No Nobel Peace Prize For Self-Claimed God of Gods Sathya Sai Baba

Not far short of a decade ago, it had been announced in Sathya Sai Baba centers round the world that Sathya Sai Baba was a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize. On behalf of our networked group of former followers of Sathya Sai Baba, I wrote to Dr Geir Lundestad, then Director of the Nobel Institute. An exchange of emails ensued, and I provided him with in-depth documentation concerning Sathya Sai Baba and his sect. 

(Photo: But no Nobel Prize for Sathya Sai Baba. Dr Lundestad is on the Left of H.H. the Dalai Lama, recipient of that Prize in 1989).

Dr Lundestad emphasized that the policy of the Institute is never to issue any list of candidates, either before or after the winners of the Peace Prize are announced, and that the names of Nobel Prize recipients are announced, while the names of failed candidates are not revealed.

Dr Lundestad’s statements are a far cry from the announcement of Sathya Sai center leaders worldwide. Great had been the rejoicings of devotees, despite the fact that a Nobel Peace Prize – in an odd come-down from the dizzy heights of Heaven – would sit oddly encircling the neck of God.

The fact of the matter is that this was a time when there was great and organized dissent by former devotees. Increasing numbers – including very prominent and respected leaders – were leaving the Sathya Sai Organization. The Sathya Sai Organization had a problem of huge dimensions on its hands.  See:

 

In Memoriam – Glen Meloy (“Standing up for truth and goodness”).

 

Any straw to clutch onto was welcome, or even the hope of a plum from the Nobel Insitute ‘tree’.

 

To the Nobel Institute, we offered, among other compelling evidence, material that referred to UNESCO, Interpol, FBI, Australian Federal Police, and so on. We had witnesses with credentials of outstanding service and repute in their own communities. These came from many professions, trades and cultures. We had decent families who have invested years of dedication and sacrificial service to Sathya Sai Baba. Sathya Sai Baba’s serial sexual molestation of their children, and other grievous abuses, had shattered their lives. The names of most we have not allowed to be publicized, though they have long stood ready to cooperate with well-reputed media, institutes, etc.

 

Moving into Scandavavian waters, we also cited  ‘Seduced’ by DR, Denmark’s national television and radio broadcaster, subsequently shown by SBS in Australia, retitled: ‘Seduced By Sai Baba’, which, as it had done with DR, the Sathya Sai Organization threatened to sue. In a phone conversation with me, when I mentioned the (then) Australian head of the Sathya Sai Organization T.Sri Ramanathan’s threat to sue, a senior Producer with SBS laughed, and said: “Let them!”.  As always, when Sathya Sai Baba’s officials have threatened instrumentalities like the BBC and other leading media, they failed to carry out their threats. It is a behaviour seen in many groups widely deemed to be cults that reveal a strong autocracy, perhaps most famously Scientology.

 

Among other documentation available to the Nobel Institute was that from former devotees from several countries, including sworn testimony, earlier provided for UNESCO, resulting in a stern Media Advisory. Furthermore, UNESCO successfully intervened with a complaint to the Press Trust of India when The Times of India (with a leading member of the Sathya Sai Central Trust on its Board of Directors, ex-Chief Justice of India P.N. Bhagwati) tried to water down the Advisory. See:

 

The Case of UNESCO’s Missing Media Advisory.

UNESCO and Indian Government – Were Up To Tricks

BBC Caught UNESCO Head Bowing To Indian Government

Note:  Puttaparthi officials and the Indian Foreign Minister (himself a follower of Sathya Sai Baba) tried to get UNESCO to suppress the Media Advisory – but were sharply thwarted by the BBC.  

Further Reading

 

‘Black Sheep’ Of Sweden’s Nobel Family Called By Ba-Ba (Sathya Sai Baba)

Posted by Barry Pittard on June 14, 2009

QUOTES

‘One of Sathya Sai Baba’s many hugely expensive and major Sai propaganda efforts has been the setting up of Sai Global Harmony via WorldSpace International Satellite Radio Service. It broadcasts 24/7 to many countries. A director of WorldSpace is Dr Michael Nobel.”

Note:  Sai Baba publicly mistakenly stated that “The man who gives the Nobel Prize (Chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee) is coming here on the 22nd November. The ones who will show this to the whole world, TV people, are all coming here on the 22nd”.

‘In fact, Michael Nobel has been repudiated by the Swedish Nobel Committee and exposed in the New York Times.

There are many instances that show how Sathya Sai Baba, far from his being, as he claims, all-knowing and all-seeing, has behind him a trail of egregious blunders and unfulfilled predictions, promises of cures, and much else. In this article, I quote the mess he made in the (would-be) Nobel Peace Prize incident. Repeatedly, he hangs his claims on their own petard. His apologists are too blinded to see, not the ‘Glory of Puttaparthi’ but the absurdity of Puttaparthi’. 

……………………………………………….

UNESCO Media Advisory 

UNESCO WITHDRAWS FROM CONFERENCE

Paris, September 15 – UNESCO has decided it will no longer sponsor nor take part in a conference it had been due to co-organize with the Institute of Sathya Sai Education (ISSE, Thailand) and The Flinders University Institute of International Education (Australia), in Puttaparthi, India, from September 25 to 29. The decision means UNESCO is no longer associated in any way through sponsorship, organization or participation of any kind with the conference on Strengthening Values Education: Innovative Approaches to Teacher Education for Peace and International Understanding.

UNESCO’s withdrawal was prompted by several factors. Certain decisions were taken by the ISSE without consultation, such as plans to hold some of the sessions at the Ashram of the Sathya Sai movement in Puttaparthi, and the inclusion of some speakers in the conference programme without their previous consent. Furthermore, the Organization is deeply concerned about widely-reported allegations of sexual abuse involving youths and children that have been levelled at the leader of the movement in question, Sathya Sai Baba. Whilst it is not for UNESCO to pronounce itself in this regard, the Organization restates its firm moral and practical commitment to combating the sexual exploitation of children, in application of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires States to protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation and violence.

Susan Boyle. Unexpected Divine Chanteuse. Sweet 47.

‘Full many a gem of purest ray serene’ …

Divine British Nightingale Susan Boyle. Sweet 47. ‘Never been Kissed’ (Though Ms Boyle, given to country humour, said later that this was a joke’)

Judgementalism on the grounds of a person’s body shape, place of origin, social status, and so on, is, course, one of humanity’s most destructive tendencies. Is there a profound lesson to be learnt by every one of us? In a few moments, I shall come to the wondrous Susan Boyle, from a small village in West Lothian, Scotland, U.K., whose triumphant performance on ITV1 in UK in April 2009 would, I should think, make many of you weep freely and give her a standing ovation in your heart. May already have done so, because she has now been heard by tens of millions of people around the world.

Ms Boyle’s story inescapably reminded me of the lines of the English poet, Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

Thomas Gray. A Favourite English Poet

in his poem ‘Elegy written in a Country Churchyard’:

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

And I thought, too, of the stark lines in Leonard Cohen’s song ‘Chelsea Hotel’:

Leonard Cohen. Ever Loved Singer-Songwriter

“for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music”.

Some lines of Ms Boyle’s song – ‘I had a dream’ from Les Miserables – English lyrics by

Herbert Kretzmer, Lyricist

– deepen yet futher such a theme and its resonance for us:

“But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame”

I shall come to Ms Boyle in few moments. Her moments will last forever …

NOTE:  Those who came to this blog in regard to Susan Boyle may like now simply to go down to the section highlighted in green

Judgementalism and Discrimination

Scarcely hours before I had the beatific priviledge of viewing the Susan Boyle footage, I had been musing on the topic of judgementalism on the grounds of (supposed) physical appearance.

Gerald Moreno – allied with key individuals close to Sathya Sai Baba – e.g., the saibabaofindia.com consortium – and involved in extreme defaming one after another of many around the world who have called for proper third party investigation, and raised terribly serious questions about Sai Baba and core leaders of his worldwide Sathya Sai Organization, has this to say:

“Let us see if Barry Pittard looks any better than Sathya Sai Baba does (according to one email source, his face is heavily and deeply wrinkled, his head is mostly bald and he is physically unattractive). Barry Pittard also collects a disability pension (the details of which are fanatically guarded secrets) and shows all the signs of old age. Despite this fact, Barry Pittard hypocritically points out faults in a much younger-looking Sai Baba! Barry Pittard sounds more intent on revenge & ridicule than he does on “justice”.

This piece of high spiritual felicity appears on Gerald Moreno’s ‘Sathya Sai Baba – Life, Love & Spirituality’  blog, which fairly bursts with content that surely no genuine Sai Baba follower could ever regard as embodying Sai Baba’s teachings on life, love and spirituality whatsoever.

Barry Pittard, of course, does not – as does Sathya Sai Baba – claim that he will not age or that he is, and will forever be, the fullest incarnation of God to appear on the earth. Or that he will save the entire the world before he dies circa 2022.

Strangely, Moreno published a photograph which he most mistakenly claimed to be of me with my son, whom he disgracefully named. This action, he has continued, with his customary spurious logic of a sort that will long continue to mar his work, to justify. The photo was in fact of her model! There is not a wrinkle to be seen, not a luxuriant hair out of place. He carries some other child not known to me.

Moreno set up a series of stratagems to divert business away from the company which she, with great courage, integrity and hard work has built up. He justified his misconduct by arguing from dates that he has entirely misinterpreted. It is his typical practice. Take a fact, or alleged fact, and spin it with hostile intent.

But can Moreno, at all, be referring to the fine creature I see before me in my never-cracking mirror each morning? Might this gentle critic have got me mixed up with the Elephant Man?

Sathya Sai Baba Has Said That He Will Not Age After His Sixtieth Birthday

But of course, pointing to Sai Baba’s present physical condition is entirely proper comment. It is known to many devotees and former devotees alike that he said that, after his 60th birthday, he would not age. It is but one of his many unfulfilled prophecies – impossible for Moreno or anyone to refute. See:

When Disasters Overtake S. Sai Baba’s Promises

Behold Gerald Joe Moreno’s Ageless Idol

…  the “much younger-looking Sai Baba”

“Usually old people have wrinkles on their faces … I do not have any signs of old age. (loud applause). There is not a single wrinkle on My face”. Sanathana Sarathi, October, 2002.

Usually, elderly people don’t have their hair dyed, either, but go along with nature’s inevitable processes.

Sathya Sai Baba Video. Too Weak To Cut Birthday Cake

Sathya Sai Baba Continues To Ail

Sathya Sai Baba’s Tips To Keep Ageing Away.

The Magnificent Susan Boyle

Now to Susan Boyle, the British television video of whom will, I think, give you some wonderful moments of genuine life, love and spirituality. I rather suspect some will want to download the footage and keep it as a treasure. There are some versions on the Internet which do not include the extra minutes. But the off-stage moments, the many revealing shots of the audience and judges AND her singing of  ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from Les Miserables are all to be savoured in the YouTube version, see below. No doubt many parents and teachers will use it in educating their charges on the issue of judgements and stereotypes. Not too much use doing that unless we educate ourselves, first.

A Cry For Blood Is Not A Far Cry Away From A Cry From The Heart

And then to drive the question, first, to ourselves and then to our societies: What supposing Ms Boyle had not triumphed in her song?! Are we some frenzied mob at the athenaeum-bear pit-meatmarket? Are we forever to cooperate with the forces that only allow ‘glamorous’ figures and faces to appear on stage and in videos and movies?

“I’m going to make that audience rock”.

Did you ever see a standing ovation like this one? Was there anything that did not tell against her?

Unless it was her cheeky and absolutely justified self-confidence. With her radiant naturalness and marvelous self-purpose, seconds before going on stage, the Divine Ms Boyle says, “I’m going to make that audience rock”.  At first, the audience and the judges barely prevented themselves from falling over.

Wave on wave of scorn, disbelief, judgementalism, ageism and cynicism crashed towards her. For no better reason than the profound brainwashing of all of us by the movie, fashion and advertizing industries and other forces of human immaturity and oppression.

There were her age, her bodyshape, her dress sense (or lack of it), her … um … primal hairdo, her el cheapo neck chain, her humble village origins. Her whole self, as she purposely strode onto the stage, stood against the stereotype of success, whether on stage or in (so-called) ‘real life’ at large. Moments before going on-stage she even grabbed a bit of a sandwich – white bread and all!

In the video, note audience’s and judges’ air of barely concealed cynicism, disbelief, patronisation, and judgementalism. And then, from the first moments of her opening her mouth to sing – the powerful wave of change … Or rather, of transformation. Our transformation. She is already transformed, having duteously served her sick mother over the years, and became love in the village which, too, gave her life.

All mockers are confronted by their good angel. Dressed like it is thought that angels don’t dress.

Judging and Self-judging

In the moments after Susan Boyle has sung in her crowning triumph, the judges – Amanda Holden, Simon Cowell, and Piers Morgan – variously make comments such as:

“We were all being very cynical. That was the greatest wake-up call – ever!”

“Without a doubt, this is the biggest surprise I have had in the three years of doing this show”.

“The biggest ‘Yes’ I have given anybody”

Widetrends reports:  “Susan Boyle is also being lined up for an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show which would give her the chance of a number one album in the US”.

Here are the responses of two children to whose lovely responses on the Susan Boyles video segment I was privy, and wrote down verbatim straight after:

6-year old girl

Adult: Why did all the people laugh at the lady when she walked on stage?

Girl: Because she is fat they think she can’t sing, and they don’t want her to be on the stage.

Adult: Why did the people change their mind?

Girl: Because she sang so beautifully.

9 year old boy

Adult: What did you reckon about the lady?

Boy: She’s not scared. She didn’t care what the people thought, she walked fastly and stood straight.

The Divine Ms Boyle. Coming World, Ready Or Not

Source: YouTube. 2009. To view, click on photo

………………………………………………………………

General

Excerpt From Public Petition

(Note: The above articles contextualizes. Or 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)

Indian God’s Birthday. Says Will Rule World. Photo

God Sai Baba. 83 years

Sathya Sai Baba’s Self-generated Mythos

At the cost of much effort in scanning the originals, Robert Priddy is gradually posting a wide cross-section of his diary material. This he gives in parallel, with his handwritten entries on one side and a typed version, with his current added comments, on the other.

Robert Priddy visited Puttaparthi many times and was one of the main contributors to Sanathana Sarathi, the Sathya Sai Baba’s official publication, which goes worldwide. As a national leader of the Sathya Sai Organization (Norway), he had access to all the internal correspondence of the Sathya Sai Organization and international meetings.

An example of the scanned material is:

Directly recorded notes (September 1990) as always made daily during my visits to the ashrams

For scholars and others who study the build-up of Sathya Sai Baba’s self-generated mythology, Robert Priddy’s scans of his careful diary-keeping over the years is an asset. Noting some early examples of Sai Baba’s mendacity even as self-reported by Sai Baba himself, Priddy writes (referring to our mutual friend the late V.K.Narasimhan, one of India’s greatest newspaper editors):

“V.K. Narasimhan recounted several times for me how Sathya Sai Baba told him about the two boys reborn as his dogs. He told V.K.N in detail how he had wilfully deceived the examiners by cheating on the behalf of the two boys. I always made diary notes directly after these conversations and have scanned a number of pages as further documentation of my various assertions”.

Reference:

Sathya Sai Baba tells how he deceived examiners and more…

Posted by robertpriddy on October 29, 2008

Related material

Sai Baba on two boys reborn as his dogs

Avatar Day Declaration

By Brian Steel:

The University Chancellor and his Schoolboy Stories (Amended)

Criticism of Sai Baba No Reflection On Hinduism

Many Sathya Sai Baba devotees assume that any questioning of him equates to a denunciation of Hinduism. However, Hindus at large do not make this assumption in the least.

A major national Hindu leader has emailed me (December 5, 2006) in the terms I quote below. (Except to those in the responsible media who may wish to obtain a statement from him, I will not disclose his identity). However, Hindus who wish to make enquiry in their own associations as to current views of Sai Baba will be able to establish the factuality of the strong trend inimical to Sai Baba to which my correspondent points): 

“There is considerable concern among the Hindu Community, especially among the educated. It is very hard to get any action from the temples as they do not wish to cause difficulties with the Sathya Sai Baba groups. People are starting to distance themselves from Sathya Sai Baba. It’s going to be gradual process of education. The biggest impact it appears was the ‘The Secret Swami’ … it seems it has had a tremendous negative effect on the SSB”.

Travel widely across India and you will know the exceptionally widespread disdain for Sai Baba – whatever may be the praise for the undoubtedly good social uplift work his devotees perfom in his name. This is especially due to his:

–  emphasis on miracles
–  his claim to be the prime manifestation of God in all history. Quote: “The whole world will be transformed into Sathya Sai Organisation and Sathya Sai will be installed in the hearts of one and all.” (Sanathana Sarathi, January, 1999. page 16). For many more examples, documented in his own official publications, of Sai Baba’s self-deification, see HERE
– the vast pomp and circumstance that surround him, his fleet of luxury foreign cars. See commentary and incredibly revealing pics, Sai Baba, Kubla Khan, Citizen Kane, Bill Gates et alia
– his cultivation of the rich, his giving special seating positions at darshans to the rich, his flattery of the rich and famous … See, Dare Songstress Nora Jones Touch Sai Baba

His flattery of various visiting Indian Prime Ministers is – embarrassingly for his cause – unwittingly, documented across issues of Sanathana Sarathi (the official Sai Baba organ distributed worldwide), including the case of Narasimha Rao, who was sentenced to years in jail, convicted on a slew of corruption charges relating to kickbacks from secret arms deals with the Swedish firm Bofors. It was the Narasimha Rao government which inititiated the profound Indian government cover-up of the circumstances surrounding the police killings in Sai Baba’s bedroom on June 6, 1993, a suppression that has been strictly maintained by each succeeding Indian government to this day. See, Robert Priddy’s The Unresolved, Covered-up 1993 Murders In Sathya Sai Baba’s Bedroom Revisited

Further Reading

The BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ – A Revision
The Genesis of the BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’ (Sai Baba)
Serial Sex Molestation and Bedroom Killings. But Much More

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Some Key Cultic Responses To Critics

I think that the following list – which is suggestive rather than exhaustive – will contain pointers to behaviours repeatedly found by any who expose a powerful cult.

* Legal manipulations, so that a leader or his organization cannot be further proceeded against

* Use of a cult’s considerable financial resources and political, religious or civic clout to suppress testimony, rather than to address the issues honorably, compassionately and responsibly

* Production of false witnesses and a connived avoidance of legal accountability

* Ignoring the sheer weight of the evidence, and strong, psychological denial

* The claim that criticism is coming from only a mere handful of malcontents

*  The attribution of mental illness to those who criticise

* Misconstruing what is being alleged, distorting it; ignoring it; laying a worst-case interpretation on virtually every word of critics, bending words in a procrustean way to suit the purposes of the cult’s protagonists and to belittle those who speak out

* Missing the points being urged and instead highlighting peripheral issues

* Derision, defaming and shunning of former followers, no matter how well their character and integrity were regarded when they were members, and still is so regarded in their professions, trades, wider communities, etc

* Use of guilt-by-association, ad hominem arguments, infraction of the ‘Aristotlean’ law of the undistributed middle, argument from a low poll, misinterpretation of facts that have another explanation altogether, tu quoque retorts, and other impoverished forms of argument …

 * Terrible and relentless vilification of primary witnesses and of those former followers who attempt to bring the allegations to light

* Threats of litigation – that can prove to be sheer bluff

*  Stalking and harassment. Attempting to blacken the characters of critics in their workplaces, families, friendships, universities, and so on

* In some cases, threats against life or limb

* Muckracking. Keeping of dossiers against critics, with the intention of harming them

*  Interference in the private, personal lives of those who have spoken out. Intrusions are sometimes pursued against others who know the former members but who are only most peripherally and tenously involved

* Depictions of hell (whether psychological, real or both), shockingly bad “karma” for those who have made revelations of improper conduct within a cult

* Cult members can ignore those who criticise the cult but this means that the abuses being reported ever more seriously unadressed

 * Spurious justification of the teacher’s misdeeds. E.g., claiming that he is raising the kundalini; balancing the devotee’s sexual energy; ‘ironing out sexual kinks’; rapidly expunging the devotee’s bad karmas; stating that, as we are not our bodies, the guru has not violated anybody; disporting in the divine role as Shiva the destroyer

* Blaming of the Media or any institution in every instance where it writes critically of the cult

… And so, woefully, on ….

Further Readings

International Cultic Studies Association

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

Guru Sex Abuse Testimony to BBC – After Years of Silence

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Cost Of Cover Ups Can Far Exceed Hoped-for Benefits

A great irony of cover-ups is this – that once they have been exposed, the initiators of the abuses sustain a cost far greater than would have attended the prompt admission of the initial misdeeds – and genuine, exhaustive measures to address the abuses. Tragically, “cost” may be multiply defined – and in far from money terms alone.

                             

And is there any Faith, major or minor, that is not sorely complicit in profound cover up of systemic sexual abuse?

                             

The present repercussions of the Los Angeles Catholic Diocese afford us a ready example. Questions are being raised about whether there is enough – after insurance and money from other Orders have been paid – for even a rich Diocese’s coffers to afford such a vast pay-out. This is but one diocese, and yet many others face, or have already faced, a similar predicament. Is there even a single one (as a BBC television news report would indicate) in which such allegations have not been raised?

The Editorialist in The Boston Globe, July 17, 2007, writes:

“The Los Angeles and Boston money could have been spent on other important projects if Mahony and Law had adopted a zero-tolerance policy against abuse when it first became a national issue for the church in the mid-1980s.

Catholic dioceses across the nation, including Los Angeles, have initiated thorough policies to prevent future abuse, and Mahony apologized to the victims on Sunday. Yet new policies and regrets aren’t enough. In the eyes of victims, the scandal will never be fully resolved as long as bishops who put the interests of their fellow priests over the protection of children remain in positions of leadership”.

‘Or who shall ‘scape whipping’?

But is there any organization – anywhere – which has not covered up serious allegations? Can it be a good thing that when exposure of sexual abuse is discussed the Roman Catholic Church is so often the tarnished exemplar?

Another irony is that first whistleblowers are scapegoated but then public scapegoating can too easily turn on discretely ‘easy’ targets. And what more ‘easy’ than arguably the biggest religious monolith on the planet?

Does convergence of attention on a big institution help to prevent a much wider focus?

Naturally, of course, there is, at least, a chance for other organizations – before it is too late (if it is not already far too late!) for them to act without the courts forcing them to act – to learn from the fate of those churches or other organizations already strongly exposed?

Today, most societies are multicultural. Would it not make sense to take the broad approach, with not a single organization acting as though it, too, is unaffected? Or a wider public permitted to think that it has not its own accountability?

Further Major News Media Readings on the LA scandal and pay0uts are HERE, HERE and HERE.  Website of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) is HERE

See, Robert Priddy’s article ‘Spiritual’ Abuse. Quote:

“One US lady who has been raped by a priest broke down in tears on worldwide TV News (22/7/2007) while telling how she was not believed by her very own church community, which ostracised her. This ‘turning a blind eye’ has been very common, also in the Sathya Sai Organization”.

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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. Some Dissenting Themes and Resources

Robert Priddy, former head of the Sathya Sai Organization in Norway, and retired lecturer in Philosophy and Social Science at the University of Oslo, has just posted a number of thematic links, for which, click HERE. Many further links accompany the articles themselves.

For this post, I have selected a quote from all but the first of the articles – the Bailey piece, which is virtually a small book in itself, and the second, a detailed four-part series by Robert Priddy and me, Barry Pittard. 

Investigations into Sathya Sai Baba Deceptions exposed on Ex-Baba.com
 
Pioneering materials from David and Faye Bailey’s investigations into Sathya Sai Baba’s deceptions: ‘The Findings’. This husband a wife were very close to Sai Baba, who appointed David Baily as a music lecturer in at his university, and also as his emissary to a number of countries. He selected the couple for marriage, and married them, David from the U.K., and Faye from Australia. However, as the couple travelled far and wide, the accounts of Sai Baba sexual molestation of young males and other types of serious allegations mounted drastically. As many others worldwide have done, both leaders and rank-and-file, they resigned. (Although, indeed, many quietly leave without the formality of resignation). They were unlike many who know the facts of the allegations which face Sai Baba and his very powerful and influential worldwide Sathya Sai Organization. They spoke up!  I should add that the vast preponderance of these allegations are not posted – because of their sensitivity – to the Internet. The handling of serious allegations has been extremely badly handled by Sai devotees in general, and the one mitigating circumstance is that the core leaders have not told them that the allegations are frequently made by those whose character was never under dispute when they were members of the Sai Organization, nor have been so in their professions or wider communities. However, with the carefully consulted permission of the accusing individuals and families, many of the facts ARE available to reputable, bona fide third party investigators from senior echelon media, government, law enforcement agencies, law firms, academies or institutions.

The Bailies did their best to bring the allegations to light – e.g., in the international media, UNESCO, UNICEF, police such as Scotland Yard, FBI, AFP (Australian Federal Police), government, Chief Prosecutor’s Office, Germany, etc. Like every other individual who has stood up, including former leaders like Terry Gallagher (Australia), Rick Raines, Al Rahm, Shirley Pike, Elena Hartgering, Glen Meloy, Dave Lyons, (U.S.A.), Serguei Badaev (Russia), Conny Larsson, Britt Marie (Bi-ma) Andén (Sweden), Robert Priddy (Norway), David and Faye Bailey have been subject to distortion, abuse, slander, outright libel, and shunning by those they had long come to regard as more than brothers and sisters. 

The Sathya Sai Organisation’s Deception and Propaganda Series on Ex-Baba.com

Four-part series, by Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard, with extensive links. It responds to points raised by Dr G. Venkataraman, Deputy Chairman under Dr Michael Goldstein of the world Sathya Sai Baba Organization.

Deceptions and Molestations Exposed by Sharon Purcell

(The late) Glen Meloy wrote, “As if the molestations were not enough, the infamous shootings at Puttaparthi occurred while Sathya (ed. Satya or Satch Purcell) and his Mother were still there and young Sathya remembers vividly having to jump out of the way when they were still sweeping the blood from the temple later that morning. (Hal)Honig’s group of boys had been allowed to be on the veranda for morning darshan”.

Wilful wholesale deception by Sai Baba exposed

“‘Nothing in nature is in vain’, was the Aristotelian tenet, itself the basis of belief in natural laws that can be investigated scientifically. Sai Baba has also used this unfortunate idea to dominate everyone who enters his domain as virtual slaves to his will… nothing can be done without his Divine Will, operating in the ever-unseen, ever-uncontrollable limbo of his inscrutable personality! But this is a travesty of philosophy and all that is best in human civilisation!”

Failed Sai predictions or outright deceptions

“A documented overview of the history and extent of the alleged sexual abuses by Sathya Sai Baba and examination of questions they raise.

Part 1 – The Great Scandal Has Come to Stay
1 Revelations in waves through the years
2 How allegations about Sathya Sai Baba’s sexual proclivities and abuses are silenced & ignored
3 Sathya Sai Baba’s bluff called by a major favourite devotee, David Bailey in ‘The Findings’
4. Failed predictions or outright deceptions…’
5. ‘Hearsay’ and ‘rumour’ versus ‘circumstantial and corroborative evidence’
6.”A great scandal is coming” – SB’s bogus Divine Prescience and an unstoppable exposure

Part 2 – Smoke Not Without Fire – Claims and Evidence of Serious Molestations
6 The ‘oiling’ of genitals of young males by Sathya Sai Baba
7 Major abuse testimonies world-wide by young men and their relatives
8 More “Good Chances” for Sex with the Avatar

Part 3 – More smoke and fuel to the fire
9 Why do so many young foreign boys given much attention almost invariably leave Sai Baba?
10 The serial abuse of Sai college boys and young men?

Part 4 – The Jigsaw of Mounting Testimony & Circumstantial Evidence Takes Shape
11 Further presentation in brief of documented claims
12 Tantric practices & ‘kundalini’ yoga – & Ram Das Awle’s perverted values
13 The threat Sai Baba poses for students
14 Homosexual-cum-hermaphrodite evidence

Part 5 – Sathya Sai Baba’s Claims of Purity and Celibacy that Defy all Accounts
15 The organised cover-up, rationalising and defense of pedophile activities
16 Was Sathya Sai Baba ever celibate? New evidence.
17 Why can’t the ‘universal world teacher’ dare ever to broach the subject of sexuality?
See also the latest major revelations – Ullrich Zimmermann’s description of sexual abuse by Sathya Sai Baba ”

The Sai Baba ”mirror trap’ deception

“It works like this: Sathya Sai Baba says he is God, so whatever you see, hear or feel that is not perfect and pure in him is not him, only you. Whenever he does wrong, he tells you that the fault is in your perception, your karma, your lack of faith. This he says to excuse not keeping his promises, failing to heal, not protecting his followers, exaggerating his importance, lying constantly, abusing young men, boys and worse than that, allowing devotees to be brutally murdered in his close vicinity by persons under his control! If you believe this ‘teaching’, your naive acceptance of this clever trick traps you into a hall of mirrors where no way out can be seen. This is the ‘mirror trap’, nothing more than a convenient invention for deluding people and keeping them in line. Adopting any variant of this idea from Sathya Sai Baba or his followers is to begin on a course of self-brainwashing. This ‘mirror trap’ is also part and parcel of the deceptions of many Indian gurus and swamis”.

Sai – a master of deception and delusive appearances

Tests of faith or smokescreening? “Sathya Sai Baba fell full length on what was then the compound’s concrete ground. Sathya Sai Baba got up and continued his round, but the attendant male Seva Dals manhandled the foolish Indian man and bashed his head forcibly and repeatedly on the concrete. Sathya Sai Baba retraced his steps told them to desist, but not until well after the damage was done”.

Sai deception of the ‘materialised’ Bible

Brian Steel writes, “All very impressive, spectacular even, but the truth that I discovered one day long afterwards was that copies of an identical work, the miniature so-called Good News New Testament, have been on sale in India for many years. I bought one from a Sai Baba Centre in Australia for $2.50. It looks exactly the same as the one held aloft by Baba in the ashram photos”.

Sai Deception as abuse of faith

“The very voluminous teachings of Sai Baba, once very appealing, turn out to be a pick-and-mix menu of many kinds of conflicting doctrines and ideas. These almost no one studies properly by retaining any degree of truly independent questioning or evaluation, not least because the material is spread across thousands of documented discourses etc., unmanageable to most minds and persons with limited time. They contain a plethora of sweeping generalizations (which mostly invalidates them as serious advice), any number of factually incorrect assertions on almost any subject that can be counter-checked (especially Christian scripture, Jesus’ life, the lives and sayings of various famous persons and scientists, the sciences of health, geology, history, social movements, and not least as to the size and achievements of Sai Baba and his movement…)”

Deceived by false promises

Tests of faith or smokescreening? “Sathya Sai Baba fell full length on what was then the compound’s concrete ground. Sathya Sai Baba got up and continued his round, but the attendant male Seva Dals manhandled the foolish Indian man and bashed his head forcibly and repeatedly on the concrete. Sathya Sai Baba retraced his steps told them to desist, but not until well after the damage was done”.

The web of Sai deceptions

On surveillance, security and secrecy in Sathya Sai Baba’s ashram, institutions and organisation.  “In India the culture of official secrecy is endemic and those officials who become ashram staff continue and even intensify this, revealing only what suits them, no more and no less… as indeed the inscrutable God also does by all scriptural accounts. No one who has been at any SSB ashram for long can have failed to notice the tight-lipped behaviour of nearly all SSB officials”.

A Great Deceiver Exposed
(Laughable But Still Dangerous)

“Sai Baba is indeed an emperor of his own domain worth many highly unaccountable billions, and the Anderson story slightly transmutes into a tale about an emperor with no other magnetism than the charismatic ability to gull millions – or rather to persuade them to gull themselves. For him to do this so spectacularly well, one imagines that Sai Baba would first have had to have learnt, long ago, to gull himself”.

Sathya Sai Baba: stories, myths and deceits

“A startling number of people believe that SSB creates many things from nothing, is all-powerful and knows everything about everyone. These include a dozen heads of state, various royalty and film stars etc. His ‘creations’ are most often rings, medallions, bracelets, necklaces and so on, through which he says he communicates to – and ‘sees’ what happens to – his devotees. These amulets or talismen are believed by thousands who wear them to be a ‘hotline’ to SSB and also they “bind people to him” and he can see him in them! Sai Baba makes this claim himself … rings that work in much the same was as the rings created by Dark Lord Sauron in Tolkien’s famous fiction!!”

Blog Sites:

Sathya Sai Baba’s Deceptions Exposed http://robertpriddy.wordpress.com/

Robert Priddy, former head of the Sathya Sai Organization, Norway

Call For Media and Government Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba
https://barrypittard.wordpress.com

Barry Pittard, former English lecturer Sri Sathya Sai College of the Arts, Science and Commerce, Whitefield, via Bangalore, Karnataka, South India

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Police Killings in Sai Baba’s Bedroom

Intense Indian Piety

It would be perhaps impossible to imagine a more intensely religious country than India. One way to experience this (a mostly quite delightful way, I have found) is to go on a pilgrimage with an Indian family. Another way (which can lack in delight! as I also know from personal experience of calling for proper third-party investigation of Sathya Sai Baba) is – whether publicly or privately – to criticize a guru or religious leader.

Criticizing Indian Gurus and Religious Leaders. A Tough Job

I do not say that exposing of religious leaders in India cannot occur, but that that the wall against it is extremely formidable. It is the more difficult when a guru – as is the case with Sai Baba – has been able to convince both elites and masses that he is God incarnate. He has also commanded as his devotees an astounding breadth of political persuasions, countries and cultures. The British newspaper The Guardian termed Sai Baba ‘the Indian Living God’. (See, The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards, Paul Lewis, The Guardian, Saturday November 4, 2006)

Indian Rationalists and Humanists

Given the depth of this taboo on criticizing Indian religious leaders, it is perhaps, often enough, to rationalist or humanist critics that we may need to look if we have some hope of uncovering even a few religious scandals in India. Leaving aside what may be the rights and the wrongs of the issue, the fact that a Hindu pontiff, Sri Jayendra Saraswathi of Kanchi could be arrested for implication in a temple murder, may indicate that, perhaps amazingly, things are changing in vastly tradition-bound India. Even so, in passing, I raise the question whether he would have been arrested if the charges had related to child abuse instead of murder.

Foremost among Indian critics of Sai Baba, is Basava Premanand, founder of the Federation of Indian rationalist Associations, who edits The Indian Skeptic and convenes the Indian chapter of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP)

Some Resources:

The Police Killings in Sai Baba’s Bedroom

Scroll to heading ‘Major Critic Basava Premanand’. This indexes the article links for a series of very detailed comments concerning the killings at Puttaparthi, on June 6,1993. B.Premanand responds to a critic.

On B. Premanand

The BBC’s Tanya Datta, reporter on the 2004 television documentary on Sathya Sai Baba, writes on B.Premanand, India’s best-known Rationalist. Sathya Sai Baba: God-man or con man. “Basava Premanand is India’s leading guru-buster. He believes that the country’s biggest spiritual leader, Sri Satya Sai Baba, is a charlatan and must be exposed”.  Thursday, 17 June, 2004

Wikipedia Entry. “Basava Premanand is an eminent skeptic and rationalist from Tamil Nadu, India”.

Robert Priddy’s Writings on the Killings

Robert Priddy, retired lecturer in Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Oslo and former head of the Sathya Sai Organization.

Murders at Sathya Sai Baba Ashram

Sathya Sai Baba Murders Revisited

Sathya Sai Baba: Murders/executions, Indian Press evidence

On this blogsite

Barry Pittard, Indian Rationalists, Humanists Unsafe Opposing Sai Baba

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Genital Oiling. Do Hindu Religious Leaders Approve?

My private enquiries disclose that Hindu and other Indian religious leaders do not approve such practices as the oiling of genitals. Ludicrously, Sai Baba’s foremost leaders attempt to exhonerate him by stating that his genital touching and oiling are part of a time-honoured Hindu tradition.

In an e-mail, February 2002, to Robert Priddy, retired academic of the University of Oslo and former head of the Sathya Sai Organization in Norway and devotee of 18 years, Thorbjørn Meyer, the organization’s Central Coordinator for Denmark, and a major world Sai Baba leader, has documented that he considers genital oiling to be “the age old Indian oil ceremony.” Link.

Thorbjørn Meyer’s close colleague Steen Piculell, Co-coordinator for Russia, interviewed on BBC Radio 4, Sunday, November 19, 2000, says:

“Gurus have always, as part of their job, put some oil on the er … upper er . part of their … right hand and g… and gone down in the chakra be … be … behind the testicles to er adjust the chakra there. This is a normal thing. And this I suppose Baba has also done because this is part of his job. That’s all.” (But Steen Piculell does not normally stutter like this!)

Moreover, on Danish radio and TV news, Sathya Sai Baba’s officials admitted that he genitally oils young males. Their responses infuriated a wide Danish public.

Commonsense Deserts Sai Baba Cult Members

Sai Baba’s many devotees who can do no other than admit that he commonly does this ‘genital oiling’ (as many have described it) fail to ask:

• Why would Sai Baba be so selective as to confine this activity to boys and young men?
• Why would he not correspondingly touch the genitals of girls and young women? Or older people of either sex?
• Why would he transgress the laws and ethics that obtain worldwide concerning such practices?
• Why, when he is not a medical practitioner licensed only under the strictest exceptions to touch the genitals of another person, would he engage in these genital touching or ‘oiling’ actions?
• Why his secrecy when he grasps or oils the penises of young males?
• Why do so many reports indicate that the young males receiving this attention from Sai Baba are “pretty”, “good looking”, etc.?
• In the face of such serious allegations, why are there no accountability and transparency mechanisms in the Sathya Sai Organization, especially when the accusations persist decade after decade?

Indian Constitution Safeguards Unsafe?

Hindu and other Indian religious leaders I have consulted refute that any such practice is sanctioned in their religions or by the laws or Constitution of India.  (One wishes they would all come out and make unequivocal statements on such issues, though!). In fact, Article 32 of the Indian Constitution protects both Indian citizens and foreigners who visit India.  In most countries, legal codes forbid (other than for diagnostic or treatment purposes by a medical doctor) touching a minor’s genitals. Often, it is mandatory for professionals to report any allegations of sexual molestation, and those who fail to report commit a crime.

Sai Baba’s Leaders Fail To Warn Parents

For many years, in many countries, the leaders of the Sathya Sai Organization have failed to warn parents of devotees that profound concerns have been expressed by both members and resignees about allegations of sexual molestation by Sai Baba of boys and young men.

Accusations Exceed Genital Oiling and Touching

Disturbing as the practice is, the oiling of genitals is but the mildest form of molestation of which Sathya Sai Baba is accused.  Far more severe forms of sexual abuse, sometimes extending over months and years, have been often reported.  Sathya Sai Baba is accused, in relation to young males, of:

• employing and requesting masturbation
• engaging in oral and anal intercourse with his victims
• asking for ejaculation of semen into his mouth
• ejaculating into the young devotees’ mouths.

Sathya Sai Baba is reported to have issued dire threats when his advances have been refused, and to have given bribes of jewelry and large sums of money to enforce the silence of his victims.

The statement common in Sai Baba circles that he is raising the ‘kundalini’ (a mystic power) is absurd, since these acts are for the perpetrator’s own perverse enjoyment.

Wide International Efforts 
 
As well as action which achieved a UNESCO media advisory adverse to Sai Baba and some of his organizers, affidavits and other reports have been availed to the FBI (Chicago), CBI (New Delhi), German Chief Prosecutor’s Office, London Metropolitan Police, Australian Federal Police, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and copied to governments, legal counsel and sexual abuse counsellors. Although officers in various national police forces have been helpful and indeed often commendably sensitive, we record our repeated experience that most senior police and judiciary in India are the opposite. We privately know of cases where Indian police who attempted to investigate Sai Baba properly have been sidelined, posted elsewhere, and who live in fear. Journalists have been prevented from owners and publishers from printing adversely on Sai Baba. Foreign governments and law enforcement agencies are thwarted by the Indian government’s refusal to act, although our sources in foreign services make it plain that governments also do not wish to ‘rock the boat’ with India.

Irrespective of which political party is in government, the Indian power échelons powerfully protect Sathya Sai Baba and his multi-billion dollar empire that has been reported as the biggest single Indian recipient of charitable foreign donations. Link. See also: ‘Sai Baba Exchequer Worth Billions. Many Countries Donate’

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Indian Government Study of Child Abuse Is Groundbreaking

Recent blogs at: https://barrypittard.wordpress.com have drawn attention to the (for India) groundbreaking study of child abuse (which this link downloads in .pdf format) recently released by the Government of India via its Department of Women and Child Development. See:

‘Indian Study On Child Abuse. Robert Priddy Comments’,

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

‘Child Abuse. Landmark Indian Government Study. Abuse of Indian children ‘common’’

Child Abuse in India. Will Minister Renuka Chowdhury Act?

Having spent a number of years in India engaged in social work among the very poor, I do not know why the important Indian Organization PRAYAS (often simply Prayas) is not mentioned in the paragraphs below, because they were a major role-player in the study. For their opening page on the study, which has many and very valuable links, see here. PRAYAS works within charter and spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights Of the Child, 1989.

The International Save The Children Alliance states:

“For the first time, data on child abuse and neglect in India. A new report by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in India, (supported by Save the Children and UNICEF) released today, reveals the extent and magnitude of child abuse and neglect in India. This is one of the world’s largest empirical, in-country studies covering nearly 12,500 children and 4800 young adults in 13 States.

The Study looks at three different forms of child abuse – physical abuse, sexual abuse and emotional abuse and girl child neglect in families, schools, work places, on the street and institutions. The Study complements the UN Secretary General’s Study on Violence against Children, 2006.

The Study aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of child abuse, which will help formulate appropriate policies and programmes meant to effectively end child abuse in India.

Major findings of the Study:

– Boys, as compared to girls, are equally at risk of abuse.
– Persons in trust and authority are major abusers.
– 5-12 year old children are in the high risk category: across the forms of abuse, the percentage of abuse among them is the highest.
– 70% of the children have not reported abuse to anyone.
– Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar and Delhi almost consistently report high rates of abuse in all forms as compared to other States.
– 2 out of every 3 children have been physically abused.
– Two out of every three school going children are victims of corporal punishment. Half of these incidents are in government run schools.
– More than half of the child respondents reported facing one or more forms of sexual abuse.
– Every second child reported facing emotional abuse. In more than 80% of the cases parents were the abusers”.

Let Us Not Unduly Target India 

Note:  Some commentors may find it all too easy to point a finger at India. No country must be let off the ‘hook’. In an shortly upcoming blog, we shall look at the incredible remissness of the Australian Government of John Howard, which grossly fails to support key initiatives by some of Australia’s most notable workers in childcare, including by a woman often regarded as a national treasure, Professor Freda Briggs, who is Foundation Dean of the De Lissa Institute of Early Childhood and Family Studies, and Professor of Childhood Development at the University of South Australia. In 2005, in the Queen’s Birthday Honors, she was awarded the Order of Australia (AO). She was named ‘Australian of the Year, 2007’. See Advocates For Survivors of Child Abuse (ASCA), here. The economic rationalists, however, bestow awards as an easy ‘out’, instead of addressing the real issues.
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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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