supported bringing democratic principles to their own countries

• 7% saw the Sep 11 attacks as “completely justified”. The results indicate that none in this group employed a religious justification. The view was based on fear of US plans for occupation and domination of the Muslim world

• There were strong Muslims concerns about a perceived “moral decay” in the US and the West. However, these were typical of those widely shared in the West.

Further Reading

Islam-West rift widens, poll says. BBC News Report, Monday, 21 January 2008

World Economic Forum Report Ranks Islam and West Relations.  WEF, Geneva, Switzerland, 21 January 2008

Who Speaks for Islam?
What a Billion Muslims Really Think. This excellent, succinct outline of the book by John Esposito Ph.D, Professor of Religion and International Affairs and of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, and Dalia Mogahed, a senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, is at the Gallup website

William Aitken’s Book Fails to Answer Sai Baba Critics

Today’s blog continues my small series on aspects of Brian Steel’s impressive opus, specifically at:  Bill Aitken and Sathya Sai Baba. A Writer’s Dilemma,  on William Aitken’s book, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. A Life (New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2004. Paperback edition, 2006).

Steel’s Meticulous Work Invaluable

Brian Steel’s approach in this piece is scholarly, but his writing has long been appreciated by a wider readership. All who are in search of detailed evidence will find Steel’s meticulous, painstakingly researched work (from 2001 on) indispensable. It is vast, and has been groundbreaking from the very first. I think that there will be no independent scholars or other investigators of merit who will be able to find serious fault with his project. He will nevertheless be targeted, I think, by fervent pro Sai Baba polemicists, who will increasingly undo themselves wherever there are attentive, critical and sober readers. Of Aitken’s attempts at demolishing Sathya Sai Baba critics, Steel says:

“Aitken’s preoccupation with the sensational, headline-grabbing sexual allegations (by Tal Brooke, or David Bailey, for example) does not leave him time to deal with more serious aspects of past and present critical research on Sathya Sai Baba, like recurring demonstrations by magicians (and video evidence too, especially of recent Mahasivaratri lingam productions) that some of Sathya Sai Baba’s commonest materialisations are easily replicated by others. As for the counter-evidence his claims of Divinity, it is just possible that Aitken may not have bothered to read them”.

The Supreme Preposterousness of Avataral Claims

Sathya Sai Baba can be documented by any conscientious reader as having made contradictory statements and egregious historical and scientific blunders. These include his remarks on Jesus Christ and Martin Luther . For Steel’s detailed and sharply contextualized discussion, see: Sai Baba and Christianity. Some Observations (2002). Steel remarks here the alarming “extent of Sai Baba’s inventiveness”.  This can be instructively read in concert with his Basic Notes On Sai Baba’s Credibility Problem (2004). Also on the acuteness of the credibility problem, Jorje Reysvera and Robert Priddy have written engagingly on Sai Baba and Magnetism, about his prescientific comments on the nature of magnetism. I have written in the article Huge Sai Baba Gaffes how these stunning inanities in Sai Baba’s discourses are preserved in video materials but quickly expunged by nervy Sai editors from the written records, and of my own first-hand observations of the weeding process when I was editing an internationally distributed Sai Baba magazine and books by Sai Baba devotees. This was at Sai Towers in Puttaparthi, and I saw how those such as Professor Anil Kumar and my late friend V.K.Narasimhan, one of India’s pre-eminent, historic and courageous newspaper editors, did such doctoring. I had a hand in the process myself when Sai Baba’s talk about his mother’s ghost would have raised a few eyebrows if allowed to circulate any further than a public discourse. The extraordinary blunders are excised before they get into publications that go worldwide like Sanathana Sarathi and Spiritual Impressions.

Steel quotes Aitken’s own amazement at Sathya Sai Baba’s well-known pronouncement that “Sanskrit is the parent and core of all languages,” which no respectable language scholar holds. And, indeed, to be amazed by disgrace is appropriate.

Australia Says ‘Sorry’. A Lesson For Sai Baba And Followers

A great day occurred in Australia yesterday, which the global Sathya Sai Organization may do well to note.

There is a strong lesson about admitting mistakes of the past, and responding with heart to the sorrow that one’s actions or one’s group’s actions have caused.

The rest of the Australian nation via its Federal Parliament said a vastly overdue “Sorry” to the first Australians, her indigenous people, for the tragic way in which their families were uprooted down many generations.

The proviso is, of course, that the noble sentiments and concurrence by most in the Federal Parliament and Australia at large are followed up by the appropriate practical actions that lead to true reconciliation between the first Australians and the rest of the nation.

A Genuine ‘Sorry’ Begets A Genuine ‘Thank You’, and Preludes Healing

The ‘Thank You’ message emblazoned on the tee-shirts of some the thousands of indigenous people who came to the national capital Canberra for the profoundly moving ceremonies should not escape notice. When we say sorry, and mean it, there springs a connection of the heart between people who have been at odds with each other. It is the prelude to a healing. It is the first breakage in the walls of sorrowful division.

The standing ovations for the recently elected Prime Minster Kevin Rudd and Jenny Macklin, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, were accompanied by thunderous applause. There were deep and unconstrained flows of weeping.  For some, it was as members of an afflicted race of a proud and ancient people so long traduced.

Other tears came from those of many other Australian communities who are capable of seeing the all-important connection - but too often missed when a heart connected imagination fails - between benefits long received, and still daily received, that profoundly stem from the defeat of our original inhabitants, leaving many of them, to this day, in appaling conditions that no nation can with any honor sustain.

The Sathya Sai Organization Needs to Learn to ‘Say Sorry’

The Bernie Taupin words to the Elton John song go to the heart of the matter - “sorry seems to be the hardest word”. Those who have tried to “talk it over” with Sai Baba’s key leaders have been everywhere greeted by authoritarian obfuscation and the most shocking psychological states of denial, something of which, caught by hidden camera, was seen by millions who viewed BBC’s The Secret Swami (2004).

 Sai Baba world head, Dr Michael Goldstein of Covina California USA, manifesting sublime love

The Taupin lyrics do great justice to the situation:

Its sad, so sad
Its a sad, sad situation
And its getting more and more absurd
Its sad, so sad
Why cant we talk it over
Oh it seems to me
That sorry seems to be the hardest word

A History Denied Maintains The Wounds Into The Future

The leaders and many in the Sathya Sai Organization know very well that many decent, highly regarded individuals and families around the world have left it because of the seriousness of the allegations, which are far from confined to the serial sexual molestation of boys and young men, but contain many other issues of great substance.

What the core leaders know, above all, is that there have been genuine attempts by former followers to raise their concerns in a responsible way. They know that those in dissent are not - as with great untruthfulness they have told their rank-and-file members - a ‘mere handful of disgruntled followers’. As the head of one of Australia’s leading private schools, Christ Church Grammar School Perth, Garth Wynne, informs me that he told the 2004 Sai National Conference (I rely on my carefully taken notes):  When serious allegations keep coming over years, they need to be dealt with properly. Unlike other major institutions in Australia and elsewhere who have broken off afflialiation with the Sathya Sai Organization, the school did not cancel the Sai Baba national conference booked at its prestigious venue. However, the message to the conference of Garth Wynne, the Principal (who acted in handling the Sai Baba matter on behalf of the then Anglican Archbishop of Australia, Dr Peter Carnley) was this - as he himself told me:  The accusations against your founder have kept on coming year after year. It puts an institution like ours, as well as your own organization, in a difficult position if you do not follow the appropriate procedures of investigation and accountability

Further Reading

For full text of Mr Kevin Rudd’s ’sorry speech’,  National Nine News, Wednesday February 13, 2008.

Quote from recently elected Australian Prime Minister Mr Kevin Rudd:

“We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country”.

Video Footage of Prime Minister Rudd’s speech

Barry Pittard article, Truth Commission Model May Assist Sai Baba Devotees

William Aitken Fails on Prof. E. Haraldsson and Dr K. Osis

As promised, I shall take some further looks at the work of Brian Steel. See my articles: 

• A Host of Sai Baba Hagiographers

• William Aitken’s Sai Baba Book Major Flaws Says Scholar

• Sai Baba Researchers’ Huge Debt To Scholar Brian D. Steel

In this blogging and some upcoming ones, I shall be looking at Brian Steel’s article: Bill Aitken and Sathya Sai Baba. A Writer’s Dilemma,  on Aitken’s book, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. A Life (New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2004. Paperback edition, 2006).

 

Aitken speaks of his book as a counterweight to “excesses of hagiography”. Steel’s textual analysis, however, reveals beyond any dispute that the book is strongly, despite its claims to the contrary, hagiographical. It isolates “headline grabbing” and superficial views contra Sai Baba, while ignoring the large body of serious criticism by former devotees and other critics that has been taken seriously by many third parties. For example, see below for clickable video material from the BBC’s The Secret Swami and DR’s Seduced. See also, my fairly extensive resource compilation, Exposure of Sai Baba: Media Source List.

 

Brian Steel criticises Bill Aitken’s work for carelessly elevating a minor player, the US parapsychologist Dr Karlis Osis, to major importance and yet leaving out of account Osis’s more relevant and well known research partner, Professor Erlandur (other spelling=Elendur)Haraldsson, author of Miracles Are My Visiting Cards. USA Title, (1988). Modern Miracles. An investigative report on psychic phenomena associated with Sri Sathya Sai Baba. New York: Ballantine Books, 304 pp. This is a work, sold in the many thousands, which Sai Baba devotees commonly - and very mistakenly - hail as ‘proving’ that his so-called miracles are all real.

 

Steel says:

“The author’s preference for Murphet’s quote about the minor participant (Osis) and his inexplicable lack of curiosity about one of the most influential books in the SSB literature is an important flaw in the research for this book, especially since Aitken fleetingly mentions Haraldsson’s book (on p. 220), but merely to recommend its coverage of miracle stories”. 

Dr E. Haraldsson, Emeritus Professor of the University of Iceland, Reykjavík, a leading academic parapsychology researcher. Incorrectly and widely cited by Sai Baba devotees as having ’proved’ Sai Baba’s claims to have extraordinary psychic powers. 

 

Professor Haraldsson’s careful and exhaustive investigations discredited Sai Baba’s claim to have ‘resurrected’ Walter Cowan, which the crypto-/ virtual devotee Aitken fails to note. Morover, Osis is promoted as an expert in Kirlian photography. In fact, ‘photographs of auras’ have been shown to be explainable by physics other than by any supposed ‘aura’. There is an interesting Wikipedia article which notes how Kirlian photography has been discredited in the scientific community.

 

To be continued shortly

For Viewing

See The Secret Swami HERE. Available in broadband and modem

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

Seduced

(21 MB, Modem)

Further References

• Dr Elendur Haraldsson, University of Iceland Faculty of Social Science. Dr E. Haraldsson’s webpage (English version), with his email contact details
• Erlendur Haraldsson, Wikipedia entry
• How Not to Study Paranormal Phenomena. Book Review by Babu Gogineni, Director, International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU). This looks at critically at Haraldsson’s work on Sai Baba, and says that the former has not responded to the points made.

A Host of Sai Baba Hagiographers

In the heyday of Sathya Sai Baba’s mission, some devotee writers with various professional backgrounds influenced many, particularly his more educated followers.

These included Professor N. Kasturi, Howard Murphet, Dr John Hislop, Dr Samuel Sandweiss, Ra. Ganapati, Dr Satya Pal Ruhela, V, Balu, Shukuntala Balu, Robert Lowenburg, etc.

Where Hagiography Fails Ethically

The name of William ‘Bill’ Aitken has now to be added to the list of these hagiographical writers on Sai Baba. In coming days I shall be looking at Bill Aitken and Sathya Sai Baba. A Writer’s Dilemma, by the Australian scholar Brian Steel  writing on Aitken’s book, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. A Life (New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2004. Paperback edition, 2006).

The Blind Misleading of Blind Yearning

The willingness of those searching, often with a great and aching longing, for peace of mind can conceal from their readers, even well-educated ones, just how hagiographic these works really are.  The role of educated writers who forsake time-honoured principles of rigorous questioning of phenomena needs to be looked at in relation to Sai Baba and his hagiographers. They bear a tremendous responsibility, and I think that history will treat them harshly. They have been, in effect, among the prime recruiting agents for Sai Baba, commanding many thousands of readers, and show no sign of the same careful investigation of the allegations that many former devotees and other critics, as well as major institutions such as the BBC and UNESCO, have made. These writers have profoundly failed in their duty of care - in standards of critical research, and in bringing any accountability to Sai Baba or his global Sathya Sai Organization. Our worldwide network shows no sign that they have attempted to meet or in any way engage with our former devotees, who number many who are honored in all their walks of life, and were so honored when they were so very dedicated in their work in various programs of the Sathya Sai Organization. The scale of the shunning of those in dissent has been simply enormous. 

Spurious ‘Appeals to Authority’ Rampant Among Sai Devotees

A professional standing (e.g., teacher, journalist, psychiatrist and so forth) imparts, quite spuriously, an added aura of authority. In the Sathya Sai Baba movement, this logical fallacy of ‘appeal to authority’ has long served as high octane fuel in the promotion of this guru. There is the appearance of urbane reason but in reality an abandonment of questioning. The guru - especially in regard to his own self-concept - is unchallenged and a myriad of inconsistencies are typically explained away in phrases common to devotees, such as: “Baba’s little leela (guru’s sport)”, his “unfathomable mystery”, his “testing of the devotee’s faith, spiritual progress”, his “wiping clean the devotee’s karmic slate”, etc.

Further Reading

Bill Aitken and Sathya Sai Baba. A Writer’s Dilemma

William Aitken’s Sai Baba Book. Major Flaws Says Scholar
Sai Baba Researchers’ Huge Debt To Scholar Brian D. Steel

Sathya Sai Baba Fails To Materialize Top Tennis Match

What? No one for Sai Baba tennis?

Anyone for a contractual obligation?

Well, there was player turnup, except for the authority’s last-second cancellation because there was no Sai Baba turnup. The shocked reaction of one of the players interviewed (see Hindustan Times report below) carries its own moral force.

In more recent times, Sai Baba’s behaviour - whether it concerns his appearance or non-appearance - has become ever more erratic.

Opulent ’spirituality’ at Puttaparthi

But Where Has Sai Baba Gone?

The latest episode concerns his cancellation of a tennis tournament by top players from India and the Philippines. This was one of two scheduled matches, one of which was to have taken place at the so-called ’spiritual’ guru’s incredibly opulent ashram at Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, South India. See, Champion Tennis At Top Indian Guru’s Ashram

A typical bizarre case was last October 4, when there was a rush by thousands of devotees avid to see a promised vision of Sai Baba in the moon, announced by one of his top servitors, Professor Anil Kumar.

In yet another extraordinary piece of behaviour, Sai Baba has canceled a tennis match. In the report below, I have highlighted in red the Indian journalist Deepika Sharma’s comment, which makes highly implausible the top Indian tennis official’s excuse about an electicity failure.

One may add that the Hindustan Times, one of India’s leading newspapers, is one of the few media that will publish stories adverse to Sai Baba, although there are some signs that this is changing. See, Indian Media’s Reticence on Top Guru, Sathya Sai Baba, Weakens

Tennis takes a backseat in holy land

Deepika Sharma, Hindustan Times
New Delhi, January 21, 2008
First Published: 23:50 IST(21/1/200
Last Updated: 21:26 IST(22/1/2008)   
 

Tennis was not quite blessed in the land of the Sathya Sai Baba. The India-Philippines tennis test series at Puttaparthi — the home of the Sri Sathya Sai Baba — could not take place a couple of weeks ago because of bizarre circumstances.

According to sources, the first of the two ties — India won the second 3-0 at the DLTA facility here — did not happen because the Sai Baba could not turn up to inaugurate the tie and bless the players.

“We were ready to start the match, when suddenly, we were told that the matches would not take place,” a player told HT on Monday. “It was really frustrating that the matches could not place because Sathya Sai Baba did not turn up to bless us and inaugurate the event,” he added. “Doordarshan had even started telecasting the first game when we came to know that we were being packed off without playing.” They were apparently told that it would be “inauspicious” to begin playing at the new tennis stadium (reportedly an outstanding facility) without the Sai Baba’s blessings.

A Doordarshan sports director, Isaac, confirmed to HT that they “were prepared” to go on air. “We were all set to telecast the match live. We had even gone on air for five minutes,” he said. The reason for the official cancellation of the tie though, is obviously different. The president of the Asian Tennis Federation, also the secretary-general of the All India Tennis Association (AITA), Anil Khanna, held “power failure” the actual reason for abandoning the tie.

“The first tie was called off because there was a power failure. We wanted to play under the floodlights but since there was no electricity, we had to call off the tie,” said Khanna. Incidentally, the first tie was to begin at 5pm (when it wouldn’t have been dark).

Further Reading

Robert Priddy article, with photos of Sai Baba’s flash tennis venue - part of his Sri Sathya Sai International Centre for Sports:
Sai Baba’s tennis stadium another white elephant?

For ‘the secret swami’s’ influence on major Indian power elites, See, International Cricket And The Secret Swami

For his mental and physical decline - with his minders working at fever-pitch to hide it where possible and rationalize it otherwise - See, Has ‘World Saviour’ Missed His Plane?

William Aitken’s Sai Baba Book. Major Flaws Says Scholar

The following are some quotes from Brian Steel’s article Bill Aitken and Sathya Sai Baba. A Writer’s Dilemma.

Retired Spanish language expert and lexicographer from one of Australia’s top universities, Steel critically assesses a book by William McKay ‘Bill’ Aitken: Sri Sathya Sai Baba. A Life (New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2004. Paperback edition, 2006).

‘Bill’ Aitken

Aitken’s Methodology Badly Flawed, Says Steel

Quotes:

Aitken’s style of reporting often shows a judgemental bias in favour of Sathya Sai Baba, somewhat akin to the devotee’s habit of rationalising any doubt or inconvenient information about the guru. Nowhere is this clearer than in the few pages where he makes an attempt to explain away SSB’s clearly documented errors and exaggerations (pp.131-136)

This biography contains other errors and omissions which suggest that Aitken was over-selective in his sampling of the vast hagiographical literature on SSB.

Equally disappointing for the general reader is the author’s superficial treatment of recent controversies. On more than one occasion he issues blanket condemnations of all criticisms of Sathya Sai Baba, dismissing them out of hand and even implying interference by “certain rival missions” (p. 189) or speculating that someone “could be a paid informer of the missionary lobby”. Also, Aitken’s preoccupation with the sensational, headline-grabbing sexual allegations (by Tal Brooke, or David Bailey, for example) does not leave him time to deal with more serious aspects of past and present critical research on Sathya Sai Baba …

(Aitken’s book will)

disappoint many non-devotee readers (especially researchers) simply because any account of Sathya Sai Baba’s life that ignores, misrepresents or makes mistakes over relevant available evidence about that life (especially the copious amounts freely available in SSB’s Discourses, the available literature and on the Internet) can hardly be seen as a complete or impartial work.

In spite of his professed neutrality between “the hype of unhinged devotees and a howling pack of detractors”, some parts of Aitken’s eulogy, ‘Awareness of Divinity’, written for The Week (27 November 2005) on the occasion of SSB’s 80th Birthday, are no different, in essence, from what a Sathya Sai Baba apologist would assert, especially the blanket dismissal of all criticism as inherently baseless and extraordinary generalisations like “the critics are so intemperate in their dislike that their vituperation now comes across as almost near comical in its predictability”, as well as the permanent blind spot for serious Internet criticisms of Sathya Sai Baba that have not been refuted.

See Barry Pittard’s article Sai Baba Researchers’ Huge Debt To Scholar Brian D. Steel

Forthcoming

• A look at Robert Priddy’s articles on William McKay ‘Bill’ Aitken
• Barry Pittard looks at Steel on Aitken and on other topics

Sai Baba Researchers’ Huge Debt To Scholar Brian D. Steel

The Australian academic linguist Brian Steel has posted his Research on Sathya Sai Baba and the Sathya Sai Organisation. New Factors for Researchers to Consider, December 2007

Brian D. Steel’s Huge Project

Of the ‘New Factors’ section, he notes: “This extensive survey is also an integral section of the third Part of my annotated Bibliography on Sathya Sai Baba”. Far more that offering long lists of sources, the bibliographies include succinct comments in the case of works that Steel deems of special note. His scope is breathtaking.

“These three Bibliographies have listed and briefly described three large and diverse corpora of information currently available in December 2007 about the guru Sathya Sai Baba, his 60-year spiritual Mission and his organisation (the Sathya Sai Organisation). By winnowing this enormous mass of varied documentation, researchers should be in a better position to separate fact from fantasy and research from propaganda in order to arrive at a fair evaluation of the complex Sathya Sai Baba story”.

Steel’s overview:

‘An Annotated Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba in Three Parts. Part 1: Sources of public information, including items of a scholarly or academic nature or provenance, with an Appendix on entries in works of reference, surveys and textbooks  An Annotated Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba
Part 2: Alternative Sources of Information and Opinion about Sathya Sai Baba and his Mission  An Annotated Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba  Part 3: A Bibliography of Apologetic Writing about Sathya Sai Baba. Presenting Sathya Sai Baba to the World Sections 1-5.   Sathya Sai Baba’s Teachings, etc.

Section 6. New Factors for Researchers to Consider’

Continuum of Sai Scholarship Which Now Includes Dissent

Many readers look to Brian Steel’s work which, with its habits of a lifetime of scholarship, shows cool appraisal and lays great emphasis on care over detail, close textual comparison, verification of sources, and so forth. Much of his work invites wider than scholarly readership. All who are in search of both copious detailed bibliographical sources and/or analysis will find the entire Steel opus (from 2001 on) indispensable. It is vast, and has been groundbreaking from the very first. Indeed, his writing on Sai Baba issues and bibliography was already established when he was still a devotee. After twelve years of following him, he left and continued extensive analysis of texts, many of which he had long known. Some of the contradictions - especially in Sai Baba’s so-called ‘Divine Discourses’ - had already troubled him while he was a devotee. This witnesses a common experience of dissenters in general, since there is often no overnight revelation but rather a prolonged and anguishing period of reassessment. I think that there will be no independent scholars or other investigators of merit who will be able to find serious fault with his project. He will nevertheless be targetted, I think, by fervent  pro Sai Baba polemicists, who increasingly undo themselves wherever there are attentive, sober critical readers, as witness his Endnote (to which I refer below). Even an endnote from Steel is strong medicine. In his endnote to ‘New Factors, he examines the efforts of an individual of extreme zeal who, assisted by some of Sai Baba’s servitors in various countries, has spearheaded Internet attempts to discredit  those who have publicly presented evidence which openly conflicts with Sathya Sai Baba’s Divine Claims.

William ‘Bill’ Aitken - A Non-hagiographic Hagiographer?

I shall shortly review a section of Part 3 (See, link above) of this December 2007 series, which analyses the book William McKay Aitken’s book ‘Sri Sathya Sai Baba. A Life’ (New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2004. Paperback edition, 2006). The Aitkin material is in Part 3, Section 6, New Factors for Researchers to Consider. 1. Recent Publications and New Promotional Media. Specifically 3. Which Sai Baba Movement? A Writer’s Dilemma

Aitken Accepted By Top Sai Baba Official

‘Bill’ Aitken is extolled as an authoritative intellectual by Dr G. Venkataraman, Sai Baba’s deputy world chairman and head of Sai Global Radio (via WorldSpace International Satellite Radio Service). Aitken speaks of his book as a counterweight to “excesses of hagiography”. But is it anything of the sort?

Serious Omissions and Commissions?

Rather, Steel’s textual analysis reveals that the book has strong hagiographical content, and also ignores some critics of Sathya Sai Baba by isolating “headline grabbing” and superficial views contra Sai Baba, while, to an extraordinary extent, ignoring the large body of serious criticism.

(More on Brian Steel’s work shortly)

Sai Baba - Miraculous or Disastrous?

It may not necessarily be fun for religionists and rationalists to find themselves on roughly common ground. Especially when it comes to the topic of Sai Baba’s so-called ‘miracles.

The Disaster of the ‘Miraculous’

Many religious people place little or no importance on miracles. For example, the Buddha inveighed against them, viewing preoccupation with them as problematic for one’s spiritual growth. Likewise, Sri Ramakrishna and many spiritual teachers of various paths. No matter what Sai Baba may say about his (alleged) miracles being of the relative importance of a flea to an elephant, large numbers of his devotees are extensively concerned with them.

No rationalist will surely cede to a notion of the miraculous, and perhaps even if a shower of them occurred would not be too impressed. His or her likely position would be:  whatever the cause, there will be, if there is not in our present state of scientific knowledge already, a non-theistic, non-deistic explanation for the phenomena. Such touching trust - and again a certain likeness to so many religionists. Anyone, by the way, who has not met a fundamentalist rationalist, hindu, jew, christian, buddhist, etc., is missing out on one of the great treats of life - the resemblances are almost awe-inspiring! 

Some Devotees Silent On Miracle Topic

In reflecting on their personal experience of extraordinary phenomena that they would deem far from psychic or occultic, I think Sai Baba devotees and former followers would agree with the following statement:  it can be uncomfortable speaking with those who have not experienced like phenomena, including many fellow devotees. There is tension between those who perceive themselves to have experienced directly and those who have not. There can be odious comparison, which can be unhelpful when not all the experiences are of the same type. There can be jealousy from those ardent to experience but for whom no miracle has occurred. And, for experiencees, there can be a difficulty in quantifying in mere words something felt to be sublime. (Let us leave aside in what those phenomena may actually consist).

Devotee Intelligentsia Can Fear Professional Ridicule

The topic is more broad, and not confined to the Sai Baba fold. There are scientists and other usually hardnosed professionals who have experienced phenomena far beyond what can be readily explained - and they often shut up about it. This is not to say that sophisticated intellects are unabatingly sophisticated, and beyond gullibility. A clever, seasoned magician or a crafty scam artist can surely testify to that, if only we could afford to listen to them. 

In the Sai Baba cult (leave aside the question of elsewhere), there is no shortage of those in many professions, and of none, who have observed, and in some cases been the immediate recipients of what appear to be, supraphenomena in homes and other places around the world. There are various reasons for their silence - for example, not wanting to endanger terms of university employment or preferment, or simply not wanting to be embarrassed in social circles. A well-known example of professional and student ridicule that can be generated is referred to by Professor Samuel Sandweiss MD in his book The Holy Man and the Psychiatrist. Birthday Publishing Company, San Diego, Southern California. 1975.

 

Once it became known that Dr Sandweiss was partial to an Indian guru (Sathya Sai Baba), he suffered around his university no end of taunts, whispering campaigns and nastiness by colleagues.

India A Fast Breeder of Rationalists

In passing, I would note that in India (where I lived for several years) for a respectable Indian intellectual to hold that supraphenomena can exist is nowhere so difficult as in western countries. This fact makes India a fertile ground for rationalists. In my years there, I was struck by how aware were wide cross-sections of educated India of rationalists such as (late) A.T. Kovoor, (late) Professor H.Narasimhaiah, Basava Premanand, Professor Narendra Nayak, Prabir Ghosh, and others. This was no sleeping issue.

Silence Motivated by Spiritual Aspiration

Another reason for remaining quiet is a time-honored traditional one - when embarked on a spiritual path, an aspirant wants to eschew egotism. In experiencing phenomena that appear divine (let us imagine for the moment that the phenomena to which they refer is not the mere spooky or occult), the sense that oneself is somehow special, singled out and blessed by the divine is hard to avoid, and this may or may not manifest in crudely in blatant egotism. The mind, having its own rich complement of tricks, can manifest a subtle, but none the less still powerful, egotism, which cannot be wished away.

‘Miracles’ Are More Than Sai Baba’s ‘Visiting Cards’

Sai Baba makes a belated pretence at downplaying his so-called miracles, yet boasts of them constantly and performs these apparent feats often - although falling back on legerdemain. His very denial of the importance of the miraculous is lost in his behavioural performances, just as his very denial of sex is lost in his having of it with boys and young men, and his emphasis on not collecting funds by his Organization is lost in ‘backdoor’ methods of fundraising.

Sai Baba devotees tend generally to be very excitable about his ‘miracles’. Many revel in accounts (very poorly provenanced) such the supposedly 17th century Islamic Shi’a  Mehdi Moud prophecies from Iran, about which I shall shortly blog. This has become a part of Sai myth-making, along with so many other references to miracles and wonders, and is featured in the multi-million dollar Sai Baba Chaitanya Jyothi Museum, built to glorify him. Typically, when confronted by doubt, Sai devotees tend soon resort to telling what miracles they have received or others have received - including ‘miraculous’ occurrences often far beyond Sai Baba’s physical presence. A highly manufactured and managed ‘Glory of Puttaparthi’, ‘Advent of the Avatar’, ‘India’s National Treasure’, etc.

Endemic Devotee Exitability

No small demonstration of the mass devotee headlong rush towards the perceived miraculous occurred in October 2007. Thousands of Sai devotees tore from the ashram to Sai Baba’s airport (which, by the way, is up for sale), believing that Sai Baba would grant a vision of himself in the moon (variously termed ‘vishwa viraat roopa darshan’, vishwarupa darshana’, ‘viwa rupa’, etc. See Moon Mission of Sathya Sai Baba. Re Merinews Article and Sai Baba To Be Seen In Moon. But Where Was Moon?

Where Oh Where Without Miracles?

There can be little doubt that Sai Baba minus the ‘miracles and wonders’ aspect would exercise far less a grip. Especially is the grip powerful in a land of hoary and intense religiosity. He also appeals to that part of the world, profoundly lost to the old Christian or other religious ’verities’ and full of desperation for something to fill the materialism-driven emptiness and the torn legacies of other ‘gods’ that have failed. 

But most pitiable is the case when human beings are not genuinely fed mind, heart and soul.  When they are betrayed. And subject instead to arguably history’s most powerful and controversial guru, now exposed on countless grounds as profoundly corrupt - whatever angelic processes m