Isaac Tigrett. Selling Out Those Condemned to a House Of Blues

One of many Sathya Sai Baba backers, who have donated fortunes to the Sathya Sai Central Trust, is Isaac Tigrett, of the USA. The BBC’s documentary ‘The Secret Swami’ (2004) exposed the attitudes of major figures connected with Sai Baba. Only Tigrett granted the ‘probability’ that the allegations of sexual abuse of boys and young men were true, but he still adheres to his guru, and has recently been reported living at Puttaparthi. Tigrett sold out his world-famous Hard Rock Cafe and House of Blues chains. But, too, he can be regarded as having sold out honoured families and their children (many of them with a life-long devotion to Sathya Sai Baba) around the world who have been shattered by their treatment by Sathya Sai Baba and those in the international Sathya Sai Organization who have been involved in years of far-reaching cover-up. 

Isaac Tigrett. With Hollywood Associates John Goodman and Dan Akroyd

Isaac Tigrett donated the many millions of dollars that built the Superspecialty Hospital at Puttaparthi. He has been a chief agent in spreading Sathya Sai Baba to many countries, an influence which has included the White House in the case of Al Gore. Politically, the hospital is used as a showpiece and a propaganda tool to impress politicians and medical authorities both in and well beyond India. In the first raptures of their enthusiasm, some of these visitors are shepherded into keynote speaking roles, and used to showcase Sai Baba as all-beneficent, etc. An example of this  outreach is Dr Michael Nobel, a great grand nephew of Alfred Nobel, of Sweden, who bequeathed the Nobel Prize. The New York Times has exposed Michael Nobel as an imposter, and he is repudiated by the Nobel authorities but not by Sathya Sai Baba, whose Sai Global Harmony satellite broadcasting company WorldSpace, of which Nobel is director, beams Sathya Sai Baba and the Sathya Sai Organization internationally .

ISAAC TIGRETT
Interviewed by the BBC in the one-hour documentary ‘The Secret Swami’. This is a brief except. Transcript and Video clip details are below.

                                             

BBC Interviewer Tanya Datta: 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 laughs at this rather wildly …
Isaac Tigrett: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. He could go out and murder someone tomorrow, as I said, it’s not going to change my evolution, it’s not going to change the good things that have come out of my relationship down there.
Tanya Datta: Does that mean that some part of you believes there could be some truth to the rumours?
Isaac Tigrett: Oh, absolutely I believe there is truth to the rumours.
Tanya Datta: You believe there is truth to the rumours?
Isaac Tigrett: Sure, there probably is, probably is.
(Click to view video clip of this episode- file size 1.34 MB). And –  Transcript and Commentary

Smitten by Sathya Sai Baba, who claims (a fantasy now fast and absurdly being forced to recede in all but his blinded followers) that he will save the world and save it before he leaves it, Tigrett tells Tanya Datta:

“India’s so unique, it’s so incredible. If there’s a spiritual train then India is the engine. All this mysticism, all the strangeness that surrounds Sai Baba and all that stuff, this is the perfect home for it.”

…………………………………………………………

Robert Priddy On Isaac Tigrett (2008)

The fall and fantasies of Sai Baba supporter, Isaac Tigrett

A known appreciator of the Pythonesque, Priddy writes of ….:

‘Tigrett’s strange antics involving a crystal skull which he claims was ‘materialised’ for him in an interview by Sathya Sai Baba. He implanted this skull in the top of the Pyramid Arena in Memphis, Tennessee and, when it was removed by the powers-that-be, an Internet source reported:“According to Mr. Tigrett: “You don’t have any idea what you have done,” he said upon being told that the crystal skull had been removed, adding somberly that the cosmic balance of the earth could be disturbed as well.”’

…………………………………………………………

The BBC interviewed other major figures covering up for Sathya Sai Baba, allowing them to expose themselves badly: 

Dr Michael Goldstein world chairman of the Sathya Sai Organization,, who (with a BBC hidden camera trained on him) lost his temper and makes unsupportable remarks about accountability and transparency).  For commentary and BBC video footage of the angry and evasive Dr Goldstein, see: Sathya Sai Baba Chief, Dr Goldstein, Explodes. “I am the consummate professional” (See Film Clips). Millions of viewers in over 120 countries have seen ‘The Secret Swami’. As a shocking example of belief in a spiritual elect, which has been documented from Goldstein’s widely-distributed email to Sathya Sai Baba devotees, see:   Sai Baba Saved Devotees From 9/11 Says Dr Michael Goldstein. See also: BBC Hidden Camera in ‘Secret Swami’. Ethical?

Murali Manohar Joshi, a senior minister in the then Vajpayee right-wing government of India, lost his temper, bullied and jabbed the air with pointed finger at the BBC’s Tanya Datta, accusing the BBC and people in England of plotting against Sathya Sai Baba, A.B. Vajpayee and P.N. Bhagawati (a key Sathya Sai  Central Trust member and former Chief Justice of India). He arrogantly shouts at her: “No, no, no… You don’t know the meaning of interviewing a minister in my capacity, as a minister of my stature.” See:  Indian Minister Shields Sai Baba on BBC television

By their fruits ye shall know them!

…………………………………………………………

Robert Priddy

Indisputable facts about Sathya Sai Baba by BBC

Barry Pittard at https://barrypittard.wordpress.com

The Genesis of the BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ (Sai Baba)

The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ – A Revision

BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ and British Press Praise

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

Guru Sex Abuse Testimony To BBC – After Years of Silence

India A Mature Democracy? BBC Probes

V.P.B. Nair. B.Premanand. R.Priddy: Sai Baba Bedroom Killings

Isaac Tigrett. Wealthy Promoter of Superstition

Former head of the Norwegian Sathya Sai Organization Robert Priddy exposes a superstitious belief of Isaac Tigrett, one of Sathya Sai Baba’s key financial backers. Tigrett was an immensely wealthy U.S. citizen, who walks with some of the most powerful leaders in the world. Businesses he has built include famous institutions such as The Hard Rock Cafe and The House of Blues. He has contributed many millions to Sathya Sai Baba.

Isaac Tigrett. Secret Swami Cult’s immensely wealthy and hearty Laugher

Robert Priddy writes:

“Isaac Tigrett has stated that Sathya Sai Baba – who Tigrett worships as God Incarnate etc. etc. – gave him a crystal skull at an interview where the object just appeared in Sai Baba’s hands (as posted recently on my blog). Tigrett believes in the supernatural power of this skull and that cosmic balance depends on it (somehow) and that it carries a cosmic curse which can destroy the earth – as can be seen from the pages copied from the Internet below”

Sources

Isaac Tigrett, Sathya Sai Baba and the crystal skull

Posted by robertpriddy on October 7, 2008

The fall and fantasies of Sai Baba supporter, Isaac Tigrett

Posted by robertpriddy on October 5, 2008

Tigrett Speaks To BBC Television On His Faith In Sathya Sai Baba

Similar Tigrett preoccupation with mystic fancy has been seen in the BBC documentary ‘The Secret Swami’ 2004, where Tigrett tells the presenter Tanya Datta:

“India’s so unique, it’s so incredible. If there’s a spiritual train then India is the engine. All this mysticism, all the strangeness that surrounds Sai Baba and all that stuff, this is the perfect home for it.”

Unlike other Sathya Sai Baba leaders, Tigrett the latter comes across as compassionate but his unusual and repeated laughter in the BBC documentary suggests his ultimate denial of feeling that needs to translate to humane action. Tanya Datta says,

“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.”

Isaac Tigrett says,

“He could go out and murder someone tomorrow.”

Tanya Datta probes,

“Does that mean that some part of you believes there could be some truth to the rumours?” Tigrett replies,

“Oh, absolutely I believe there is truth to the rumours.”

But the practical effect – which is that Isaac Tigrett does nothing to advocate a hearing for Sathya Sai Baba’s accusers – is the same as if he did not believe in their truth! This immensely wealthy man, who walks with some of the most powerful leaders in the world, like Al Gore, blocks the chance of marginalized victims to effectively tell their stories. Clearly, his self-perceived spiritual development is all that matters. Therefore, he lends himself to one of history’s great cover ups. He may provide palatial buildings for Sai Baba but what about rebuilding broken people, and perhaps saving still others from coming to grief in the secret chamber of the ‘secret swami?

View the BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’

The Secret Swami (BBC Television):
(154 MB Broadband)

Read the articles:

The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ – A Revision

BBC Hidden Camera in ‘Secret Swami’. Ethical?

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

BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ and British Press Praise

BBC Acted “Totally Irresponsibly” Says Ashok Bhagani

Indian Ex Top Official Dogs Sai Baba On BBC. ‘Cold-blooded Murder’

Note:

For an example of another major figure around Sathya Sai Baba who lends himself to highly irrational beliefs, see my two articles:

J. Jegathesan. Part of The Secret Swami’s Cover Up and

Dato J. Jegathesan, a ‘Secret Swami’ cult top leader-roving ambassador

(These articles contain links to Robert Priddy’s writings on J.Jegathesan)

Muck-rakers and The Timid Who Enable Them

I was browsing through Pete Hammell‘s book ‘Why Sinatra Matters’, and read the following. For all its nastiness, it is but a mild example of the level of mentality that would target dissidents. Not only, of course, that aimed at those who have spoken out about Sathya Sai Baba and the core leaders in the Sathya Sai Organization and those in both State and Central Indian governments who cover up for him, but, as I am often enough reminded, hurled at those from various parts of the world with whom I have corresponded or shared phone conversations who are also exposing an array of corruptions.

Attack, slander, libel distortion, derision, poor ability to argue properly, ad hominem attacks, breakage of e.g., the Aristotelean ‘law of the undistributed middle’ (confusion, which can be deliberate, of ‘all’ with ‘some’, name-calling and muck-raking (whether the muck is real, fabricated or exaggerated) are inevitable. Just as inevitable is the timidity of those who could stand up, and need to be the very ones to stand up, for truthfulness, and who do not. Those who dive for cover are commonly expert with excuses. They resemble, for example, those in the Weimar Republic  who, from the earliest stages, did not stand up to Hitler and his fascists.

Hamell cites the story for the Scripps Howard newspaper syndicate by the writer Robert Ruark, whom Hamell desribes as a “macho right-winger who despised Sinatra’s politics”.

“Mr Sinatra, the self-confessed savior of the country’s small fry, by virtue of his lectures on clean living and love-thy-neighbor, his movie shorts on tolerance and his frequent dabblings into the do-good department of politics, seems to be setting a most peculiar example for his hordes of pimply, shrieking slaves, who are alleged to regard him with the same awe as a practising Mohammedan for the Prophet”.

While reading the Hammel quote, the lines of a Sting’s song “Saint Augustine in Hell” came to mind:

Relax, have a cigar, make yourself at home. Hell is full of high court
judges, failed saints. We’ve got Cardinals, Archbishops, barristers,
certified accountants, music critics, they’re all here. You’re not alone.
You’re never alone, not here you’re not. OK break’s over.

(For Sting’s selection of his work see, “Lyrics By Sting”. Simon and Shuster, 2007)

– and I thinly smiled at the thought that Sting has left out a) muck-rakers and b) the timid who allow them to try to bluff and intimididate their way into a world where we need to strive for as much clarity and cool appraisal as we can muster.

Trying to reason with them is but wrestling in a gutter of their choosing. One has best to trust that there are enough serious, percipient and less easily misled readers, and to focus on one’s own clear purpose. This in itself is demanding of great time and energy. Why waste it attempting to beat back the lava of sludge and in breathing the vapors of the sewer?

By their rotten fruits they shall be known.

As to the timid …. What a heaven of conscience they must already be enjoying.

Pamela Stephenson Protects Celeb ‘Shrink Rap’ Interviewees

In the experience of networked former followers of Sathya Sai Baba, there needs to be a new regimen of sensitivity and responsibity in the media. Overall, we have fared well, but see the need for a better grasp of deeper human issues, and greater standards of accuracy.

This is not to say, necessarily, censorship of either journalists or of content presented by those they write about. (Although it is a sad comment that the very advocates of an open society have, all too often submitted themselves, to self-censorship against philistine triumph). Rather, it is about creating an altogether different climate in which genuine feelings of interview or other subjects can be discussed more openly and commented on sensitively and intelligently, and cynical exploitation. As in e.g., pop music, principled, genuinely critical and sensitive media would raise standards and help to create richer canons of satisfaction, rather than sinking to the lowest (assumed!) common denominator.

I recently saw Pamela Stephenson interviewed by Andrew Denton in Enough Rope on ABC television (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). She is the former celebrated actress and comedian, and star of such television shows Not The Nine O’Clock News. She is now a clinical psychologist in Hollywood and a professor of psychology at the California Graduate Institute.

Vile Public Critics

In her recently-made television series Shrink Rap, her famous interview subjects were willing to bare their more vulnerable feelings and lesions, and in a serious way beyond what usually passes for celebrity (so-called) ‘revelations’. Her subjects thus far have been Sharon Osbourne, Stephen Fry, David Blunkett, Sarah Ferguson, and Robin Williams.

In a note for the show, Stephenson says:

“Shrink Rap is an attempt to allow people not to be under pressure of performing, not to feel that they have to present the ideal self, the one that is always adorable and perfect and funny and together. This allows people to bring forward the true self, to not always tell the official story”.

Holding Barbarians at Bay

But, prior to its release, she found herself editing things out far more than she had earlier thought she would need to. It was not the celebrities themselves who called for this degree of censorship but Stephenson’s own deepening awareness of state-of-the-art maliciousness among media commentators and other unconscienable attackers.

Stephenson had her own experience of having earlier been one of Great Britain’s best-known television celebrities (and is, moreover, the wife of one of the world’s most famous comedians Billy Connelly). Therefore, the need occurred her to go to still greater editorial lengths to protect her famous interview subjects. She was acutely aware of the extreme readiness of unscrupulous critics to make insensitive and distorted use of what her subjects revealed about themselves. In an interview for The Independent, she observed:

“I can control what we have in the programme, and take out things that might be misunderstood, but there’s no guarantee of how it’s going to be received. I will feel terrible on people’s behalf if anyone is publicly punished for saying how they feel.”

Slack Journalism Needs Extinctifying

Rupert Murdoch thinks he can influence an eco friendly ‘greening’ of his newspapers. So then, let him and other prime movers and shakers support those developmental programmes which create greater awareness in journalists (and especially the emerging trainee ones) that might approach that sensitivity and deep ethics being role-modeled by Pamela Stephenson.

Further Resources

Pamela Stephenson – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

PamelaStephenson.com

Judge warned: Crippling disease won‘t stop pervert

Some devotees of Sathya Sai Baba – the ‘God’ worshipped by so many of India’s top power brokers (and others beyond) who faces worldwide accusations of large-scale, serial sexual molestation of boys and young men – claim that he could not possibly offend, if he ever did, because of his age and physical incapacity, and that therefore his current accusers are caught in a palpable deceit. 

L. Ageing multiple rapist Wayne Chapman still Dangerous. (Boston Herald Photo Pool). R. An Ironside Sai Baba – not one to easily push around.

They offer no evidence concerning the nature of sexual capacity and ageing. Yet there is a mass of readings on the topic ‘ageing and sex’ in the popular press, let alone a wealth of information from Gerontology and Geriatrics. As ever, the Internet is an abundant source.  But why go looking for facts when there is a guru to defend at all costs? And the word ‘costs’ is more than appropriate, since Sai Baba’s worldwide cult has to defend many billions of dollars of investment in its notion that Sai Baba is about to rule the earth. Any dear reader who happens to be a billionaire, watch your money – Sai Baba is a consumate master in extracting it from you – without seeming to want it. See my article: Sai Baba, Kubla Khan, Citizen Kane, Bill Gates et alia

Of course, making Champion of the World may require Sai Baba to take a little more than Viagra or Cialis. 

Extract from: Judge warned: Crippling disease won‘t stop pervert
By Laurel J. Sweet
Boston Herald. Friday, March 23, 2007

‘Aging and Sick Sex Offender to Be Civilly Committed?

Whatever the wisdom of civil commitment laws it would seem that this fellow might qualify.  Increasingly, though, the states are going to have to contend with the high cost of health care in keeping aging and sick convicts behind bars.

Even though his aging, bloated body is confined to a wheelchair, a judge was warned yesterday a 59-year-old convicted sexual predator remains dangerous to children. A forensic psychologist assured Lawrence Superior Court Judge Howard J. Whitehead that convicted child rapist Wayne Chapman, who bragged he had sexually molested between 50 and 100 boys and even fantasized about killing some of them, “presents a high and unacceptable risk to re-offend.” “It just doesn’t go away,” Christine Schnyder Pierce testified. Chapman, an interstate predator, has been incarcerated for 31 years. Having served his time, he is hoping to retire in Massachusetts, but the Essex District Attorney’s Office is fighting to have Whitehead civilly commit him for life as a “sexually dangerous” person’.

Further Resources

Wikipedia, Sexuality in older age

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When ‘Divine’ Magnetism Becomes A Dead Weight

Sai Baba’s alarmingly many scientist and other (supposedly) intellectual followers must have to block ears and eyes when he opines on matters scientific. Heavily rose-tinted glasses can be particularly helpful.

He speaks, for example, of the nature of magnetism. Here, Sai Baba’s educated devotees provide a modern example of the Hans Christian Anderson story of the Emperor New Clothes (see story below) – where the emperor’s subjects saw naked discrepancy but, mystery of mysteries, didn’t see it! 

Professor Dr K.S. ‘Sunny’ Anand, birth scientist, a top President Bush medical advisor who worships Sai Baba as God fully incarnate. Only rose-tinted glasses can ignore Sai Baba’s extremely inept statements on birth science.

In his March 13, 2002 Mahashivarathri discourse, Sai Baba said,

“So when I put My foot down,

the whole foot stuck to the ground. It is a little hard to lift a foot that is stuck. Wherever I walk, it sticks there. Whatever is held, it sticks to My hand. This magnet is not in everyone like this. This magnet is so powerful only in Divinity.”

Philosopher and social scientist Robert Priddy comments aptly on Sai Baba’s unscientific statements about magnetism and the nature of the atom HERE. In a recent blog, Priddy says HERE,

“despite all the billions of dollars in hand – (Sai Baba) has not made one inch of progress in getting international recognition from any serious institutions”.

Many Sai Baba followers are at the top of their professions in the armed and police services, government, the judiciary, the sciences, arts, finance, industry, sports, and so on. Of course, healthy-minded individuals see clothes as clothes and nakedness as itself. It is a worry when key world power brokers and their functionaries think that their guru wears clothes.

When Does Life Enter The Fetus?

Also primitive, and very exposing of Sai Baba, but seen and, every so mystically, not seen by his followers is his view about what time life enters the human foetus. You may view HERE scans of two brief extracts, run side by side, of Sai Baba’s entirely conflicting statements on the topic. They are extracted from two editions of the guru’s official magazine (distributed worldwide), Sanathana Sarathi – of a) September 1996 and b) April 1997. This from a guru whose devotees number many thousands of medical doctors. I take but one example –

George W. Bush Medical Advisor Joins The Emperor’s Subjects

Kanwaljeet ‘Sunny’ Anand (read in here strings of the most prestigious medical degrees and other qualifications) is one of countless Sai Baba scientists caught in the emperor-with-no-clothes syndrome. The media might like to interview him. But remember that Sai Baba’s followers typically avoid any challenge to their (non) thinking. They, like cult members the world over, race into hiding. Another thing they chronically do, as does their founder, is to hold up high examples of prestigious figures who go to Sai Baba. They are highlighted among his keynote speakers, and given VIP treatment – sometimes obvious to the public, sometimes only to those in-the-know. They are carefully cultivated.

Dr Anand’s mental gymnastics are considerable, for he has somehow to  shine in his scientific field (accomplishments none can deny) and yet ignore his guru Sai Baba’s risable absurdities – even in Anand’s own branch of birth sciences. Professor Anand rose become a George W. Bush medical advisor – and yet hails Sai Baba as God fully incarnate, even stating, preposterously and unascertainbly, that Sai Baba has one hundred million followers. Like his guru, Anand exposes himself. For this and other palpable nonsense that Dr Anand falls for, see my article Sai Baba Is God Says Top George Bush Doctor, HERE

In the Anderson story, it is a child who sees the actual nakedness as opposed to the ostensible clothing. Perhaps devotees could do worse than ask for the reactions of a few kids to Sai Baba. As long as forces jesuitical have not trapped them.

The Emperor’s New Clothes
Hans Christian Anderson. Denmark
Many years ago there lived an emperor who loved beautiful new clothes so much that he spent all his money on being finely dressed. His only interest was in going to the theater or in riding about in his carriage where he could show off his new clothes. He had a different costume for every hour of the day. Indeed, where it was said of other kings that they were at court, it could only be said of him that he was in his dressing room!

One day two swindlers came to the emperor’s city. They said that they were weavers, claiming that they knew how to make the finest cloth imaginable. Not only were the colors and the patterns extraordinarily beautiful, but in addition, this material had the amazing property that it was to be invisible to anyone who was incompetent or stupid.

“It would be wonderful to have clothes made from that cloth,” thought the emperor. “Then I would know which of my men are unfit for their positions, and I’d also be able to tell clever people from stupid ones.” So he immediately gave the two swindlers a great sum of money to weave their cloth for him.

They set up their looms and pretended to go to work, although there was nothing at all on the looms. They asked for the finest silk and the purest gold, all of which they hid away, continuing to work on the empty looms, often late into the night.

“I would really like to know how they are coming with the cloth!” thought the emperor, but he was a bit uneasy when he recalled that anyone who was unfit for his position or stupid would not be able to see the material. Of course, he himself had nothing to fear, but still he decided to send someone else to see how the work was progressing.

“I’ll send my honest old minister to the weavers,” thought the emperor. He’s the best one to see how the material is coming. He is very sensible, and no one is more worthy of his position than he.

So the good old minister went into the hall where the two swindlers sat working at their empty looms. “Goodness!” thought the old minister, opening his eyes wide. “I cannot see a thing!” But he did not say so.

The two swindlers invited him to step closer, asking him if it wasn’t a beautiful design and if the colors weren’t magnificent. They pointed to the empty loom, and the poor old minister opened his eyes wider and wider. He still could see nothing, for nothing was there. “Gracious” he thought. “Is it possible that I am stupid? I have never thought so. Am I unfit for my position? No one must know this. No, it will never do for me to say that I was unable to see the material.”

“You aren’t saying anything!” said one of the weavers.

“Oh, it is magnificent! The very best!” said the old minister, peering through his glasses. “This pattern and these colors! Yes, I’ll tell the emperor that I am very satisfied with it!”

“That makes us happy!” said the two weavers, and they called the colors and the unusual pattern by name. The old minister listened closely so that he would be able say the same things when he reported back to the emperor, and that is exactly what he did.

The swindlers now asked for more money, more silk, and more gold, all of which they hid away. Then they continued to weave away as before on the empty looms.

The emperor sent other officials as well to observe the weavers’ progress. They too were startled when they saw nothing, and they too reported back to him how wonderful the material was, advising him to have it made into clothes that he could wear in a grand procession. The entire city was alive in praise of the cloth. “Magnifique! Nysseligt! Excellent!” they said, in all languages. The emperor awarded the swindlers with medals of honor, bestowing on each of them the title Lord Weaver.

The swindlers stayed up the entire night before the procession was to take place, burning more than sixteen candles. Everyone could see that they were in a great rush to finish the emperor’s new clothes. They pretended to take the material from the looms. They cut in the air with large scissors. They sewed with needles but without any thread. Finally they announced, “Behold! The clothes are finished!”

The emperor came to them with his most distinguished cavaliers. The two swindlers raised their arms as though they were holding something and said, “Just look at these trousers! Here is the jacket! This is the cloak!” and so forth. “They are as light as spider webs! You might think that you didn’t have a thing on, but that is the good thing about them.”

“Yes,” said the cavaliers, but they couldn’t see a thing, for nothing was there.

“Would his imperial majesty, if it please his grace, kindly remove his clothes.” said the swindlers. “Then we will fit you with the new ones, here in front of the large mirror.”

The emperor took off all his clothes, and the swindlers pretended to dress him, piece by piece, with the new ones that were to be fitted. They took hold of his waist and pretended to tie something about him. It was the train. Then the emperor turned and looked into the mirror.

“Goodness, they suit you well! What a wonderful fit!” they all said. “What a pattern! What colors! Such luxurious clothes!”

“The canopy to be carried above your majesty awaits outside,” said the grandmaster of ceremonies.

“Yes, I am ready!” said the emperor. “Don’t they fit well?” He turned once again toward the mirror, because it had to appear as though he were admiring himself in all his glory.

The chamberlains who were to carry the train held their hands just above the floor as if they were picking up the train. As they walked they pretended to hold the train high, for they could not let anyone notice that they could see nothing.

The emperor walked beneath the beautiful canopy in the procession, and all the people in the street and in their windows said, “Goodness, the emperor’s new clothes are incomparable! What a beautiful train on his jacket. What a perfect fit!” No one wanted it to be noticed that he could see nothing, for then it would be said that he was unfit for his position or that he was stupid. None of the emperor’s clothes had ever before received such praise.

“But he doesn’t have anything on!” said a small child.

“Good Lord, let us hear the voice of an innocent child!” said the father, and whispered to another what the child had said.

“A small child said that he doesn’t have anything on!”

Finally everyone was saying, “He doesn’t have anything on!”

The emperor shuddered, for he knew that they were right, but he thought, “The procession must go on!” He carried himself even more proudly, and the chamberlains walked along behind carrying the train that wasn’t there.
————————————————————–Source: Hans Christian Andersen, Keiserens nye klæder (1837). Andersen’s source was a Spanish story recorded by Don Juan Manuel (1282-1348).

Translated by D. L. Ashliman.

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Dalai Lama visits Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo

Dalai Lama visits Irwin’s Australia Zoo
Brisbane June 13, 2007

Extract from: theage.com.au (Click for full article)

 Cuddly: the Dalai Lama with, from left, Terry, Bob and Bindi Irwin and a koala. Photo: AP

About 5000 people have gathered at the late Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast to hear the Dalai Lama talk about kindness to animals and the environment.

Monks at the 71-year-old exiled Tibetan spiritual leader’s Dharamsala monastery are friends with the Irwin family.

Terri Irwin and daughter Bindi today joined with the Dalai Lama at the talk, being held in the zoo’s ‘Crocoseum’.

The Dalai Lama will also use the visit to launch Kindness Week, a community project initiated by Queensland-based palliative care service Karuna Hospice Services.

This afternoon about 15,000 people are expected to fill the Brisbane Entertainment Centre to hear the Dalai Lama speak on the issues of compassion and kindness.

The Chinese government has expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with the Australian government for holding meetings with the Dalai Lama during his 11-day tour of Australia.
…………………………………

Blognote:

Last night, Wednesday June 14, 2007, this blogger got unexpectedly taken to see the Dalai Lama at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre. This venue holds 15,000 and almost all seats were taken, with a crowd outside which one newspaper estimated at about 3000, watching on a large screen. Next blog, extract will be from my notes of this enrichening experience, with some references to how this leader of such great naturalness, simplicity and courage has – against incredible adversity – for so long walked his talk. And, indeed this theme’s relatedness to the wider concerns of https://barrypittard.wordpress.com. That the Dalai Lama would have visited Steve Irwin’s Australia Zoo, in Beerwah, north of Brisbane, will have a special resonance, not only Australians, who as a nation have terribly lamented his loss, but for millions around the world who loved and revered the beautiful and exemplary life of the late environmentalist Steve Irwin, so tragically struck down by a stingray September 4, 2006, and his remarkable family.

The office of the Dalai Lama’s website is: http://www.dalailama.com

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Sai Baba: I Will Save India Then World. But he’s Failed

Unfortunately, a great many valuable statements in the exposé of Sai Baba and his powerful worldwide cult, the Sathya Sai Organization, are somewhat buried among long, detailed articles. Every now and then, this blogsite – https://barrypittard.wordpress.com – will uncover some of these.

Below, is a quotation from a piece by Robert Priddy, Sathya Sai Baba Is Influenced Also By Blame – So He Had To React! (See source Url at end).

Sai Baba’s hired private jet for a quick hop to his retreat in kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, South India, 2005.

Robert Priddy was head of the Sathya Sai Organization in Norway, 1986-2000. He investigated the ashram and  state and central Indian government cover-up of the police excecutions in Sai Baba’s bedroom on June 6, 1993, and many allegations of sexual abuse of young males by Sai Baba. As a result, he resigned, as did his wife Reidun, an active devotee from 1983-2000. He is a retired lecturer in Philosophy and Social Science, University of Oslo, and author of two books on Sai Baba: Source of the Dream: My Way to Sathya Sai Baba (Paperback) Details HERE at Amazon.com. Hardback publisher, Samuel Weiser, 1998 (301 pages), ISBN 1578630282, and End of the Dream: The Sathya Sai Baba Enigma (600 pages), Podanur, India, 2004, published, Basava Premanand. His professional entry is at Wikipedia HERE, and further bio info HERE.

Sathya Sai Condones India’s Greatest Evils by Ignoring them

Sathya Sai Baba lauds and blesses any politician who visits him and never speaks out against the many inhumane policies, their signal failure to take care of the most basic needs of most Indians, the massive Swiss bank accounts most of them hold, or riding the gravy train while the privileged get richer and richer. Claiming omniscience and omnipotence – Sai Baba never had the guts to speak out against their many powerful and brutal oppressors and utterly vile criminals throughout India. He has never defended in any substantial way whatever the tortured, raped, murdered and utterly desolate people of India, the tribals, the dispossessed, the vast army of beggars. Against Mahatma Gandhi’s revered principle, Sathya Sai welcomes ‘blood money’ and even in a public announcement of donors giving at least one crore (a ‘crore’ equates to 10 million) at his 70th Birthday celebrations (such as Bhangarappa, a known corrupt Karnataka politician, who gave ten million rupees, and two famous Indian ‘liquor barons’, one of whom, Mr. Reddy, was murdered in Madras in 1996 only a week or so after a personal visit by Sai Baba accompanied by V.K. Narasimhan.

(Ed. The latter was former top editor of several India newspapers, and recipient of the prestigious Ramnath (R.N.) Goenka Award  For Excellence in Journalism (Economics), bestowed by the Freedom of Information Foundation. ‘V.K.N’., as he was known and loved throughout India, was a warm and trusted friend of Robert Priddy for many years).

Self-Proclaimed Avatar Can’t Save His Own Back Yard, India, Much Less The World, As He Has Promised

Despite his many earlier ‘avataric predictions’ that he claims cannot fail, India’s gigantic injustices and problems are getting no better – still no social security whatever (all the poor get to live on is sunlight), no reduction of corruption, more infanticide, still bonded labour and life servitude as debtors to criminal moneylenders, child prostitution, a massive and growing AIDS epidemic, unimaginable numbers of child labourers, vast peasant penury, wife killings, ghastly begging mafias which deform babies into ‘rat children’ and ‘spidermen’ for profit, not to mention all manner of sexual abuse of children (sic!)… and so now Sai Baba states he is “minded to take a world tour”. So has he given up on solving India’s problems before he ever would go abroad, as he has repeatedly pledged?

The man is a hotbed of contradictions, false predictions and outright lies. It is well recorded how Sathya Sai Baba has told leading devotees on several occasions that he would visit them in their countries – for example USA, Italy, U.K., Southern California and other places – but then he has changed his supposedly all-knowing mind, saying that India must be cured first!

Further Resources

Source of the quote above is Robert Priddy’s article – Sathya Sai Baba Is Influenced Also By Blame – So He Had To React! – is HERE:

Robert Priddy’s Blog is at:  http://robertpriddy.wordpress.com and an extensive, highly-organized website is HERE.

His appreciation of his friend, ‘V.K.N’, Requeim To A Kindly Spirit – Celebrated Indian journalist V.K. Narasimhan is HERE.

An updated version of Robert Priddy’s End of The Dream. My Credo and Rejection of Sathya Sai Baba is HERE.

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

Note:  3 December 2010.  In the aftermath of Sathya Sai Baba’s 85th birthday celebrations, here is a 2007 article which shows that the incredible opulence that surrounds him has been in the building for a long time now.

………………………………………………………………………………………

 In the director-writer-actor Orson Welles’s great movie classic Citizen Kane, one can, it is true, note certain differences between the U.S. newspaper proprietor William Randolf Hearst

and Welles’s and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s creation Charles Foster Kane. For decades, the differences have been fought over – fiercely. Nonetheless, both were fabulously wealthy, gigantically egocentric – and corrupt. They splurged incredibly on their domiciles. As does Sathya Sai Baba -See: Sai Baba’s Birthday. Vast, Costly Pomp and Ceremony

(Microsoft founder, Bill Gates’s humble little shack – dubbed by some wag as: Xanadu 2.0. No zoo there yet, but who knows? – with the true coming-of-age of Robotics something cyber-‘animal’ might be managed. Although Sai Baba’s imperial fiat has gone out to his devotees that they must have nothing to do with the Internet, his devotees, from top to bottom, are using it extensively. So much for the notion ‘Guru is God’).

In naming the fictive Kane’s dream home on sprawling acres, Xanadu, Welles and his writer Mankiewicz thought – perhaps inevitably – of the fabulous city of the 13th Century Mongolian emperor, Kubla Khan (see portrait above) and of the English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s fittingly eccentric and exotic poem known to millions, whose first line runs:

In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea  

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

 Today’s Would-be ‘Emperor’ of India and Then the World

Kane in Florida, like Hearst at San Simeon in California, was absolute King of his castle. But there is a virtual Emperor in India – Sathya Sai Baba.

But even Randolph Hearst (as perhaps a modern-day media buccaneer Rupert Murdoch) might have blushed a wee bit for shame to hold such sway with the big end of town as Sathya Sai Baba has long done with India’s power brokers, irrespective of what political party is in power. Sai Baba (and I have seen him up close a great many times), who long ago learnt not to blush, is arguably India’s and history’s most famous – and infamous – guru. 

How the stupendous splurger Sai Baba can ever say the name of Mahatma Gandhi, modern India’s simple-living ‘father of the nation’, without blushing is one of his greatest miracles!

Hearst would refer to his establishment as “the ranch”. Hugh Heffner, the ‘soft’ pornography magnate and publisher of Playboy Magazine had built his Playboy Mansion, of which  the writer John Marshal has observed  that  driving through its gates is “like being misdirected into the back entrance of a public zoo”. The zoo atmospheric reminds that Hearst’s estate included a zoo – then the world’s largest. The narrator in Citizen Kane speaks of Kane having the largest zoo since Noah. See USA Weekend LINK.

India’s Fabulous Top Guru Sai Baba. More Emperor Than King

But then see the article: 

The Decline and Fall of the Showman Empire. Posted by Barry Pittard on July 10, 2007

 

One wonders why Sai Baba has not included a gee-wizzo zoo. Perhaps it would be a counter-distraction, because everybody is supposed to have their eyes trained on Sai Baba (it is called ‘darshan’, and his devotees spell it with a capital ‘D’. Instead of gazing at one’s navel, one gazes at the guru). However, one Indian man sitting next to me at a Sai Baba ‘darshan’ described Sai Baba’s setup to me as “a national circus”.

See:  SATHYA SAI ORGANIZATION LAVISH SPENDING ON SUPER DOME VENUE MEETING
 Compiled from Australian sources, with comments by Barry Pittard and Robert Priddy

Vastly Costly Monuments Glorifying Sai Baba

His splashy-colored and sometimes vast buildings rise up at enormous cost. Sathya Sai Baba’s exchequer owes to vast donations to his Central Trust via his powerful organisation spanning more than 150 countries, and not least to the donations of the extremely wealthy – like James Sinclair, the Canadian cable and minerals magnate, Isaac Tigrett the American founder of the Hard Rock Café and House of Blues, the Rai family in India in steel and technology, and an astounding number of other hugely wealthy and influential individuals and families from many countries. Rediff News, July 06, 2005, reported:

“The Andhra Pradesh-based Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust is the largest recipient of foreign contributions. The Sathya Sai Trust received Rs 95 crore (Rs 950 million) during 2003-04″.

This figure – which is well over US $20 million – is but the officially declared one and does not account for contributions of those foreigners who donate when they are in India. One can observe how at Sathya Sai Baba’s establishments at Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh, and Whitefield, Karnataka, in South India, the Indian and foreign mega business fraternity swap business cards – within what devotees regard as the so-called Holiest of Holy precincts! – and thereafter mutually thrive. At the Puttaparthi temple, on June 6, 1993) police executions took place in Sai Baba’s bedroom, with his close proximity and command of the situation. See my article, at LINK, which contains a further link to a video clip of the BBC The Secret Swami television interview with former Andhra Pradesh Home Secretary V.P.B. Nair saying that the slaying was “absolute cold-blooded murder”).

It is easy to see that far wider national and international economic and political forces are at play, and that it is little wonder how successive Indian governments both State and Central have been loathe to ‘kill’ a goose that lays an incredible number of golden eggs.

Twin Palace. Sai Baba Lives Here

Efforts to Globalize Sathya Sai Baba with World Radio Station

Sai Baba controls with an iron hand the international Sathya Sai Organization. This powerful cult has been found by some of the world’s top media like the BBC, Times of London, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and in other countries, as well as UNESCO, the U.S. State Department and other institutions to be extremely hard to investigate or act against. His second most senior aide is its deputy chairman, who, as head of Sai Global Harmony, is his ‘minister of propaganda’, Dr G. Venkataraman, one of the progenitors of India’s atomic bomb, as was Sai Baba’s previous close aide, the late Dr S. Bhagavantam – sometimes called ‘the father of the Indian atomic bomb’ – as was his present staunch devotee, the President of India, Dr A.J. P. Kalam, who writes flowery  panegyrics to Sai Baba, as did the last Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Sai Global Harmony broadcasts, in affiliation with WorldSpace International Satellite Radio Service, 24/7 to many countries. With a behind-the-scenes corporate-style, assisted by the billions of funds that pour from many countries into the Sathya Sai Central Trust, the declared aim is to penetrate to every corner of the globe.

Government Inaction on Powerful Cults

A vital question will be whether politicians in democratic countries will be capable of distinguishing between the issue of freedom of religion and the issue of cults that decidedly do not, whatever may be their rhetoric, respect democracy.

Followers Believe Sathya Sai Baba Will Rule World

Former monstrous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (about whom Sai Baba and G. Venkatarman have warmly recollected, See LINK) only imagined himself to be the ‘Last King of Scotland’ but Sai Baba takes all India for his domain, not to mention the world, which he has long said (it is one of his myriad of broken promises) he will travel to and bring to his feet, after he has “set (his) own back yard (India) in order” and before he dies in AD 2022. Given India’s enduring tragedy – despite her superpower aspirations – he had better get a bit of a wriggle on!

Poor Hearst, Jackson, Gates, Murdoch, et alia! For Sai Baba is an Emperor, who has Indian power brokers in his thrall irrespective of their party or religious affiliation. None – except a rare and tremendously courageous individual like B. Premanand, India’s famous “guru buster” – dare  take him on in India. See BBC story HERE.

For Successive Indian Governments, Sathya Sai Baba Is ‘goose that lays the golden eggs’

Indian local, central and state governments, often incredibly corrupt and incompetent, are able to watch while the more efficient Sai Baba and his massive organization get social welfare projects done. Drawn out of donations from some 150 foreign countries, his revenue is prodigious. India’s profoundly compromised ruling elites would no more sneeze at that country’s donations from Bill Gates, yet another of history’s outstanding buccaneers, than it would at the taxable revenue pouring into the Sathya Sai Central Trust.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man

 

Further Reading

The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ – A Revision

BBC Hidden Camera in ‘Secret Swami’. Ethical?

Guru Sex Abuse Testimony To BBC – After Years of Silence

Indian Minister Shields Sai Baba on BBC television

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

V.P.B. Nair. B.Premanand. R.Priddy: Sai Baba Bedroom Killings

Exposure of Sathya Sai Baba. Media Source List

Video Resources

The Secret Swami (BBC Television):
(154 MB, Broadband)

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

http://home.hetnet.nl/~seduced/seduced.wmv
(21 MB, Modem)

Right Hand. Sleight Hand. Watch Sai Baba Cheat With Sacred Ash (Film clip)

BBC and Other Film Footage Shows India’s Top Guru Sathya Sai Baba Faking Miracles

BBC Footage Exposes Fake Sathya Sai Baba Miracle « Call For Media and Government Investigation

Sathya Sai Baba Chief, Dr Goldstein, Explodes. “I am the consummate professional” (See Film Clips)

Raising ever more serious questions about how spiritual is the head of what Sathya Sai Baba has called THE divine organization in the world,

Michael Goldstein explodes with anger (710kbs)

at the BBC’s perfectly reasonable questions about accountability

Dr. Goldstein again reveals his higher self (1.500Kb)

Michael Goldstein and the sexual allegations (2,10 Mbs)

Michael Goldstein admits his view is merely a belief (456kbs)

Sathya Sai Baba Cult Exposure By Major TV Channel In Australia « Call For Media and Government Investigation

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General

Excerpt From Public Petition

(Note: You may prefer to proceed straight to the Petition):

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

There is a Spanish version available:

PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL)

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The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice ! …..

….. That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Police Killings Related to Sai Baba Sex Abuse Says Dr Bhatia

Mick Brown, British journalist and author of several books, extensively researched some of the scandals that continue to erupt for Sathya Sai Baba and his exceptionally powerful and wealthy worldwide organization. Members of the Sai Baba cult – including a great many otherwise educated members from an astonishing array of professions – believe that they are his workers in bringing about the greatest spiritual revolution in mankind’s history.

In a long article researched on both sides of the Atlantic, ‘The Divine Downfall’, Mick Brown of The Telegraph (U.K.), November 12, 2000, wrote:

“For all the allegations laid against him over the years, Sai Baba has never been charged with any crime, sexual or otherwise. And his exalted position in India has until now kept him safely insulated from any kind of public inquiry.

In June 1993 he was the subject of an apparent assassination attempt when five young men broke into his private residence. Two of his personal attendants were stabbed to death and four of the assailants were shot dead by police ‘in self-defence’. Sai Baba allegedly escaped by rushing out of his room and activating an alarm system. In a subsequent discourse, he said the attack was caused by ‘jealousy’. Dr Bhatia told me he believed the attack was linked to Baba’s sexual activities. The guru was never interrogated by police over the attack. The Indian press raised the obvious question: if Sai Baba is omniscient, why couldn’t he see it coming?”

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Dr Naresh Bhatia. Silenced Now In Indian Child Abuse Scourge

For many years, Dr Naresh Bhatia was a prominent doctor (and head of the Blood Bank) in Sai Baba’s vast but from many reports badly under-utilized Super Speciality hospital at Puttaparthi. There are accounts of his having to flee for his own safety from Puttaparthi and then finally being able to retrieve his possessions only after his undertaking with Sai Baba’s top officials to make no further public statements. A secret swami’s secret India, where at last a landmark study of abuse and the extreme hiding of it has just been released by the Manmohan Singh government. See Resources, at the foot of this article.

The Guru Can Do No Wrong

Dr Bhatia says that he, when younger, was for a long time a homosexual lover of Sai Baba. (The former Swedish film star Conny Larsson, now a drug rehabilitator among prisoners and others, says the same of himself). Dr Bhatia has told me that he still cannot shake off his belief that Sai Baba is Divine even though he knows that Sai Baba has sexually abused very many of his male students and other young males. One may note that the guru tradition in India cannot be readily understood by outsiders. One concept is that one does not criticize one’s guru, no matter what he or she says or does. Rooted in almost timeless history, the grip of the guru and other religious authorities is endemic in India.

On November 12, 2000, in an extensively researched article, author and journalist Mick Brown wrote:

“Contacted by phone, Bhatia said that he had become a devotee of Sai Baba in 1971, at the age of 20, and that he had sexual relations with Sai Baba for “15 or 16 years”. In that time, he said, he was also aware that Sai Baba had relations with “many, many” students from the college and school, and with devotees from overseas.”

When making The Secret Swami the BBC television producer Eamon Hardy also spoke with Dr Bhatia, this time in New Delhi but the segment was not included in the documentary, for which 80 plus hours of footage had been shot, containing many compelling testimonies from various countries that, taken together, depict Sai Baba as a serial sexual molester on a most terrible scale.

Many Indian Gurus Abuse But Followers Shut Up About it

Among my papers, I have a note by a former national leader of the Sathya Sai Organization (who still has not gone public). He had a huge outreach among both Indian and Western devotees. He wrote the note while still a devotee but already going through angst following the upheavals following fusillades of revelations around 2000 in the organization which he and his wife so much loved:

“Talking to some Indian devotees (who by the way are not affected at all hardly any of them have left) they tell us that it is common knowledge that “Gurus” generally have some of those tendencies”

Anecdotally, this scenario would surely suggest the origins of the vast shockwaves right now going through India, following the release by the Manmohan Singh government of a landmark study of child abuse in that country. Where sexual abuse is concerned, Sai Baba the ‘secret Swami’ (as BBC television has called him) is close kindred to countless other Indian secret gurus who but reflect countless millions of ‘secret’ citizens of India. Like those of us in other countries who shut up for the sake of the ‘quiet life’, they are – even when not directly committing child abuse – to an extreme degree, therefore permitting it. For decades, Sai Baba has said India is about to lead the world in spirituality, under his banner. But his own ‘backyard’ (which he has said he will clean up before visiting the world) is in a dire shambles. So is he, as we can see when we examine photos and film footage that emphatically display his decrepitude. He is also increasingly given to unquestionably inane utterances and other odd behaviour. Click here for my articles  Sai Baba’s Tip To Keep Ageing Away and Sai Baba – A Degenerative Disease?

Dr Naresh Bhatia – Some Clarifications

Dr Bhatia told me that he felt the threat to his life was very real and that he was concerned that no further harm should come to a young boy who he (and a medical colleague in Bangalore) professionally believed was injuriously sodomized by Sai Baba. For this reason, he says, he has modified his earlier public stance that can be read in David and Faye Bailey’s The Findings (April 2000). Though one child is extremely precious, there can be a great danger to protecting a single individual. Shutting up rather than strong combattive action can threaten the safety and well-being of a great many children.

There Have Been Threats to Life or Limb

I asked Dr Bhatia whether he thought his near fatal accident where a truck hit him was likely to be the work of those on the nasty side of Sai Baba’s outreach. He replied that he felt that the distance and speed from which the truck came before hitting him did not seem focused enough to have been an assassination attempt. I also asked him to clarify a point that has raised some confusion.

The Abuse Patient Was A Level Seven (Primary School) Boy

It had been repeated – either originating, or worse confounded, in the Bailey’s seminal article that a boy was seven years old when very badly sexually abused by Sathya Sai Baba. Dr Bhatia responded that the boy was not seven but was then in Level 7 at Sai Baba’s school at Puttaparthi. He has also confirmed this to my fellow Australian, Stephen Carthew, long known for his courage and truthfulness not least when trying to reform the Sathya Sai Organisation from within, who visited Dr Bhatia in New Delhi 2000. Stephen, who had made kept this visit to India very secret, wrote to me that:

“I found Dr Bhatia delightful and most welcoming, notwithstanding the bind he is in. His own ambivalence regarding the spiritual nature of his Guru and the pressures coming from many sources to keep quiet make it difficult for him to do more than tell his story when asked. Certainly, he believed he was threatened and harassed during his rushed departure from Puttaparthi, after criticizing Sai Baba to his face.”

Abuse Is Too Cruel At Any Age

I should add that, in essence, abuse of a person is still grievous no matter what the age of a victim. However, amongst Sai Baba apologist documents is the incessant habit of siezing on every mistake or inconsistency or inadvertency in the writings of critics of Sai Baba. Any attempt to point out the actual facts results in, for example, further adversarial displays of nitpicking and obsession with peripherals. There are also cases when responding so as to put the record right would entail releasing information that is sensitive and should be secure. However, to genuine and bona fide investigators, such as leading media and those doing studies with well-accredited tertiary institutions, patently sincere enquirers such as those processing the anguish of leaving Sai Baba, and so on, this constraint is often not present.

Note on the Baileys

The Findings reports the Baileys’ discoveries that Sai Baba is guilty of male sexual molestation, huge financial fraud, faked miracles and other criminal and vastly hypocritical deceptions. David Bailey is a well-known British musician who lectured in Music at Sai Baba’s university in Puttaparthi. Travelling around the world as Sai Baba would direct, he was his highest profile roving ‘ambassador’ among devotees. Sai Baba arranged his marriage with Faye, who had previously been a key worker in the Australian Sathya Sai Organization. Unlike so many of the other leaders who know the truth of the accusations, David and Faye were possessed with a conscience. When they spoke out, they had to endure untold scurrility. It went throughout many countries in the Sathya Sai Organization that David languished in jail on charges of paedophilia. Similar outrages occurred when Conny Larrson, former head of the Swedish organization, spoke out. Those of us who were in touch with them on their private telephones were struck by the fact that they were decidedly free – except from the dastardly slanders of many Sai devotees around the world. As has been the case with a number of those of us formerly connected with Sai Baba’s work, Sai Baba’s male students and others who have come under his sway, David and Faye Bailey have been the repository of many accounts of sexual abuse (not to mention other shocking revelations) by Sai Baba. Against almost unimaginable slander and distortion by his defenders, former devotees in various countries continue the attempt to expose these abuses to the world.

Resources:

Child Abuse. Landmark Indian Government Study
Abuse of Indian children ‘common’
By Geeta Pandey
BBC News, Delhi

The Findings
By David and Faye Bailey (an historic but in various ways a very dated document)

Child Abuse in India. Will Minister Renuka Chowdhury Act?
By Barry Pittard.  Email:  bpittard (at) optusnet.com.au

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Child Abuse Rife In India. But Who Would Speak Out?

It is impossible for many of the Indian students and former students of Sathya Sai Baba’s colleges and university, and others to come forward with their accounts, which are innumerable from around the world of his decades of sexual abuse of boys and young men.    

Their parents, relatives and friends are – very often – Sai Baba devotees who worship Sai Baba as God, and are unlikely to believe them, or, in other cases, concoct rationalizations for why Sai Baba would do such a thing. The victims have nowhere to turn, unless to persons such as David Bailey, who was a music teacher at Sai Baba’s Institute of Higher Learning), or Terry Gallagher who, after considerable investigation resigned as head of the Sathya Sai Organization in Australia. They, like even myself once, as a lecturer in a Sai Baba college, had a ‘privileged’ seat on Sai Baba’s veranda. Various Indian and western former students and others who have had close ties with Sai Baba also get in touch with those such as Robert Priddy and me, owing to our high profile in investigating Sai Baba and his movement, and ensuring that information reaches the world more widely. It is essential that their accounts be kept highly secure, such as lodgement in the vaults of a bank.  Many may never wish to witness in for example a class action lawsuit but if ever they should so wish the option is there.

A former staff member who contacted me told of how, when he raised disturbing questions with other staff members, he was tipped off by one of his teaching colleagues that his life was now in danger. The Germans Jens and Gurprit Sethi were similarly tipped off and fled from Puttaparthi. They informed their embasssy in Delhi and the German police, and returned to their country for good.  If students were to withdraw from their studies, they would lose their education, career and marriage prospects.

In India a great many marriages are arranged, and marriage is in many ways a complex family alliance. Some of Sai Baba’s former Indian students, including those with personal accounts of his sexual abuse of them, have told me that the shame and stigma attached to having been abused by Sai Baba thwarts the type of action former devotees have initiated in the West.

India is a country where survival is often a fight, if not in everyone’s case for food and shelter , at least to achieve and maintain tenuous social position.  The abuser is a world-famous religious teacher, in a country with thousands of years’ tradition of intense guru worship and extreme idolising of notable public figures. Sai Baba’s power and influence in virtually all sectors of Indian society is so great as almost to defy the imagination.Discussion of various forms of sexual abuse, such as rape, incest and molestation, is strictly tabooed in India.

A common Indian perception is that only if one has a great deal of money and power, with the ability to use them corruptly, is there a chance of getting one’s story out and acted upon. But even here, who would wish to break the taboo?

Barry Pittard. Email:  bpittard AT optusnet.com.au

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Child Abuse in India. Will Minister Renuka Chowdhury Act?

(Renuka, in blue sari, and close business friend)

In the last hours, the BBC and other news services have reported on a major study of child abuse in India. See:
https://barrypittard.wordpress.com/2007/04/11/child-abuse-landmark-indian-government-study/

The BBC report says, 

“Two out of every three children in India are physically abused, according to a landmark Indian government study”

The Manmohan Singh government of India Minister responsible for the release of the report is Renuka Choudhury (also spelt Chowdhury). Before she became Minister for Women and Child Development, Ms Choudhury was Minister for Tourism who worked hard at driving tourism to Sai Baba and Puttaparthi, where he has his main ashram. She  comes from Andhra Pradesh, the same state of India as Sai Baba. Among many other serious accusations, Sai Baba faces worldwide allegations of sexual abuse of boys and young men, implication in police killings in his bedroom on June 6, 1993, and, along with his ashram officials and the Congress Party government of the time (the present Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Party), is accused of a massive cover-up of the scandal.

One of our Indian workers reports dealing closely with Ms Choudhury and briefing her in detail about compelling evidence against Sai Baba. He said that she went to real effort to personally photocopy vital documents our group shared with her and, still further, to go around to the then Opposition leader Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s residence to brief her on them. The rest was silence – which, of course, is the very essence of deep compromise and cover-up.

In her Tourism portfolio, Renuka Chaudhury, in all practical effect, drove large numbers of boys and young males to Sai Baba. This was even though she was in possession of extremely revealing documents (too sensitive to reveal on the Internet) that, among other terrible matters, evidenced years of large-scale, serial sexual molestation by Sai Baba.

How, then, after all, can Mrs Chaudhuri act to rid India of a sexual abuse scourge that implicates such powerful figures as Sathya Sai Baba?  Manmohan Singh and so many members of his political party – and indeed the President of India, Dr Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam – are deeply implicated with Sai Baba. 

Sai Baba is arguably the most powerful and influential guru in India’s history. How could Renuka Chaudhury and her Ministry of Women and Child Development possibly prevail against one who is so incredibly powerful, and one who the BBC has named ‘The Secret Swami’?

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Child Abuse. Landmark Indian Government Study

Abuse of Indian children ‘common’
By Geeta Pandey
BBC News, Delhi

This is the first time India has done such a survey on child abuse
Two out of every three children in India are physically abused, according to a landmark government study.

Commissioned by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, the study says 53% of the surveyed children reported one or more forms of sexual abuse.

This is the first time the government has done such an exhaustive survey on the controversial issue of child abuse.

Abuse of children, particularly sexual abuse, is rarely admitted in India and activists have welcomed the study.

Releasing the report at a press conference in the capital, Delhi, Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury said: “In India there’s a tradition of denying child abuse. It doesn’t happen here is what we normally say.

“But by remaining silent, we have aided and abetted the abuse of children.”

Thousands quizzed

Describing the findings of the study as “disturbing”, Ms Chowdhury called for an end to the “conspiracy of silence”.

The issue of child abuse has been raised in the past by non-governmental organisations, but this is the first time an attempt has been made by the government to document the scale of the problem.

The study took two years to complete, and covered 13 states where 12,247 children (between five and 12) and 2,324 young adults (over the age of 12) were quizzed.

Dr Loveleen Kacker, the official in charge of child welfare in the ministry, compiled the report.

She said the study had revealed that contrary to the general belief that only girls were abused, boys were equally at risk, if not more.

She said a substantial number of the abusers were “persons in trust and care-givers” who included parents, relatives and school teachers.

Ms Chowdhury said the findings of the study were disturbing

Dr Kacker said a disturbing finding of the study had been that 70% had not reported the abuse to anyone.

Besides surveying physical and sexual abuse, the study also collected statistics on emotional abuse and neglect of girls.

The study called for efforts to make society aware of the rights of children and officials say the data will help them formulate better policies to protect children.

‘One too many’

The report has been welcomed by child rights activists who say such a study was sorely needed in India.

Roland Angerer, country director of Plan International, told BBC News it was “very important that the government has finally taken up the issue”.

“It doesn’t matter what statistics say. Whether the percentage of abused children is 75 or whether it is 58 is unimportant. Each child that is abused is one too many,” he said.

“It’s important that parents and adults must learn that children are not property, that they have rights too.”

In India, parents are often reluctant to admit child abuse and sexual abuse of children involving family members is almost always hushed up.

The study also collected data on how girls are neglected

Perhaps that is why – as the study shows – more than 50% of the young adults surveyed wanted the matter of abuse to remain within the family.

Only 17% of the abused young adults wanted harsh punishment for the abusers.

Officials and activists say the biggest challenge for the authorities and society is to ensure that children are encouraged to report abuse.

India is home to almost 19% of the world’s children. More than one-third of the country’s population – 440m people – is made up of children below 18 years of age.

According to one study, at least 40% of these children are in need of care and protection.

The country has millions of child workers.

Many are employed in hazardous industries and also in homes and small restaurants, which makes them vulnerable to violence and exploitation.

Last year the government banned children under 14 from being employed in homes and at restaurants to avoid their exploitation and abuse, but millions of children continue to work in these sectors.

India is a signatory to various international laws on the protection of children, but implementation of these laws is often lax.

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Sai Baba Promised to Transform India. But Child Abuse Rampant

Children vulnerable to abuse during travel, weddings Apr 10, 2007 – 3:49:12 PM

The survey is expected to develop a dependable and comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of child abuse.

By IANS, [RxPG] New Delhi, April 10 – Almost 50 percent of India’s children aged between 5 and 12 are prone to sexual abuse such as forcible kissing and being made to exhibit their private parts during travel, marriage and other family ceremonies, says the national study on child abuse.The figure reduces to half as soon as they cross into their teens, points out a study conducted by ministry of women and child development, UNICEF and two NGOs,Save the Child and Prayas.The survey among 15,000 children in 13 sample states has come up with disturbing data.While 41.17 percent of children in the 5-12 age group complained of being forcibly kissed, the figure came down to 25.73 percent for the 13-14 years category. Similarly, around 25.86 percent of teenagers reported being forced to exhibit their private parts, but the relevant figure for those below 12 was 35.86 percent.

Around 37.25 percent of the younger age group and 27.61 percent of teenagers were sexually abused during travel. As much as 41.33 percent in the 5-12 category and 25.29 in the 13-14 category reported abuse during marriages and other ceremonies in the family.

According to the study, 53.22 percent of the children surveyed faced one or more forms of sexual abuse while 21.9 percent of them faced severe forms of sexual abuse and 50.76 percent other forms of sexual abuse.

What is worse, the report said, ‘around 70 percent of abused children have never reported the matter to anyone’.

While Assam – topped the list of states where children faced sexual abuse, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi followed closely at 72.83 percent and 72.26 percent. Rajasthan reported the lowest complaints with only 29.36 percent.

The percentage of sexually abused young adults – is also high in Assam at 77.5 percent, followed by Delhi at 69.11 percent. Goa reported the least complaints – 23.01 percent.

‘Every second child reported facing emotional abuse,’ says the report. While 68.26 percent of children in Assam reported being emotionally abused through humiliation, the figure was 58.32 percent for Delhi and 55.67 percent for Madhya Pradesh.

The survey is expected to develop a dependable and comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of child abuse.

‘It will also facilitate the formulation of appropriate policy and programmes meant to effectively curb and control the menace,’ Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Choudhury said.

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