China Courts Dalai Lama. Olympic Good Spirit?

The Chinese government has been making strenuous attempts to ensure a meeting with the Dalai Lama. The troubled events attending the Olympic torch relay, and international condemnation of China for her human rights record, have brought considerable pressure on the Chinese leaders to make this move. This is in marked contrast to its decades of execrating the Tibetan Buddhist leader in exile.

 

 

 

The pint-sized - although reprehensible - thuggery of violent protesters only served further to obscure the Chinese government’s monumental thuggery practised for so long. It also demonstrated one of the Dalai Lama’s difficulties - how to restrain those of his own culture who think violence is the answer. Their lack of restraint lost a priceless opportunity to gain far greater world sympathy for their cause. 

It is a great pity that the violent actions of some protesters have detracted from one of the singular facts in the world’s recent history:  the Dalai Lama, in the extremely small company of those such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, has been a great voice for peace. The Chinese government responded in the way that it so often has done with other individuals who speak out boldly on behalf of the facts. It attempted to denigrate the Dalai Lama by calling him a liar. It is a ploy extremely often and long used by totalitarian governments and by democratic leaders when there is a good chance of getting away with it.  

Rudd’s Diplomacy. Or:  Is There Anything So Dainty As An Old China Hand

My own country’s Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd, for all that he spoke frankly to China of human rights concerns about her shockingly violent suppressions in Tibet, will have sore need, when dealing with many other countries, of more than his adroit diplomacy in his recent visit to China. Let us trust that he does not soon become jaded, if he is not already.

  

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd review honour guard, Beijing.

 

That Mr Rudd and the Chinese leaders almost wildly succeeded in their trade aims indicates that his outspokenness on human rights was never going to threaten the trade realpolitic at all. All his fine sentiments about China, splashily but cannily delivered in Mandarin, were always bound to have been reported in the Chinese media, just as his remarks about human rights in Tibet were forever doomed to be highly censored. An old China hand would have known this even in his sleep.

 

India Could Show Way (if she cleans her own backyard).
 

As India shakes herself loose of antidemocratic forces within her midst, posed by those powerful oligarchies such as Sathya Sai Baba’s cult, one can hope that a great counterweight to Communist China’s influence will swing into place. Ensuring India a place in the UN Security Council is one of the ways in which the international community can resist the impact that China hopes, in part, to achieve by holding a successful Olympic Games. China may find it harder to play games with countries in Asia and elsewhere that have much to fear from a Communist China rampant.  

 Photo:   Sathya Sai Baba in pure gold chariot

Resources

 

Envoys for China, Dalai Lama to meet Sunday

CNN. May 3, 2008.  With the outbreak in violence and the resulting crackdown, Beijing has been under intense international pressure to re-open its dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

 

When the talks were announced last week, China said it would resume meetings with representatives of the Dalai Lama in hopes the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader would use his influence to stop anti-Chinese protests that threaten to disrupt the Olympics, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported. 

The international torch relay ahead of the Olympics in Beijing was dogged along the way by protesters supporting the Free Tibet Movement. The remainder of the relay will take place within China and its territories and was in Macau on Saturday.

 

Some Articles at Call For Media and Government Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba

Dalai Lama: Forgiveness does not mean forgetfulness

The Guru Trap. Will India Be Forever Trapped?

Indian Minister Shields Sai Baba on BBC television

India A Mature Democracy? BBC Probes

Probed On Male Sex Abuse, Sai Baba Evicts BBC TV Team

Dissent From Guru Cults Draws Slander and Harassment

Indian Gurus Stifle India’s Chance To Excel

Cultic Depersonalization or Demonization of Dissenters

 

 

Saudi King Abdullah: Jews, Muslims, Christians Must Diolog

Sathya Sai Baba, 82 (although records suggest that he is older, see discussion and further links here, The Date of Sai Baba’s Birthday) has long said that he will cause, within his own lifetime, a profound coming together in peace and harmony among the world’s religions.  See, Will World Accept Sai Baba? He Says Yes. Very Soon When one looks at the Interfaith horizon, there are many players, and yet Sai Baba and his global Sathya Sai Organization are frequently conspicuous by their absence. A simple check with the organisational leaders of the Interfaith community will reveal all.

‘Divine’ Decline and Decline of the Showman ‘Emperor’

 

Sai Baba is now showing significant signs of dotage. His devotees - but not his worried minders! - ignore all the patently obvious signs of decrepitude. They claim e.g., that it is “all Bhagawan’s Leela” and that “Swami is simply testing us”, and display a range of rather saddening symptoms of being in deep psychological denial.

The Rise and Rise of Interfaith Diolog (and meaningful action!)?

On the other hand, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called on Jewish, Christian and Muslim clerics to hold united fora “to defend humanity from harm”. In his meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in November 2007, King Abdullah had foreshadowed the idea, but has surprised some commentators by acting to gather clerics from these denominations. Part of the surprised reaction was because Saudi Arabia is religion-wise very conservative. It bans, for example, public prayer by members of any other religion. Perhaps the surprise is not occasioned, because the King is virtually surrounded by hard-line Islamic leaders committed to jihad. Not far from King Abdullah’s mind must surely be the powerful and continual rise of Iran, which is not an Arab country. The decisive issue may prove to be whether the King and Arab moderates prefer a strong peace settlement with Israel or to have to deal with it as a hostile, as well as with Iran. 

Whatever may be the prime motivation - whether Realpolitik or Interfaith leanings - at least King Abdullah is doing what Sai Baba has so long promised but singularly failed to accomplish. Certainly, the Saudi move is not the first Interfaith initiative from within the Muslim world. See my article,

Muslim Leaders Initiative Bold. Sai Baba’s Efforts Fail.   

An extraordinary cross-section of mainstream Muslim clerics, theologians and academics have acted in a way that Sai Baba and his mega wealthy worldwide cult, the Sathya Sai organization, have profoundly failed to act. This failure needs to be made very clear within the interfaith movement. The members of the Sathya Sai Organization which has attempted to interact with it, can be challenged to [...]

Further Resources

Yahoo News

Saudi King calls for interfaith dialogue.

By DONNA ABU-NASR and ABDULLAH SHIHRI, Associated Press Writers Tue Mar 25, 5:21 PM ET

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The Saudi king has made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians and Jews - the first such proposal from a nation with no diplomatic ties to Israel and a ban on non-Muslim religious services and symbols …..

 Boston Globe

Religious leaders welcome Saudi proposal

By Lily HindyAssociated Press Writer / March 26, 2008 

NEW YORK-Several Jewish, Christian and Muslim leaders reacted warmly to a proposal for dialogue among the religions by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, welcoming the overture from the leader of the strict Muslim country as a major development in interfaith relations. Specifics of the initiative, including whether Israelis could take part, remained unclear — leading some to caution against too much optimism. Abdullah’s proposal comes at a time of stalled peace negotiations and heightened Middle East tension. It also comes amid Muslim anger over cartoons published in Europe seen as insulting the Prophet Muhammad and in the wake of the pope’s controversial baptism of a prominent Muslim convert [...]

See, too: Has ‘World Saviour’ Missed His Plane?

In his February 16, 2007 so-called ‘divine discourse’, Sai Baba said, “I intend to undertake a world tour, shortly.” But will he? How can he?
The guru, perhaps the most wealthy and politically powerful in India’s long history, claims that he will save the world in his own lifetime. He will, he says, preside over the [...]

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

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

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)
 

Indian Gurus Stifle India’s Chance To Excel

Intense and blind faith in gurus, such as one finds endemic in India, shames a great many of her otherwise educated individuals, including scientists. It jeopardizes her opportunities to gain unstinting international respect.

Guru Worship

Still flinging themselves passionately at the feet of gurus, and worshipping them as God incarnate, they ignore the gurus’ absurd pronouncements on matters scientific. This would matter badly enough if the gurus were small local gods and demigods, because no communities should need to suffer from such gross ignorance and superstition, which always tend to spread, anyway. However there are many gurus in India who have vast followings and they are extremely powerful and influential. They also attract many young, impressionable people from many countries. Because I lived lengthily in India, living with some wonderful Indian families, and worked beside Indians from a wide array of backgrounds and religious and non-religious affiliations, I was able to gain a sense of how deeply ashamed many thoughtful and sensible Indian people are of these gurus and the harm that they do.

Some Indian Gurus Attract Millions of Followers

Sai Baba, to take one of a number of instances, is worshipped as God incarnate by millions, and his devotees have numbered a series of prime ministers, presidents, as well as countless other power brokers in the highest echelons, often irrespective of party affiliation. 

Guru Worship Poses Grave Harm to India’s International Reputation

These mental gymnastics that allow so many educated Indians to listen to the utterest balderdash from gurus like Sai Baba, will increasingly shame India before the world as she vies for superpower status, and as the international spotlight falls increasingly on her. She may not be stage-struck, but she is, all-too-often guru struck. If she were to manage to secure genuine moral highground, enough countries might feel greater pleasure doing business with her, in preference to China, with her continued and huge-scale human rights abuses. (Not that India does not have to address many very serious human rights abuses). But how can she, when she is in such a parlous mess in so many areas?

Another India, Another Time

One of the greatest privileges I ever had was, in my years spent in India, meeting a number of wonderful individuals who not only faced with dignity, integrity and courage the evils of British imperialism but also the oppressions meeted out during Mrs Indira Gandhi’s 21-month 1975-1977 Emergency. Some Judges I met had made the grand refusal to see good laws perverted, and made great sacrifices, including jail, to show their non-cooperation. They reminded me of Sir Thomas More the Lord Chancellor of Tudor times who stood up to his monarch, Henry VIII, one of the most absolute of history’s rulers, and was prepared to be tortured and to die for doing so. Those I met who were in the Indian army were of an era when there was a great pride taken by the Indian people in their armed forces and whose behaviour was in such marked to distinction to her perpetually cruel and hated police forces. 

Perhaps only younger and more questioning generations of Indians will be able to make the difference, and that can only be when  gerontocratic ruling hands are prized from their deadly grip at the merciful time of death of these incredibly corrupt individuals (most of them men!).

Below, which I excerpt from an article by Robert Priddy - Global Warming and Prophecies - is but one example of the crass scientific ignorance I refer to:

Sai Baba has evidently picked up some stray thoughts from visitors and his educated servitors about the ozone layer and CO2 pollution and has mentioned the problem in a few sentences.

We see that Sai Baba was unaware that CFC gases were the primary cause of ozone depletion, for he believes that tree-planting (afforestation) could correct ozone depletion. He is ignorant of the science and obviously confuses ozone depletion with CO2 increase.

Further Reading

Indian Media’s Reticence on Top Guru, Sathya Sai Baba, Weakens

Quote: “Breaking decades of virtual Indian media silence on comment critical of Sathya Sai Baba, a number of major Indian news organizations have run (mostly November 22, 2006) the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) report on Paul Lewis’s article in The Guardian, ‘The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards’“…

Sai Baba’s “Back Yard” Still A Mess

Quote: “Will more Indian activists Speak Out? Activism from within India against Sai Baba and his worldwide cult, the Sathya Sai Organization, and other corrupt gurus is crucial. Activists know best their own culture. It would be good to see many more critics than the courageous B.Premanand and Swami Agnivesh and a handful of others speak out against the abuses” ….

Who In India Will Stand out Against Abuses?

Quote: “According to reports by Sanjoy Majumdar, BBC New Delhi and Tim Sullivan of Associated Press, there have been some recent populist stirrings in India against corruption and its cover-up. Not that there have not long been those Indians who have stood up valiantly against these. One may hope that the groundswell will come to include corrupt gurus”….

9/11 Memories Discredit Sai Baba and His Global Cult

“A number of reports have been received from devotees indicating that our Beloved Swami prevented many of his devotees from being injured or killed in the World Trade Center where they are employed or had meetings scheduled. His Miraculous Intervention on behalf of His devotees is clearly evident”.

The above triumphal proclamation to the Elect (through whom Sai Baba has said he will achieved mankind’s greatest spiritual revolution) was circularized to large numbers of Sai Baba devotees around the world. Its author was Sai Baba’s world chairman, Dr Michael Goldstein, a physician of Covina, California, USA.

In a public meeting in Buenos Aires, attended by some 1500 Sai Baba devotees, October 20, 2001, the same Dr Michael Goldstein (reported by Zona de Investigación, Azul TV, Argentina) said:

“There are many devotees that worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon… And none of them went to work that day, or they arrived late…all the New York and Washington devotees are safe…”

A raging Dr Goldstein as caught by BBC hidden camera in The Secret Swami (2004). See video clip HERE.

Communities and Governments Need to Heed Sai Baba Cult Facts

Various governments, political, civic and religious leaders have seen the utterly committed nature of Sai Baba’s leaders of his mega rich Sathya Sai Organization who have - at very high levels - contacted them, seeking to affiliate with community mainstreams. One area targeted is the inter-Faith movement, as are executives of  major world Faiths. Another sensitive area is schools and other places of learning. Here, likewise, Sai Baba is largely kept out of mention, but the secret agenda of the one named ‘the secret swami’ by the BBC’ is nonetheless powerfully unfolded. See Dominic Kennedy article, Suicide, sex and the guru, The Times of London, Monday August 27, 2001.

Sai Baba Has Promised To Rule World, Soon

What Sai Baba cultists do not disclose is that their agenda is to see their guru worshipped by the entire world. Despite all evidence to the contrary - including Sai Baba’s visibly and sorely deteriorating health - his devotees (many of them extremely rich and influential at the highest echelons of world power) are high-octane fueled by the absolute belief that he will - with a profusion of miracles the like of which have never been reported in history - make good his promises to rule the world before his dies (they do not use this word!) around 2022 AD. See my article, Will World Accept Sai Baba? He Says Yes. Very Soon

But would any country wish to be ruled by one whose top leaders say that their guru mystically prevented his devotees from being victims on the day of the terrorist attacks on the USA?

Further Reading

9/11 and Sathya Sai Baba’s claimed intervention! Posted by Robert Priddy, September 11th, 2007

Serial Sex Molestations and Bedroom Killings. But Much More

The English translation from Spanish of Gatapado journal article by a top Argentinean investigative journalist and Azul TV presenter Alejandro Agostinelli is HERE

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

P.N. Bhagawati, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India, a key figure on the Sathya Sai Central Trust (India) has also long been on the Board of Directors of The Times of India. 

In a joint public letter (December 2001), Bhagwati along with the former Prime Minister of India of the right wing BJP, A.B. Vajpayee, and another former Chief Justice of India, Ranganath Mishra, and three other prominent leaders wrote a public letter stating that contentions of Sai Baba’s dissenters represent a:

“wild, reckless and concocted allegations made by certain vested interests and people against Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba”.

See my own responses after this issue broke, HERE

“Wild and Reckless”?

What then of an Indian Prime Minister and former Chief Justices and others (one now Home Minister in the current Manmohan Singh Government) who proffer no evidence that they, in a transparent and accountable way, have investigated any of the substantive allegations against Sai Baba?

P.N. Bhagwati - supposedly a model of the dispensation of Justice - does a profound injustice to hundreds of good and decent former Sai Baba devotees from many countries who have, on the strictest ethical principle, left Sai Baba and his worldwide Sathya Sai Baba Organization.

(Dr Goldstein pic from: The Secret Swami, BBC). What? Not looking wild and reckless?!

The leaders of this organization, such as the world chairman Dr Michael Goldstein of Covina, California, USA, know perfectly well the excellent standing of many former devotees who have attempted to bring attention to the allegations. This is both from the point of view of their role when still members and of the high esteem they have attracted in their professions, trades, education institutions and wider communities.

Yet P.N. Bhagwati and the other signatories wrote of “wild, reckless and concocted allegations made by certain vested interests and people against Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba.”

History will judge very harshly of the failure of those blinded by their devotion so greatly as to be incapable of exercising requisite ethics, sensitivity and applied skills and processes to investigate serious and repeated allegations. These have been asserted by scrupulous and conscientious individuals who have, indeed, investigated the allegations with probity, moral responsibility and a natural compassion.

Why the great anomaly? Why should the Sathya Sai Organization and a few public figures who support Sai Baba not be subject to the same accountability criteria that are now best practice in countless organizations?

We Are Open to Bona Fide Investigators

Many individuals worldwide have, in varying degrees, been alienated from Sai Baba and his Sathya Sai Organization from which they expected to see spirituality and compassion in action. In some cases they have been terribly traumatized by their experiences of Sai Baba and his core leaders, whom they see as having grossly derelicted their duty-of-care for members. Therefore, they are not likely to be too open to those who are aggressive, name-calling, and who fail to observe proper ethical and professional canons of enquiry.

In fact, our submissions to various media, government, civic, academic, law enforcement and other authorities are submitted with the utmost responsibility.  For those of them who are ready to act with integrity, sensitivity and care, we provide as a further mark of good faith, and on the basis of strict privacy, the contact details of those in outstanding, in some cases eminent, positions in government, law, media, education, psychology, medicine, etc., who know the facts.

As well, we are able to coordinate personal and telephonic, and where practicable, contact with articulate individuals and families - and also others not intellectually articulate but who are nevertheless also poignantly moving in their accounts - who are ready to share, in a proper atmosphere, their harrowing experiences of sexual abuse by Sai Baba and other wrongdoings. These are very far from confined to those like the Rahm family (BBC and DR, Denmark’s national television and radio broadcaster), who have already shared their experiences in the media and elsewhere.

We have always been ready to to assist investigative journalists from quality major media in various parts of the world, as well as important religious and civic institutions, and, for example, academics who are either researching allied issues themselves or supervising students who are doing so.

We also have provision of highly qualified professional counselors.

In short, we are able, with the strictest accountability, to provide compelling credentials, for those who are far removed from attacking, slandering and maligning the many witnesses who attempt to tell (not always particularly coherently and yet often most movingly) of their extremely painful and traumatic experiences at the hands of Sathya Sai Baba, and of his also profoundly compromised officials and other supporters.

Related Reading and Viewing

Indian Minister Shields Sai Baba on BBC TV

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

See this video clip. Here, BBC footage clearly exposes one of the then Vajpayee Government’s most powerful Ministers, Murali Manohar Joshi, follower of Sai Baba, as he angrily bullies and slipperily evades the interviewer Tanya Datta, who asks him entirely reasonable questions.

This Link is worth a look. India’s foremost Rationalist B.Premanand (later copying the exchange to his newsletter The Indian Skeptic, Vol. 19. No. 7 15-11-2006) wrote a series of letters in 2006 to top echelon Government of India officials, including police, referring back to the period when A.B. Vajpayee was in office. The letters attempt to establish a) whether the provenance of the letter ostensibly written by Vajpayee and other in defense of Sai Baba was true and b) whether, if it was, there had been any proper investigations of allegations against Sai Baba for sexual abuse of young males. The essence is that, as usual - since Sai Baba has for decades been heavily protected by Indian governments irrespective of what regime is in power - he got grand obstruction. Of course, one of the great successes of Premanand’s “failures” in his tireless efforts with power structures is to reveal the billowing smokescreens that rise as soon as accountability issues are probed.

List of signatories to letter supporting Sai Baba

(a Wikipedia linked copy of the joint letter is HERE)

A.B. Vajpayee
(then) Prime Minister of India
P.N. Bhagawati
Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India
Ranganath Mishra
(then) Chair Person, National Human Rights Commissioner of India
Formerly Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India
Najma Heptulla
(then) President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union; UNDP Distinguished Human Development Ambassador
Shivraj V. Patil
(Details as signatory: Member of Parliament, India; Formerly of the Lok Sabha & Union Minister. However Patil is now Home Minister in the Government of Manmohan Singh, who himself has shown strong partiality to Sathya Sai Baba)

Note On The Provenance of the Letter:

The good provenance of the letter can scarcely be in doubt. Clearly none of those whose signatures it bears are of a character too timid to wish to set aright matters concerning their position in regard to Sathya Sai Baba.

Former devotee websites did of course carry the letter. But good provenance (in this respect) is the official online Sai Radio Listener’s Journal run by Dr G. Venkataraman, the Deputy World Chairman of the Sathya Sai Organisation and Director of Sai Global Radio. The relevant page contains the Vajpayee et al letter - the provenance of which has never been disputed by any of the signatories. The link is HERE. Page down to the subheading: ‘Mr Vajpayee et al Counter The Lies Through A Public Statement’:

There is also a Wikipedia citation in the article under ‘Sathya Sai Baba’ which links to a copy of the letter at a Wikirefs page HERE. The Wiki article states:

“In an official letter released to the general public, in December 2001 … (the signatories) “called the allegations against Sathya Sai Baba “wild, reckless and concocted allegations made by certain vested interests” and that they “unequivocally condemned” the allegations as “baseless and malicious”.

Truth Commission Model May Assist Sai Baba Devotees

Other group leaders from various countries who we know to have been informed that Sai Baba sexually abuses boys and young men still take groups of all ages to see him. There is repeated evidence that they still do not inform parents of global allegations concerning Sai Baba, nor that highly respected individuals, once loved and esteemed  leaders and members of the Sathya Sai Organization, make them.

Sai Baba’s leaders tell rank-and-file members that those making the allegations are a small disgruntled handful. Blind to commonsense, deaf to basic reasoning processes, rapid to leap to worst case speculations about the motivations of Sai Baba dissenters, Sai Baba’s devotees typically believe that former devotees have become, in an instant, transformed into demons. Racing into deep denial, vacating all commonsense, these devotees chronically deny the good standing of those they have long loved and respected, and worked and worshipped beside. History is bound to ‘out’ those who do this. They cannot possibly defend themselves on the grounds of truth and compassion. They will need, above all, to express profound sorrow, and admit profound failure in duty-of-care, towards those Sai Baba has so criminally, and for so many decades, abused.

Perhaps some of the Truth Commission experiences and insights may assist Sai Baba devotees to pull themselves out of their dilemma. It would be a great pity if the good social uplift works done by many good and decent Sai Baba devotees were to be damaged by the revelations already so extensively available, with many more on their way.

Starting points are:

http://www.truthcommission.org/
http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/