Exposure of Sathya Sai Baba. Media Source List

Media resources source list relating to the exposé of Sathya Sai Baba and his cult. Compiled by Barry Pittard: bpittard (at) optusnet.com.au

Note: Please kindly report any errors,  updates, or suggest improvements. This overview - not exhaustive -  was mainly compiled well before the BBC’s The Secret Swami, June 2004, and amid many far more pressing duties. I think I have sorted out Urls still alive and scrapped defunct ones. Some newspaper Urls are now not extant, or are retrievable by paid subscription, so in various cases I have relied on copies posted of these articles, usually close to the time when they were published in the media. Usually the postings were to former Sai Baba devotee websites - http://www.exbaba.com or http://saiguru.net . However, institutions, journalists, academic researchers and others in need of originals should be able to obtain those via standard resources, such as hard copy within the media establishments themselves.  Barry Pittard.

               ……………………….

The Week, June 20, 1993. High intrigue. Deadly power struggle in Puttaparthi

Indian Skeptic, 6(4), August 1993, Santa Claus in India. Piet Vroon, Santa Claus in India, from Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant, Saturday December 5, 1992, translated J.W. Nienhuys 

Sunday Magazine, December, 10-16, 1996. Brushed Under The Carpet. From five-page Feature: G.S. Radhakrishna, Sandhya Mendonca

Nexus Magazine, August-September 1999. Volume 7, Number 5. Sai Baba Exposed - Fraud, Fakery, & Molestation. Terry Gallagher, Hans de Kraker, Jens and Gurprit Sethi. Compiled from the website: www.myfreeoffice.com/saibabaexposed/ (no longer available)

Bild (Tr., German daily). August 21, 2000. Resident from Munich Ran Away From India - Guru all of a sudden wants sex. Wolfgang Ranft

Trouw (Dutch daily ), September 6th, 2000. The Downfall of A Guru Sai Baba, Koert van de Velde, tr., Ella Evers

Spiegelbeeld, (Tr., Dutch national Magazine) October, 2000. The truth will prevail. Matthijs van der Meer:

Noordhollands Dagblad (Tr., Dutch daily), Saturday December 9, 2000. Devotee becomes anti Sai Baba activist. Arthur de Mijttenaere

BBC Radio 4 - Sunday 19, November 2000 - 7.30 am.  Interview by Stephen Perry with:  David Bailey (UK), former closest Western devotee; Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph journalist (UK); Jed Geyerhahn (USA), Steen Piculell, Ashok Bhagani, Trustee, UK Sathya Sai Organisation

Daily Telegraph, Saturday October 28, 2000. Divine Downfall, Mick Brown

Tehelka, November 29, 2002.  Sathya Sai Central Trust: grab as grab can

Tehelka, November 29, 2002.  Is the Sai Baba’s empire beginning to disintegrate?

Tehelka, November 29, 2002.  Ashram Mandiram: fortress of solitude

India Today, Cover story: Sathya Sai Baba: Test of Faith.  Monday, December 4, 2000. Test of Faith, Amarnath K. Menon, Ashok Malik. SAI BABA:  A God Accused.  Vijay Jung Thapa with Lavina Melwani (New York), Syed Zubair Ahmed (London), Arthur J. Pais (San Francisco)

India Today, resulting letters to; archived  

The Ottawa Citizen, Tuesday, December 19, 2000. The Man Believers Think is God. Bob Harvey

The Times of India, December 26, 2000, Sai Baba Lashes Out At Detractors.  B.S. Manu Rao

Toronto Star, January 14, 2001, Guru shrugs off sex allegations. Tom Harper

Vancouver Sun, February 27, 2001. Holy man? Sex abuser? Both? Douglas Todd

The Times of India, August 9, 2001. Tight security for Sai Baba after LTTE threat

Salon.com, July 25, 2001.  Untouchable, Parts 1 to 4. Michelle Goldberg

Times of London, Monday August 27, 2001. Monday August 27, 2001. Suicide, sex and the guru, Dominic Kennedy

The Times of London, Monday August 27, 2001. Three die after putting faith in guru, Dominic Kennedy

Times of London, August 27, 2001. I sought peace and couldn’t find it. Michael Dynes and Dominic Kennedy

The Times News Network, August 27, 2001. British Law Against Sai Baba Sought. Rashmee Z. Ahmed (ed. i.e., Times of Indian, not Times of London)

The Hindustan Times, August 27, 2001.  Sai Baba could be put on UK blacklist. Vijay Dutt, London 

The Age (Melbourne, Australia), Saturday-Sunday, November 12, 2000. Scandal engulfs guru’s empire

DR (Denmark’s national radio and television broadcaster), January 30, 2002. Seduced by Sai Baba. Producer-Presenter, Øjvind Kyrø

Gatopardo (A leading Chilean Magazine), Febuary, 2002. No. 21 Yr 20. Divine Sin.  Alejandro Agostinelli

Noticias (Argentinean Magazine), August 17, 2001, Bad Faith Business, Juan Alonso: 

Nexus, (Australian/International bi-monthly magazine) Vol 10, N­o. 4. June-July 2003. Sai Baba Allegations Grow. Barry Pittard

The Australian Financial Review, 21 November 2003.  The Trouble with Gurus. Mary Garden

BBC News, June 17, 2004, Sai Baba: God-man or con man? Tanya Datta 

The Scotsman, June 18, 2004, Guru who gives us no answers. Tom Adair

The Guardian, June 18, 2004. Spiritual Depths. Rupert Smith

The Observer, Sunday June 20, 2004. Deity dancing. Kathryn Flett

The New Statesman, Monday, June 21, 2004. Laying on of hands. The guru who thinks he’s God is exposed as far from divine. Andrew Billen

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio National, The World Today, Friday, 25 June, 2004.  Guru glamour uncovered. Interviewer: Rachel Kohn. Guests, Mary Garden, Australian author, Mick Brown, English author and Daily Telegraph journalist

The Guardian. The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards. Saturday, November 4, 2006. Paul Lewis

DNA (Daily News and Analysis, India). Sunday, November 05, 2006. A holy furore rages in Britain. Ginnie Mahajan and Brajesh Kumar

Some Indian News Headlines on Sai Baba controversial remarks on the Telangana issue

Times of India, Jan 24, 2007. TRS cries hoarse over Sai Baba’s Telangana stance

Times of India, Jan 24, 2007. Cong ignores Sai Baba’s remarks

The Hindu. Special Correspondent, Jan 25, 2007. Agnivesh Flays Baba’s Remarks

Andhra Cafe, India, Jan 21, 2007. KCR condemns Sai Baba’s Anti-Telangana comments

CNN-IBN, India, Jan 23, 2007. Sai Baba lands in a Telangana row

Hindustan Times, India, Jan 22, 2007. Telangana activists upset with Sai Baba

Wikinews reports on Telangana issue. (There are some further news sources cited at the foot of this Wiki article)

Cancellation of ‘moon miracle’

Sify News and many Indian media carried the IANS (Indo-Asian News Service feed on this). Friday, October 5, 2007. Sai Baba’s Moon Miracle Fails

Note: Close on the heels of the Guardian article The Indian living god, The paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards by Paul Lewis, an historic Indian media feed seachange started to happen. There were many IANS (Indo-Asian News Service) feeds to Indian and a few foreign media which referred to this article, with some added input from IANS Staffer Sudeshna Sarkar, Nepal, who followed up on the story, and filed from London. This broke decades’-long silence from an Indian press which almost exclusively has censored news adverse to the extraordinarily powerful and influential Sathya Sai Baba. The Telangana issue, in which vast conflicting interests were involved, was the next blow to Sai Baba’s virtual immunity to criticism in the Indian media. This marked change was yet again witnessed in early October 2007 in the wide Indian press coverage of reports that Sai Baba had promised a great divine miracle, subsequently cancelled when clouds appeared, in which thousands of his devotees gathered at his private airport would, it seems he had promised via his close aide and chief translator Professor Anil Kumar, see the universal form of God (or vishwarupa darshanam) in the moon. Again, it was the upstart news agency IANS which was aggressive in gettings its feeds accepted in India. It may be argued that, with so many NRI’s (non-resident Indians) freely reading news and views highly critical of Sai Baba in other countries around the world, that with new generational influences in Indian media far more inclined to secularism, and that what with the arrival of a rising ’star’ news agency like IANS, Sai Baba and his semi-feudal, ancien régime servitors and minders are in ever faster decline. There are many signs, including BBC footage and other photographic evidence, along with travelers’ and ashram inmates’ reports that cannot be denied by any except his most blinded followers that his health, both mental and physical, are in serious decline.

Sai Baba Fails To Appear In Moon, IANS Reports

In the last hours, many Sai Baba devotees have received yet another of many setbacks to expectations that he would perform, as he has so many times promised, this or that great miracle.

Of course, my dear reader may have noticed that at least Sai Baba’s afro hairdo has been seen quite clearly on the moon on not a few occasions. On the other hand, his hair has considerably thinned in recent years, despite his prophecy that he would not age after his 60th birthday.

In this case, IANS (Indo Asian News Service) reports:

“It all started when an official of the Sai Trust announced that the godman would make a “moon appearance” 6-7 pm and asked devotees to proceed towards the airport”.

Several news services have released the IANS (Indo Asian News Service) feed, including Sify.com HERE:

Sai Baba’s moon miracle fails
Friday, 05 October , 2007, 00:05

Puttaparthi: Thousands of people gathered at the airport here on Thursday night after word spread that controversial godman Satya Sai Baba would be “sighted” on the moon - but returned disappointed when the “miracle” did not happen.

The 81-year-old Sai Baba was also present at the airport and later returned to his ‘Prshanti Nilayam’ ashram here in Anantapur district.

It all started when an official of the Sai Trust announced that the godman would make a “moon appearance” 6-7 pm and asked devotees to proceed towards the airport.

Thousands of the Baba’s devotees from neighbouring villages rushed to the airport but were disappointed as a cloud cover hid the moon. They waited for an hour before dispersing.

Police had a tough time in clearing the traffic on the airport road to enable the Baba to return to his abode amid tight security. There was no word from Sai Trust as to why the ‘miracle’ failed to materialise.

His devotees believed that the clouds played spoilsport while rationalists termed it an attempt by the Sai Trust to revive the Baba’s waning popularity. IANS.

Further Reading

Subsequent articles on this topic at: http://barrypittard.wordpress.com are:

Sai Baba Fails To Grant Great Moon Vision. Endangers Crowds (’Vision here refers to what is called in Hindu classic sacred literature viswarupa darshanam or universal, cosmic vision of the divine, such as that depicted in the Bhagavad Gita as being conferred on Arjuna by Lord Krishna at the time of the Kurukshetra battles. Little wonder, then, the rush of devotees to the Puttaparthi airport!).

Is Indian ‘Godman’ Sai Baba’s Moon Waning Still Further
Quote from this Barry Pittard article: The DNAINDIA news service reported that Sathya Sai Baba’s chief translator and personal India and international emissary, Professor Anil Kumar, has acknowledged the extraordinary traffic and crowd snarls occasioned by Sai Baba’s trip to his private airport at Puttaparthi.

It is reported that India’s most famous and controversial guru was at the airport in his car on the evening of Thursday October 4, 2007, which got badly detained by unruly crowds. He would be present, it was believed, to preside over a profound mass vision that he, as God, would perform. An Indo Asian News Service (IANS) staff writer reported …” etc. See article
……………….

Robert Priddy - who goes on to demolish the story with some real, as opposed to lunatic, moon facts - writes in his article Sai Moon Man that RA. Ganapati, the Tamil scholar and much-read hagiographer of Sai Baba, wrote that on December 8, 1973, on a stop with Sathya Sai Baba between the Puttaparthi ashram (Andhra Pradesh) and Brindavan, Whitefield via Bangalore) ashram (Karnataka), devotees threw stones at a wood-apple tree and brought down one unripe fruit, and quotes Ganapati:

“Svami bent down and picked it up. Holding it between the thumb and forefinger He said, “Here is the moon”! When He closed His palm over the piece for an instant and opened it again, the fruit was no longer found. Instead an unusual article was in his hand. It was a translucent sphere. The sunlight was gorgeously reflected out of its surface. Though as a whole it was luminiscent there were several dim and even dark spots inside. Multi-hued veins of minerals could also be seen. Superficially smooth-surfaced, it revealed elevations and depressions inside.

“The mini-moon, made up of all the ingredients of the moon”, observed Baba.
Only a few days before, the newspapers had carried photographs of both sides of the moon transmitted by spacecraft. All their features could be precisely perceived in this three-D-mini-moon. More than that, it was refracting the spectrum of colours in sunshine. The party enjoyed the picnic in the glades. Svami held up the mini-moon finally to sunlight. The solar rays glancing off the outer rim sprayed gold. “Do you see the moon rise?” asked Sai, as pleasing as the moon itself. With one more folding and unfolding of His hand, the mini-moon set! It had returned to its old wood-apple birth! (Baba: Sathya Sai, by Ra. Ganapati, p. 83f).

Note: Indo Asian News Service has fed news that has helped break the long decades of most of the Indian media to run any story inimical to Sathya Sai Baba. See Paul Lewis’s article The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards in one of the top British newspapers The Guardian, which, amazingly, IANS was able to get into sections of the Indian press previously silent on many Sai Baba-related scandals.

Note: Many surfers used the following search terms to get to the articles at http://barrypittard.wordpress.com on the Sai Baba moon issue:

Sai Baba on moon
baba in moon
sathya sai baba in moon
satya sai baba in moon
saibaba on moon
moon appear satya sai