Sai Baba’s Airport Up For Sale, Reports Business Standard

Stop Press. It is reported that Sai Baba’s airport, which has long had capacity for international flights, is up for sale.

Especially when devotees see scenes such as a jumbo jet landing at the Sathya Sai Baba airport from Hong Kong, heavily laden with a panoply of sets and costumes to celebrate the Chinese New Year at Puttaparthi, they cannot but smile. The Kingdom of Sai is surely at hand! See, my article – Will World Accept Sai Baba? He Says Yes. Very Soon

Knowingly, they observe – Ah, Swami has promised to physically go abroad very soon. All these devotees coming from around the world, alighting at Puttaparthi by plane, and what with a railhead now all the way up to Puttaparthi, praise be – it cannot be long before the whole world accepts him as Lord of all!

Is Sai Baba Flying or Well Grounded

But rather, our reports are of greatly declining numbers visiting Sai Baba from abroad.

In the face of 7 years of the most intense exposure for former devotee forces both on and off the Internet, is the Sathya Sai Organization having a grave liquidity problem?

If it is, perhaps, big donors like minerals magnate James Sinclair, Isaac Tigrett, former creator-owner of the Hard Rock Cafe and the House of Blues, the Rai family in India, etc., who may have to come extra good for the sheer capital just to keep hugely costly Sathya Sai programs, building and plant going. But then, are these individuals free of their own liquidity problems?

When Exposed, Recruit – and Fast

Although it has long been ordered by Sai Baba not to promote, we saw his cult more recently hiring very costly venues – places where the rich are bound to feel comfortable, and perhaps generous.  Places such as the Sydney Superdome (built for the 2000 Olympic Games in Australia), historic town halls in major cities, Cooper’s Union (where Abraham Lincoln once gave a talk), New York; La Mirada Theatre; Los Angeles County, Hilton Ballroom; Sheraton Hotel & Towers, both Chicago; Copley International Conference Center, San Diego; etc. See article by Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard: Sai Organization’s Spending Spree In Super Dome, Sydney.

And See, news report just released. 

Sai Baba`s airport up for sale

S Kalyana Ramanathan / Chennai October 31, 2007  

Trust puts floor price at Rs 600 crore 
 
The airport’s owner, the Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust, which manages the religious and philanthropic assets and work of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, has invited bids for it and put the floor price at Rs 600 crore. 
 
One big attraction of this airport is that it is only 70 km from Bangalore International Airport, coming up in Devanahalli. The vantage location will allow airlines to feed the southern sector, which currently has 30 major and minor airports. 
 
The other is that, to sweeten the deal, the Trust is throwing in 2,000 acres of adjoining land. 
 
The additional land could be used either for real estate development or for setting up a maintenance, repair and overhaul facility. 
 
The airport is spread over 450 acres. Its runway is 2,230 metres long and currently being used mostly by chartered aircraft. Of late, Kingfisher and Indian have been using this airport as a stopover for their Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam services. 
 
The buzz in the industry is that G R Gopinath, who pioneered low-cost flying in India with Air Deccan, has tied up with a Mumbai-based public figure to put in a bid. Gopinath, however, has denied reports. 
 
Besides, the buzz was not clear whether Gopinath, were he to bid, would do so through Deccan or on his own. 
 
It is being said that Dubai-based real estate developer Limitless LLC could also be in the fray. Limitless is an integrated real estate development company and a business unit of Dubai World, one of Dubai’s leading business groups. 

Further Reading

Sathya Sai Baba Exposure, Media Source List

Sai Baba Top Leaders Antidemocratic

For many years, Sai Baba and the Sathya Sai Organization have avoided critical scrutiny. With rare exceptions, such as retired world and Indian organization head Indulal Shah, and current world chairman Dr Goldstein, Covina, California, USA, his leaders and rank-and-file have long been forbidden to make statements to media.

Not that these leaders say more than a picayune amount (if at times angrily with a rage normally kept behind-the-scenes but caught here by BBC hidden camera), and we can document that they keep crucial information from their rank-and-file. Indeed, it does not speak well of Sathya Sai Organization members that they permit such extraordinary Soviet or Chinese style, authoritarian diktat – all the more reprehensibly so in those countries which are supposed to be relatively mature democracies.

No Reputed Scholars Need Apply

Well-funded, distinguished scholarly investigation is badly thwarted – no matter whether from one of the top half dozen universities in the world. (With permission of those scholarly sources concerned, I shall, as in past years, give details to any bona fide academic institution or scholar or to well-reputed, ethical media investigators). Other cases include the extremely limited cooperation given to world class investigators such Dr Erlendur Haraldsson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Iceland and the late Dr Karlis Osis of the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University, USA.

A difficulty of the Sathya Sai Baba exposé (and I think any major undertaking that lacks teams of researchers, analyists, librarians, etc) is proliferation – where welter and mass defeat best-practice materials organization and reader focus. There are certain articles which particularly should not, I think, get buried in the mass. One of these refers to a major departure from Sai Baba’s strict policy. Here, the second top official in Sai Baba’s large global Sathya Sai Organization, retired Indian nuclear scientist Dr G. Venkataraman, has spoken out specifically pointing to activity largely led by Robert Priddy, former head of the organization in Norway, and me, Barry Pittard. Our joint article: The Sathya Sai Organization’s Deception And Progaganda Exposed is detailed, in four parts, and contains many important hotlinks. Again, what cannot be shared because of immediate security issues can and will be related to bona fide investigators, particularly those which have the clout to stand up to Sathya Sai Organization threats, as have the BBC, DR (Denmark), SBS (Australia), Times of London, and, if to a somewhat capitulated extent – worried by the lawyers of one of its big, Sai Baba devotee advertizers – CanWest (Canada), etc. Happily, despite pressure from hundreds of Sai Baba devotees even prior to screening The Secret Swami three times, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) stated publicly that it had “trust in the professionalism” of its BBC colleagues.

Quote from the Article: The Sathya Sai Organization’s Deception And Propaganda Exposed

Dr G. Venkataraman and Sai Baba’s other top leaders have failed to look with even remotest objectivity at the reasons so many have left the Sathya Sai Organisation. Unconscionably and repeatedly, its leaders have refused a proper hearing to those anguished individuals and their families – or many former members – who have told them about Sai Baba’s sexual and other abuses. These leaders have not been truthful about the integrity of those former devotees and their rightful – and righteous – claims. This cultic aspect of the Sathya Sai Organisation alerts third party investigators, such as the world’s most responsible media, to the credibility of the former devotees’ claims. Journalists and their research teams quickly notice the secretive, evasive nature of Sai Baba and his leaders.

Leading media and other organizations such as UNESCO and the U.S. State Department have been very stringent in their expectations of sound evidence from organized former devotees around the world. Those who have researched the worldwide allegations against Sathya Sai Baba include the BBC, DR (Denmark), ATUL (Argentina), SBS (Australia), ABC (Australia), and print media in India, the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, Canada, Australia, etc. They quickly discovered for themselves the dishonesty and elusiveness of Sai Baba and his leaders. For example, this was why the BBC’s legal department permitted its The Secret Swami team to clandestinely film Sathya Sai Organization world chairman Dr. Michael Goldstein, of Covina, California, USA, allowing millions in many countries to see him show no respect for the accountability and transparency that citizens and responsible organizations today expect. They also saw Goldstein act nastily in a way that is the very antithesis of a spiritual leader.

It suits G. Venkataraman – who refers to Goldstein as “Brother” to suppress this telling aspect, as he also does with other self-damning statements by Sai Baba and American billionaire Isaac Tigrett, in The Secret Swami. The BBC interviewer Tanya Datta says to Tigrett, “But even if it was proven to you that Sai Baba was a paedophile and a serial sex abuser, you’re saying it wouldn’t change the fact that he is your guru”. Tigrett replies, “Absolutely not. Absolutely not. He could go out and murder someone tomorrow…”

Further Resources

BBC Caught UNESCO Head Bowing To Indian Government

The Secret Swami BBC Docu. Review. Condensed

Sai Baba’s ‘Minister of Propaganda’ Dr G. Venkataraman

View the Television Documentaries

The Secret Swami (BBC Television):
(154 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)