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

Bernie Banton Case. Mega Poor Can Fight Mega Rich

What do many wealthy and powerful so-called spiritual organizations have in common with corporations?

Vested Religious Interests Cover up Like Any Other

When it comes to profound cover ups and gross desertion of duty of care, groups like the Sathya Sai Organization and the Roman Catholic Church (until the latter was forced to admit liability) act just as the James Hardy company in Australia has acted. With the worst lies, evasions and the utmost lack of compassion and responsibility.

But Bernie Banton, increasingly sick with asbestosis, a killer disease of which the James Hardy company had secretly known since the 1930’s, nobly fought - right up until his death two days ago - against the company’s relentless
injustice.

His spirit of forgiveness also showed that being magnanimous should not be confused with refusal to act in the face of evil.

Bernie Banton with working class idol Jimmy Barnes, at the Rights At Work rally, Melbourne Cricket Ground, 2006

Warrior Bernie Banton, Rest in Peace!

                              …………..

State funeral for campaigner Banton

The Australian. November 27, 2007

Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd said Mr Banton would be remembered as a fighter.

“Australia is going to be poorer for Bernie’s passing - our whole nation will be poorer for Bernie’s passing,” Mr Rudd said. He became a symbol, a living symbol of what is right and decent and proper in the workplace relations of this country. Mr Rudd said he had phoned Mr Banton’s widow Karen this morning and said he and wife Therese would attend his funeral. Mr Rudd said Mr Banton’s achievements would serve as a warning to companies to respect their workforces. My message to the country is this - working people are not economic commodities, working people are human beings and working people therefore deserve and demand respect, care and attention in whatever their workplace is,” Mr Rudd said.

Bernie Banton and justice for asbestos victims

ACTU Report

In February 2007, a multi million dollar fund was set up by the James Hardie company to pay compensation to people with asbestos illness. This was a big step in a very long campaign to get help for many thousands of people who have been made ill by asbestos products … Australia had the highest per capita use of asbestos in the world from the 1950s until the 1970s. Around one in three domestic dwellings constructed in Australia before 1982 is thought to contain asbestos.

James Hardie had knowledge of the dangers of asbestos from at least the 1930s but no warnings or directions were placed on Hardie’s fibro until 1978.

Enough Rope

(Andrew Denton Show, ABC, Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

At great cost to his deteriorating health, Bernie Banton has been the face of the James Hardie compensation case. For the last five years, in his own words, he’s been, “dragged through a pit of hell by a mob of bottom feeders”. In doing so, he’s been a constant reminder of what is really at issue here - the dreadful legacy of the asbestos industry and its all too human toll. Please welcome Bernie Banton and his wife Karen.

Further Reading

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

Why Might There Be Religious and Political Disconnects?

Cost Of Cover Ups Can Far Exceed Hoped-for Benefits

Indian Minister Shields Sai Baba on BBC television

For Viewing

See links for BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ and DR’s ‘Seduced’ footage at end of article, The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ - A Revision

Dissent From Guru Cults Draws Slander and Harassment

Discussions with activists from other movements of exposure of corrupt gurus are revealing. The various types of comparison between our separate experiences fall thick and fast. Those who speak out have typically and intensively undergone:     

• threats of injury or death
• cyber and other forms of stalking
• vilification, demonization, libels, character assassination
• attacks on privacy and attempts at muckracking
• attempts at intimidation by threats of various kinds, including those aimed at media who investigate the allegations
• shunning or sometimes harassment by former fellow followers
• mixed falsification and concealment by leaders to the rank-and-file of the testimony of those who have dissented
• dereliction of the duty-of-care by organization leaders
• gross distortions of words, intentions and actions of those who speak out
• frequent branding of dissenters as ‘liars’
• putting worst case interpretations on statements and situations, without considering alternative explanations
• failure to understand, or at other times deliberate failure to acknowledge, why in many cases replies cannot be given to questions aimed at dissenters (e.g., security, individual or family sensitivities, knowledge that whatever is stated, attackers will use it for their own ends, sometimes devious, sometimes simply blinded)
• ignoring the points being made, leaping on peripherals and ignoring essentials
•  making extremely improper inferences by extrapolation and decrying of dissenters as e.g., perverts, anti-Semitic, fascists, drunkards, Hindu hating, Christian fundamentalists, liars, hallucinators, addicted to drugs, etc
• the lumping of all dissenters, as though they are perfectly co-ordinated or speak with one voice at all times (The Aristotelian ‘law of the undistributed middle’ - the confusion of the logical operators of ‘all’ and ’some’ - is frequently violated)
• complicity by organization leaders, of both high and lower rank, in standing back and allowing proxy defenders of a guru to attack dissenters, while secretly ensuring that legal or other information or funding is passed to the proxies, and turning a blind eye to devotees who stalk, harass, and defame those who speak out or, more often, covertly assist those who do.

All of this proceeds despite the knowledge that dissenters have spent long years of dedication, service and sacrifice in their former cause, and who are known in their professions, trades and communities at large as persons of integrity, sacrificial service in noble causes, kindness and decency.

The Sharing of Experiences With Those Abused By Other Leaders

In discussions with those involved in other abuse exposures (sometimes very usefully conducted via webcam via a service like Skype), discussants have often not had to end our sentences. This is because of the great similarity of experience of the crimes, dirty tricks, cover ups, and shocking vilification of those who raise their voices out of conscience and deepest concern. The recognition-of-situation factor is sky-high, and tragedy, betrayal and - that greatest of emotional allies and sublime social lubricant - humor are able to be deeply and spontaneously shared.

Further Resources

A selection of closely-related articles on http://barrypittard.wordpress.com follows:

Some Key Cultic Responses To Critics

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

Cost Of Cover Ups Can Far Exceed Hoped-for Benefits

Exiting A Top International Cult. A Sai Baba Experience

The Case of UNESCO’s Missing Media Advisory

Sexual Abuse And Cover-up

Corrupt Indian Judges Stonewall Case Vs Sai Baba

If Not For Whistleblowers

Cultic Depersonalization or Demonization of Dissenters

Caught In One of History’s Most Powerful Cults (Parts 1-4)

Indian Gurus Stifle India’s Chance To Excel

Is Humanity One Big Cult?

Sai Baba. Some Dissenting Themes and Resources

Sai Baba Cult Says it is ‘The’ Divine Organization In History

Former devotees are accosted by Sai Baba cult members in shopping malls, supermarkets and elsewhere. 

Information on them (already skewed) is gathered by Sai Baba’s members and conveyed both ‘up the chain’ of the Sathya Sai Organization or, in other cases, directly to attackers on the Internet, whose poor inferential capabilities can be spotted by anyone capable of detecting fallacious reasoning, and not already blinded. 

By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

Countless former devotees around the world - except for the occasional foolish hotheads who seem to revel in it - deplore vile language or cyber fights, no matter from which quarter they may come.

The nasty defamatory, name-calling language that any surfer can see, not least from the mere search engine references linking to pro Sai Baba materials, immediately discloses the nature of a Sathya Sai Organization that would allow its case to be put while it stands in the background, letting its members cooperate, also in the background, in constant attacks against former devotees and other critics of Sathya Sai Baba. 

How Divine!

Former devotees who have not threatened or abused anyone are threatened via phone and on the Internet. 

The recent head of the Sathya Sai Organization, T.Sri Ramanathan, has made threats by phone, April 9, 2000, and also defamed former devotees to SBS Television and The Age newspaper in Australia. See HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Emails by Thorbjörn Meyer, a major Sai Baba world leader, disclose the cult mentality without any assistance from critics (See, exchange of emails between Meyer and Robert Priddy).

World chairman of the Sathya Sai Organization, Dr Michael Goldstein (Covina, California, USA, and associate top leaders Leonard Gutter (Argentina), Ashok Bhagani (UK), Steen Piculell (Denmark), J.Jagadeesan (Malaysia), and so on, have extremely falsified the stance of former devotees, as has Dr G. Venkataraman, Sai Baba’s head of world broadcasting - Sai Global Harmony via WorldSpace Satellite Radio Service (See Robert Priddy’s and Barry Pittard’s four-part article, The Sathya Sai Organization’s Propaganda and Deception Exposed.

Further Reading

Ashok Bhagani - Blotting Out Conscience and Memory?

Genital Oiling. Do Hindu Religious Leaders Approve?

Thorbjörn Meyer Interview. A careful observer of evasions and obfuscations by interviewees will readily be able to spot Meyer’s shortcomings in this interview by Bo Reimer on TV-Avisen, the Danish prime news show. The English translation is by Ole Alstrup. The interview was aired close on the heels of the documentary Seduced by DR, Denmark’s national and television broadcaster. Seduced (with an overvoice English translation) may be viewed HERE. Despite threats of legal action by the Australian Sathya Sai Organization, an English version was made by Australia’s great multicultural broadcaster SBS, and retitled Seduced By Sai Baba.

Public Petition On Sathya Sai Baba (1)

There is a Public Petition calling for official probing of Sai Baba and his Sathya Sai Organization. (See website details at the end of this post).

The JUST (Just Seekers of Truth) petition is presented by a globally networked group of former followers of Sathya Sai Baba. In the ranks of both devotees and dissenters, there are those who say that Sai Baba is history’s most powerful guru. Some critics regard him as one of history’s arch deceivers - highly charismatic, highly flawed. He may brilliantly inspire good social uplift works, which is why so many earnest and good people are attracted to him, but profoundly conceals, along with his core servitors who keep an vice-like grip on his global organization, what is morally loathsome and criminal.

Allegations Far Exceed Issue of Sexual Molestation

At first, the overwhelming thrust of the Sathya Sai Baba exposé related to the perfectly normal and profound human shock at the disclosure of threats to the innocence of the young - in this case males. As investigation proceeded, and with rapid swelling of the ranks of leave-takers from Sai Baba, the volume of other types of evidence and allegation arose. In retrospect, it was to the Australian scholar and former devotee Brian Steel’s credit that from quite early he insisted to some of us that there were also other and formidable types of anomaly and evidence for wrongdoings. One of the strengths of Steel’s work was to expose many grave inconsistencies in Sai Baba’s discourses over a considerable time. He also, for example, highlighted the dubious nature of many alleged predictions of Sai Baba’s so-called ‘Advent’, and revealed Sai Baba’s own, and his movement’s generation and propagation of demonstrable myths that have come to be believed as truths by his devotees. These myths are typically sustained via his costly, so-called spiritual museums - ostensibly respectful of major world Faiths but which glorify Sai Baba beyond all. A small selection Brian Steel articles I have personally found useful are listed below under Further Reading.

Sai Attack on Integrity of Petition Authors

I was personally involved in the drafting of the JuST Petition, to the final product of which 32 signatories gave their contact details publicly. It was but an early example of how cautious networked Sai Baba former devotees have to be - if they speak out.

Value of Speaking Out Great But Cost Is High

However, conscience demands that former devotees who have personally investigated the claims of many primary witnesses speak out. We face an extremely powerful, wealthy and influential global organization. Therefore, one must, sadly, expect the distortions and vilification of those who, in the name of Sathya Sai Baba, would presume to defend him with tactics of a kind that deprives the Internet of civil decency and self-condemns any organization calling itself spiritual. Our contact with those who have exposed other famous gurus reveals copious examples of the same sinister types of defensive behaviours by those who cover up their gurus’ corruptions.

The Eternal Disjunct Between Practice and Precept

Strange indeed it is that Sai Baba’s much vaunted pillars are: Truth, Right Conduct, Peace, Love and Non-violence (Sathya, Dharma, Shanti, Prema, Ahimsa)

The merest glance at the search engines reveals the shocking language used to constantly attack and slander former devotees and other critics who have called for proper investigation of the many, varied and most serious allegations facing Sathya Sai Baba and his organization.

In stark contrast to the case of the few hotheads among former devotees who seem to relish Internet clashes, the overwhelming number of former devotees are the majority of those we have long known  in the Sathya Sai Organization who utterly disdain such behaviour.

Sai Baba has warned his devotees, via his Sai Center leaders throughout the world, not to look at the dissenting views contained on the Internet. As his organization is extremely controlled from ‘above’, it is difficult for dissenters to message to the more honest leaders and rank-and-file that the truth is not being told to them.

Cyber Combattants - The Unedifying in Full Pursuit of the Unedifying 

The best we have been able to do with former devotee hotheads is (many times!) privately and patiently to prevail upon these very few irresponsible individuals to stop altogether or else to greatly moderate their language.

Networked former devotees are not a cult, and believe strongly in working on the basis (for all that it can be demanding on international coordinators at times) of consultation and consensus. On a rare occasion, there is the case where an individual’s exceptionally good commentary has sometimes been sadly blemished by returns to nasty name-calling language and other immature self-indulgences. This shabby behaviour is to be deplored, from whatever side it may come. At the same time, however, the rest of us refuse to act like some sort of police heavies. Even if we wished to do so, we are often too busy with life’s many other calls to go hunting down unseemly comments amid the vast output that the Sai Baba issue has provoked. Nor is the reading of toxic writings good for digestion, mental or physical. Thank heaven for better things to do, because they help to balance and beautify life.

Core Sai Cult Leaders Fail Their Own Rank-and-file

One of the foremost untruths of the Sathya Sai Organization is that various of its leaders know extremely well that there has been a formidable exit of excellent members from it around the world, and that those, like Dr G. Venkataraman, the Deputy Chairman of the world Sathya Sai Organization, a rare case of a Sai Baba leader who is allowed to write publicly (if  limitedly) in relation to the allegations, have profoundly defamed the many wonderful and decent people who have left it. (This should not to obscure that there are wonderful and decent people remaining in it). For Robert Priddy’s and Barry Pittard’s four-part article, which give further important hotlinks to other material, dissecting a seriously defamatory article by Venkataraman - see, Sathya Sai Organization’s Deception and Propaganda Exposed.

Once they have identified themselves, former devotees and other critics of Sai Baba are attacked, slandered and demeaned - absolutely breaking teaching after teaching of Sai Baba, who forever speaks of love, compassion, peacefulness, and forebearance.

Further Reading

1. The JuST Petiton is HERE

2. Brian Steel’s writings are typically exacting and detailed, and require, if any response were at all reasonable, a careful, ruthlessly honest reply by any writer of comparable integrity. That no such Sai Baba writer of intellectual note has emerged to challenge what Steel has written, makes it all the more deplorable that he has been assailed by Sai Baba forces whose one métier is the superficial rush to carping judgement. Dr G. Venkataraman, the former Indian nuclear scientist and Sai Baba’s head of propaganda organ Sai Global Harmony via WorldSpace Satellite Radio Service, who is beloved of sweeping (and untrue) generalizations, seems incapable of uttering response, reasoned or otherwise, to any part of Brian Steel’s many articles, so freely available on his extensive and highly researched website, the Index page of which is HERE.

Select articles by Brian Steel

B.D. Steel is a semi-retired linguist specializing in Spanish language and translation research, and the author of several advanced textbooks and dictionaries. During his twelve years as a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, he compiled two hagiographies which were published in USA by Samuel Weiser, Inc and in New Delhi.

The Truth Resuscitated: Suppressed Evidence Reappears
(A Brief Update on the Packaging of SSB’s Discourses)
Discrepancies in the Official Sathya Sai Baba Story: The Early Years
An Annotated Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba. Part 2. Work Critical of Sathya Sai Baba and his Mission by non-devotees (including ex-devotees)

Robert Priddy (3) Friendship With V.K. Narasimhan

Robert Priddy says that he found some devastating facts from one of Sai Baba’s very closest confidants in the 1980s and 1990s.

This was V.K. Narasimhan (d. March 2000). This remarkable man, whose history of standing courageously up (many fine citizens were flung into jail!) as a newspaper Editor to Indira Gandhi during the 21-month 1975–1977 Emergency was known and is still remembered with admiration throughout India, and well beyond.

Friendship With VKN Was Worth Cherishing

Narasimhan, Editor of the Sai Baba official magazine, Sanathana Sarathi, that is distributed worldwide, was a warm mutual friend of the both of us, although Priddy’s and my paths did not cross. VKN, as he was with much affection known, was earlier ex-Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Express group of newspapers, and widely regarded as very upright, and one of the few who were not fauning lickspittles around Sai Baba. He was, although an outstanding public speaker, in many ways a very private man. He would not in any other circumstance than admiration and trust have shared years of trusted friendship with Robert Priddy.

A Top Indian Official Tells BBC Television: “Absolute Cold Blooded Murder”

Robert Priddy relates how, on the direct initiative of Sai Baba’s younger brother and multi millionaire property developer, Janaki Ramiah (now deceased) and other officials of the ashram and Central Trust, the police were blackmailed into executing in cold blood in Sai Baba’s own rooms, four intruders who had killed two of his attendants. No less than a former Andhra Pradesh former Home Secretary, V.P.B. Nair, has described the killings in the BBC’s television documentary The Secret Swami as “absolute cold blooded murder”. View and hear Nair speaking to interviewer Tanya Datta, in this film clip HERE.

These intruders could easily have been captured without murdering them. Sai Baba was nearby as events unfolded, hour by hour, and yet - a virtual ‘omnipotent’ dictator within his independent ashram township, at least - did not lift a finger to stop the deaths. These he said afterwards in a discourse he knew beforehand would happen!

Chilling Whisperings Under Less Than Spiritual Temple Pillars

Priddy recounts how VKN shared this information with him with a lowered voice. Robert has remarked to me in various connections over time that his own subsequent extensive investigations have confirmed Narasimhan’s account. He says that VKN informed him of a discussion to which he was witness between Janaki Ramiah (Sai Baba’s younger brother) and the particularly powerful then Home Minister of India (S.B. Chavan, a Sai Baba devotee) who congratulated the brother on his actions in dealing with the matter, whereupon they laughed together over the words ‘Dead men tell no tales.’ The account is spine-chilling.

Priddy, who kept a detailed journal during these years, has given a long account of his very close friendship through a decade with V.K. Narasimhan and what they shared in hundreds of hours of private conversation, HERE

Further Reading

Wikipedia entry under: Robert Priddy

My Credo

His Blogsite

His Website

On the V.P.B. Nair BBC interview, See my article:
Indian Ex Top Official Dogs Sai Baba On BBC. ‘Cold-blooded Murder’

And more on the BBC 2 This World Documentary:
The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ - A Revision 
Probed On Male Sex Abuse, Sai Baba Evicts BBC TV Team
India A Mature Democracy? BBC Probes

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”.

Robert Priddy (2). The Protection of the Young and Innocent

Disaffection from a powerful belief system is often a slowgoing process, particularly when there has been adherence to a charismatic figure. And this, moreover, when many followers experience states difficult to understand for those who undergo them as it is for even sympathetic scientists. Going on then, to expose to the public an institution’s and guru’s corruptions and other major shortcomings, no matter how determined the activist, is an often an extremely uphill journey.

This is a note on but a small aspect of the work of a valued colleague in the exposure of Sai Baba and his worldwide cult, Robert Priddy, now a retired lecturer in philosophy and social science from the University of Oslo. He was a long-term follower of Sai Baba and national leader of the Sathya Sai Organization. He makes the big effort, and stays the long haul, no matter the strenous demands, as a duty of conscience.

Protecting the Young First Imperative

The overwhelming concern of many disaffected, now former, Sai Baba followers was - as it is for adults the world over - the protection of the young and innocent. Comparing notes with Robert Priddy over time has only reinforced my repeated discovery that disaffection from a powerful movement is a slowgoing process, not least for those who are investigative by bent and training. (See, Robert Priddy (1). Erosion of Trust in Sai Baba Over Time).

Priddy, former head of Sai Baba’s Norwegian organization, and I were both strongly commited to work inspired by Sai Baba - he for nearly two decades, and I for 25 years. He ended his affiliation with the Sathya Sai Organization in 2000. My own leave-taking of Sai Baba occurred in October 1999, after my having been lengthily blind to quite a number of situations that for the less blinded would have been warning flags of something deeply amiss. I now begun to contact primary witnesses and/or their families in various parts of the world, with their reports that Sai Baba sexually abused boys and young men, and other allegations of profound misconduct - in regard to him, and - a later development - to certain Staff in his educational establishments. There was repeated evidence of cover up by leaders close to him, and by core leaders of his wordwide Sathya Sai Organization. Ever and again came the gutwrenching accounts, and these from people not remotely connected with each other.

Opposing Cover up That Is On A Grand Scale

This massive cover up prevails  irrespective of which political forces have ruled India at any given time, and which protect Sai Baba. Apart from our own researchers, of whom Robert Pridddy is one of several, information highly adverse to Sai Baba and his ashrams has long been known to professionals in Indian journalism, police, government and politics. See, for example, my articles:  Indian Ex Top Official Dogs Sai Baba On BBC. ‘Cold-blooded Murder’, and The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ - A Revision.

Websites like those of Robert Priddy (Norway), Brian Steel (Australia), Lionel Fernandez (Mexico), www.Exbaba.com (Holland) reflect the far wider concern of former devotees of Sai Baba, and indeed other critics, that there be proper third-party investigation of the many and serious allegations.

Thorbjörn Meyer et alia.

Sathya Sai Organization’s Absence of Transparency, Accountability, and Duty of Care

Robert Priddy has published his Februry 2002 email exchanges with one of Sai Baba’s foremost leaders, Thorbjörn Meyer, HERE. In his introduction to the email exchange, Priddy wrote:

“I decided to approach Mr. Meyer, whom I have known somewhat in the past, with information that might help him investigate better. His response to this confirmed my worst suspicions about his bombastic refusal really to investigate the many and varied allegations about murder and ‘dirty’ play in Sai Baba’s ashram, Prashanti Nilayam. His failure to retract his own groundless allegations against victims of sexual molestation also confirmed and decisively documented, as is seen below, his refusal in fact to do what he falsely promised to do, namely to investigate the allegations properly … He did not even put to me a single question regarding any of these serious matters, which he claims to wish to investigate!”

Priddy comments:

“He stuck himself firmly on formalistic grounds. Extraordinarily, Mr. Meyer repeated that it is all ‘undocumented’, like a mantra to ward off evil! As if statements made by victims on film were not of ‘documentary’ status”.

When Minors Report Sexual Abuse Adults Must Heed and Act

Absurdly far out of line with contemporary public attitudes in more democratically advanced societies, some of Sai Baba’s leaders - like Thorbjörn, Meyer, Professor Peter Pruzan, Steen Piculell - have condoned Sai Baba’s practice of ‘oiling of genitals’ of young males. With absolutely no sanction from Hindu or any other religious authorities, Meyer calls this an “age old Indian anointing oil ceremony”.

It is important that Indian religious leaders speak out on this issue. But will they? Might one be too far out in guessing that they, like the various churches in the West have a great deal to cover up? Although he is not a religious authority, at least the reknowned Indian journalist and writer Khushwant Singh told the interviewer Tanya Datta in the BBC’s The Secret Swami (2004):

“There’s no Indian tradition to support the fact that, you know, worship of the Lingam includes also doing the blow job, if that is what you are referring to. I don’t think there’s any basis for that whatsoever”.

The Robert Priddy-Thorbjörn Meyer Email Exchange

In one of the emails, Priddy wrote to Meyer:

“Your cavalier attitude to ‘oiling’ overlooks the fact that any physical intrusion on genitalia without explicit consent beforehand - even by doctors - is a punishable offence in civilised countries!”

But Thorbjörn Meyer derides the accounts such as those of British musician and former Sai Baba university teacher and global ambassador David Bailey, which include genital oiling but extend far beyond it. Bailey had disaffiliated himself from perhaps the foremost role that Sai Baba has ever conferred on a Westerner. In replying to Priddy, Meyer spoke of “Bailey’s many second hand stories”, saying “Nothing of what Bailey writes is first hand. Nothing is confirmed, everything is blowing in the wind”.

Indeed, some individuals and families did go to leaders of the Sathya Sai Organization. They were, in country after country, shocked and mortified with the lack of humane (much less spiritual!) response.

To Defame Serious Second Hand Accounts of Sexual (and other) Abuse Is Wrong

Here is precisely the point at which Thorbjörn Meyer, together with many other Sai Baba devotees, departs from one of the greatest ethical imperatives. Accounts do not have to be other than second hand. It is entirely absurd to think that they should be. When a young person approaches an adult with a plea for help, citing sexual or other serious abuse, it is the duty of that adult to act on behalf of that individual, ensuring that the individual is accessed to a proper and professional proceedure.

This great responsibility is exactly what so many who are now former devotees have excercised - only to be shunned, ostracized, demeaned, and some threatened, and outrightly slandered.

To be sure, the Board of Church of Christ Grammar School, Perth, one of the leading private colleges in Australia 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.

Failure of Duty of Care and Transparency

This failure of duty of care was the case of the now deceased leader in the USA, Dr. John Hislop, and has all along been so with Sai Baba’s foremost leaders such as Dr Michael Goldstein, Robert Bozzani, William Harvey, Phyllis Kristal, J. Jagadeeshan, T. Sri Ramanathan, and others. They were informed of ‘oilings’ and of worse sexual abuses. In purging the cult of those who raised voices of conscience, Meyer, Indulal Shah (then Sai Baba’s world coordinator) and Steen Picullel were responsible for evicting one of the finest leaders from organization, Serguei Badaev (Russia), just as was T. Sri Ramanathan in getting rid of Stephen Carthew (Australia). These fine men had raised absolutely proper and quintessential questions on matters of conscience.

The like reaction is duplicated by Sai Baba’s top leaders in various countries. For example, when I suggested the wisdom of instituting transparency and accountability processes to Sri T. Ramanathan, then head of Sai Baba’s organization in Australia, he replied that matters only need to go to him. After I had succesfully persuaded a number of foremost Australian religious and political religious leaders not to accept the Sathya Sai Organization’s invitations to appear at the 2003 national conference, Ramanathan phoned me on April 3, 2003 - first to sweet-talk me “I know that you’re a decent man”, and then to threaten legal action. He said “I have only one simple mechanism which I have applied down the years” which is to “deal with complaints personally.” “Your thinking is cloudy,” he said and stated that there was no need for a complaints mechanism in the Sathya Sai Organisation, which is “special and different to any other organisation… and a divine organisation”. (See, HERE and HERE).

Networking Secure and Humane Support Systems

It was little wonder that in a context of compartmentation of information based on a strict need-to-know that our networkers faced situations that, for most of us, challenged work and notional habits of a lifetime.

A fortunate countervailing factor was that, as the exit from the Sathya Sai Organization - or rather cult - continued, our networks were often enough quickly able to determine the skill base and character profiles of those who flowed in to us. This worked to the benefit of loving and humane support systems, and helped to ameliorate the shocking sense of isolation and shock that attends sexual, ethical and spiritual betrayal by a guru and by his organization.

Another benefit was that nothing could be quite so efficient as this situation in exposing attempts at penetration - or in some cases attempts within the cult to win back what officials such as Chris Parnell (Australia, a man alongside whom I worked in the publishing house Sai Towers, Puttaparthi) called “Waverers”. He spoke to me of what he called a “high-powered” committee being formed involving him, Professor Roger Basham and others to combat the Australian Sathya Sai Organization membership depletions.

We do not trumpet our intentions to Sai Baba and his cult - preferring to continue our careful documentation to bona fide investigators, such as responsible journalists, academics, governments, religious groupings like the interfaith movement, and various civic and political institutions with which the Sathya Sai Organization attempts (without revealing the ’secret swami’s real agendas) to ingratiate itself.

A linguistic cognate of the word ’secret’ is ’sacred’. So - not all secrets are dirty ones.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

Sai Baba’s networked former followers face a formidable adversary. We do not cry our plans to expose him and his worldwide cult from the rooftops.

Our security of communications - in a word, secrecy - has been vital. Most of our networked former devotees had never in our lives been party to a public campaign. The complex steps of the ‘dance’ between private and public had yet to be learnt, and to be learnt on-the-hop. 

We found ourselves in a role in which atmospheres of readily-given love, trust and the easeful flow of information were not germane - indeed, could prove dangerous - to our task. Our adversary was a global organization, with billions in its exchequer and devotees in many of the highest positions of power. The Sathya Sai Baba Organization - or cult - was, and is, formidable - and long-practiced in the modes of high secrecy and subterranean influence, including in the worlds of power brokerage even well beyond India’s shores.

Thus, any sincere error on our part could have painful consequences. Survivors and other witnesses come to us with a trust that we should never endanger - for example, with a careless remark, the accidental sending of an email, or the answering of even certain fair and reasonable questions raised on the Internet or shopping mall, etc.

Of course, most human beings are social and gregarious by nature - an often pleasant fact of life, but every bit hazadous in our peculiar circumstances. We do not wish to parade in the marketplace those who come to us with tragic accounts of having been sexually abused by Sai Baba and certain of his teachers or subjected to other abuses within his cult. Those who have done so have been mercilessly attacked and derided, one after the other.

Secrecy Needs In Exposing A Top Global Cult

Former followers of Sai Baba and his other critics have found a vital need to exercise a certain, and indeed regrettable, secrecy. Of course, a lot of our secrecy evaporates - in a fortunate manner - when we deal with bona fide, respected media like law firms, the BBC, Times of London, Telegraph, UNESCO, etc., etc.

But only - I hasten to add - with the full and informed consent of those primary and other witnesses who are prepared to share their accounts with competent authorities and investigators

Curiously, here were we - noting how the core leadership of the Sathya Sai Baba cult was so extremely secret. To the less analytic, our position can but appear to be a blatant contradiction. But it is an irony, not an hypocrisy.

Our security needs are pragmatic, and are not in the nature of the secrecy and cover-up of scandals so endemic to an authoritarian cult that has so much to hide. The BBC’s own experience in investigating his cult and the testimonies of those who h