Sai Baba Child Abuse Allegation - Daily Telegraph, UK

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“Over the course of four years, in his ashram, while Sam's parents sat a

few yards away - thrilled that their son should be in such close proximity to

the divine, secure in their belief that the god-man was ministering to their

son's spiritual welfare - Sai Baba was actually subjecting him to sustained and

systematic sexual abuse.”

 

 

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Is this man guilty of sexual child abuse?

 

 

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“Sai Baba. He is showing little yogic aishvarya. But people are, because

they do not know, they are not aware of Krishna, they are taking him as God...

What is the amazement, wonderful thing, Sai Baba has done? If he is creator of

gold, then why he is doing business of incense? You know that? He has a big

incense business exactly like us. He can create gold? Why there is incense

business?”

 

— SRILA PRABHUPADA

ISKCON Founder-Acarya

 

 

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Dear Sai Baba, just recently in the Blitz paper, published on-give the

date-we were surprised to find one article "God is an Indian." And you have

claimed to become an incarnation of God to save the human society. What is the

ground of your claiming as incarnation? And what you have done to save the

human society? Will you explain for enlightenment of us. Or many of us. We have

got the list of incarnations recorded in the Vedic scriptures and their

respective activities also. So where is that record in the Vedic scripture

about your appearing as incarnation? Lord Krsna's incarnation is fully

described in the Srimad-Bhagavatam.

 

— SRILA PRABHUPADA

ISKCON Founder-Acarya

September 13, 1976

 

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Sai Baba Child Abuse Allegation

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, UK

Divine downfall

 

The guru Sai Baba has left India only once, yet his devotees across the

world are estimated at up to 50 million. They worship him as a living god who,

at the very least, can change people's lives and possibly even work miracles.

But now his followers are bitterly divided by allegations that their guru has

for years been systematically sexually abusing boy disciples summoned to his

presence. By Mick Brown driving into town from the small Midwest airport where

Carrie Young and her husband had met me off the plane, she pulled a large

picture from the back seat of the station wagon. Framed in gilded-gold, the

picture showed the couple and their three children posing with an elderly,

chubby-faced Indian man with an ostentatious Afro haircut, dressed in a red

robe. Staring out of the picture, it seemed the Youngs were shining with

happiness. 'And to think,' said Carrie, 'this is the man we used to think was

God.'

 

Sathya Sai Baba: for years the subject of rumbling allegations of fakery,

fraud and worse.

 

I had been with the Youngs for less than 30 minutes, but I had already

decided - in the way you sometimes do - that I liked them, that they were what

Americans call 'straight arrows': honest, decent and truthful. A handsome,

clean-cut couple in their mid-40s; both worked in the computer industry. The

past year, said Jeff, had been difficult, what with all that had happened, but

they were pulling things together. Any experience offers potential for growth,

he said; even one as traumatic, as unbelievable, as this one. The Youngs put a

lot of value in growth.

 

A year ago, their son Sam had come to them with a shocking assertion:

Sathya Sai Baba, he told them - the man the Youngs had revered as God for more

than 20 years - was, in fact, a sexual abuser. Over the course of four years,

in his ashram, while Sam's parents sat a few yards away - thrilled that their

son should be in such close proximity to the divine, secure in their belief

that the god-man was ministering to their son's spiritual welfare - Sai Baba

was actually subjecting him to sustained and systematic sexual abuse. 'You'll

meet Sam at the restaurant,' said Carrie. 'He's prepared to talk about this. He

thinks it's important too.'

 

Sam was a tall, blue-eyed, dreadlocked boy with a look that could only be

described as angelic. The Youngs ordered hamburgers and beer - a gesture, it

seemed, almost of defiance; for the 23 years they followed Sai Baba the family

were all strict vegetarians. For the next four hours, they told me the story of

how they had come to Sai Baba; of their spiritual aspirations, the dreams, the

visions, the miracles - and the nightmare their lives had turned into. And

always, throughout the conversation, the same question repeated itself: how

could it possibly have come to this?

 

For more than 50 years, Sai Baba has been India's most famous and most

powerful holy man - a worker of miracles, it is said, an instrument of the

divine. His following extends not only to every corner of the Indian

sub-continent, but also to Europe, America, Australia, South America and

throughout Asia. Estimates of the total number of Baba devotees around the

world vary between 10 and 50 million.

 

To even begin to appreciate the scale and intensity of his following, it

is necessary to have some understanding of what his devotees believe him to be,

and of the powers that are attributed to him. Much of what follows exists in a

realm beyond rational explanation. Among his devotees, Sai Baba is believed to

be an avatar: literally, an incarnation of the divine, one of a rare body of

divine beings - such as Krishna or Christ - who, it is said, take human form to

further man's spiritual evolution.

 

According to the four-volume hagiography written by his late secretary

and disciple, Professor N Kasturi, Sai Baba was born 'of immaculate conception'

in the southern Indian village of Puttaparthi in 1926. As a young boy, he

displayed signs of miraculous abilities, including 'materialising' flowers and

sweets from 'nowhere'. At 13 he declared himself to be the reincarnation of a

revered southern Indian saint, Shirdi Sai Baba, who died in 1918. Challenged to

prove his identity, Kasturi writes, he threw a clump of jasmine flowers on the

floor, which arranged themselves to spell out 'Sai Baba' in Telugu.

 

In 1950 he established a small ashram, Prasanthi Nilayam (Abode of

Serenity) in his home village. This has now grown to the size of a small town,

accommodating up to 10,000 people, with tens of thousands more housed in the

numerous hotels and apartment blocks that have sprung up around. So great are

the numbers of pilgrims that in recent years an airstrip has been constructed

near the town. There is a primary school, university, college, and hospital in

the ashram, and innumerable other institutions around India bearing Sai Baba's

name.

 

In India, his devotees include the former prime minister, PV Narasimha

Rao, the present Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and an assortment of

senior judiciary, academics, scientists and prominent politicians. Unlike other

Indian gurus who have travelled in the West, cultivating a following among

faith seekers and celebrities, Sai Baba has left India only once, in the

Seventies, to visit Uganda. His reputation in the West spread largely by

word-of-mouth. His devotees tend to be drawn from the educated middle-classes.

 

It is said that as an instrument of the divine, Sai Baba is omniscient,

capable of seeing the past, present and future of everyone; his 'miracles'

include materialising various keepsakes for devotees, including watches, rings

and pendants, as well as vibhuti or holy ash. Like Christ, he is said to have

created food to feed multitudes; to have 'appeared' to disciples in times of

crisis or need. There are countless accounts of healings, and at least two of

his having raised people from the dead.

 

Unlike the infamous Rolls-Royce-driving guru Rajneesh, who preached a

philosophy of heady libertarianism, or the Maharishi of Beatles fame, who

marketed traditional meditation techniques as an aid to better health and

efficiency, Sai Baba's teachings resemble a synthesis of all the great faiths,

with a particular emphasis on Christian charity, enshrined in his most

ubiquitous aphorism, 'Love All, Serve All'. Perhaps his most improbable

disciple is Don Mario Mazzoleni, a former Vatican priest and the author of A

Catholic Priest Meets Sai Baba, in which he expresses his conviction that

Christ and Sai Baba are the same manifestation of God on earth. Mazzoleni was

excommunicated in 1992 because of his belief.

 

The principal event in Prasanthi Nilayam is darshan, in which Sai Baba

emerges twice daily from his quarters adjacent to the main temple and walks

among the thousands of devotees seated on the hard marble floor. Hands reach

forward to touch his feet or to pass him letters of supplication. Occasionally

he pauses, to offer a blessing or to 'materialise' vibhuti in an outstretched

hand. It is during darshan that Sai Baba, by some unseen criteria, chooses

people from the crowd for private interviews. When I visited the ashram three

years ago, researching a book on India, my application to the secretary to

interview Sai Baba was politely refused; a formal letter of request to Baba

himself went unacknowledged. For the next week I sat on the marble floor of the

temple waiting to be chosen for interview. I never was. Some devotees might

wait for years.

 

It is difficult to describe the atmosphere of fervent devotion that

permeates the ashram. Devotees talk of having been 'called' by dreams, visions

or curious flips of synchronicity, impossible to explain and too powerful to

ignore. People jockey for favour and position, endlessly recycling stories of

his miracles and powers. It is a catalyst for every imaginable emotion - piety,

hope, desperation, jealousy and pride. One person described it as 'like metals

being smelted - all the crap comes up to the top'.

 

Inevitably for such a potent figure, Sai Baba has, for years, been the

subject of rumbling allegations of fakery, fraud and worse. But he has proved

remarkably immune to controversy, the accusations doing little to dent his

growing following or the esteem in which he is held. But all that, it appears,

is about to change.

 

In recent months, an extraordinary storm of allegations have appeared -

spurred by a document called The Findings, compiled by an English former

devotee named David Bailey - which threaten to shake the very foundations of

Sai Baba's holy empire. Sai Baba may represent an ancient tradition of belief,

but the instrument of accusation against him is an altogether modern one.

Originally published in document form, The Findings quickly found its way on to

the internet, where it has become the catalyst for a raging cyberspace debate

about whether Sai Baba is truly divine or, as one disenchanted former devotee

describes him, 'a dangerous paedophile'.

 

It is one of the many imponderables of this story that the charges

against Sai Baba should have begun with a rotund and jocular concert pianist

from Llandudno.

 

David Bailey became a devotee of Sai Baba in 1994, at the age of 40,

drawn by an interest in the guru's reputation as a spiritual healer. 'I

couldn't see him as a God,' says Bailey, 'but I did think, this could be a

great holy man who has certain gifts.'

 

An extrovert man, Bailey quickly became a ubiquitous and popular figure

among devotees. He travelled all over the world, speaking and performing at

meetings and would visit the ashram in India three or four times a year, often

performing during darshan and teaching music to students at the Sathya Sai Baba

College. Over the course of four years Bailey claims to have had more than 100

interviews with Baba. At Baba's instigation, Bailey married a fellow devotee,

and together they edited a magazine to propagate Sai Baba's teachings. But the

closer he came to Sai Baba, Bailey told me, the more his doubts multiplied. The

'miracles', he concluded, were 'B-grade conjuring tricks', the healings a myth,

and Baba's powers of being able to 'see into people's minds and lives' merely a

clever use of information gleaned from others.

 

Bailey's dwindling faith was finally crushed when students from the

college came to him alleging that they had been sexually abused by the guru.

'They said, "Please sir, can you go back to England and help us." They were

unable to tell their parents because they were afraid of being disbelieved, and

feared for their personal safety.'

 

Shocked by the allegations, Bailey severed his association with Sai Baba

and began to assemble a dossier of evidence from former devotees around the

world. The Findings is a chronicle of shattered illusions. It contains

allegations of fakery, con-trickery and financial irregularities in the funding

of the hospital and over a Sai Baba project to supply water to villages around

the ashram, which is habitually trumpeted as evidence of his munificence.

 

Some of these allegations have been aired before. A former devotee, B

Premenand, has made a virtual career out of debunking Sai Baba through his

publication, The Indian Skeptic. But the charges contained in The Findings are

of an altogether different magnitude. They include verbatim accounts of abuse

from devotees in Holland, Australia, Germany and India. Conny Larsson, a

well-known Swedish film actor, says that not only did Sai Baba make homosexual

advances towards him, but he was also told by young male disciples of advances

the guru had made on them.

 

In April, Glen Meloy - a retired management consultant and a prominent

Californian devotee of some 26 years standing - received a letter from an

American woman who had read The Findings on the internet. Her 15-year-old son,

she said, had also been abused. Included in the letter was a four-page

statement from the boy himself alleging multiple sexual abuse.

 

Meloy launched his own internet campaign to spread the allegations. The

effects of this have been enormous.

 

There has been a rash of defections from Sai Baba groups throughout the

West. In Sweden the central group has closed down, and so too has a school

based on the Human Education Values programme devised by educationalists at the

Puttaparthi college.

 

From other devotees, however, the response has been one of disbelief and

denial. 'Sai Baba', says Bailey, 'is a simple sex maniac who's on an ego trip,

after money, after power. He is a sheer conman.' No, say others, 'Sai Baba is

God.'

 

The Young family are not among those listed in The Findings, but the

story of how they had come to Sai Baba was not atypical. In the early

Seventies, Jeff had become interested in 'the spiritual quest', initially

through psychedelics, then through yoga and meditation. He learned of Sai Baba

through a friend, and in 1974, at the age of 18, visited India for the first

time, driven, he says, by 'an intense and burning desire to feel and experience

God'.

 

The teachings of Sai Baba, he said, struck him to the core. 'The first

thing I read by him was, there is only one caste, the caste of humanity; there

is only one language, the language of the heart; there is only one religion,

the religion of love; there is only one God, and he is omnipresent. That made

perfect sense to me. He wasn't claiming to be part of any religion. It was just

all about love.'

 

A month before leaving for India Jeff had a dream in which, he says, he

was in a queue, waiting to see Sai Baba. Baba passed him by, then turned,

looked over his shoulder, winked and said the word 'talk'. On his first day in

India he sat in a queue as Sai Baba walked past. 'Then he stopped and he looked

over his shoulder, and he winked at me and he said "Talk" - exactly as he had

done in the dream.'

 

Three weeks later Jeff had a private interview with Sai Baba. 'And I

remember feeling peace like I had never felt before; feeling loved like I'd

never been loved before.'

 

He returned to Los Angeles, where he lived in a community with fellow

Baba devotees. He met Carrie, whose childhood had been characterised by

parental abuse, and her teenage years by drug abuse. She too became a devotee

of Sai Baba, putting her troubled past behind her. They married, moved to the

Midwest and started to raise a family. Over the years, they visited Sai Baba

from time to time. They founded a community, home-schooled their children

according to his teachings, and strove to lead a life of purity and

self-discipline based on the principles of 'Love All, Serve All'.

 

Then, in 1995, things began to change. Their son, Sam, who was now 16,

visited the ashram with a family friend and was singled out for a private

interview with Sai Baba. Eighteen months later, the Youngs returned to

Puttaparthi; again Sai Baba singled out Sam and called him and the family for

an interview. 'He made [a big fuss of] our group,' said Jeff. 'He materialised

a ring for my son. He told everybody that Sam had been a great Shirdi Sai

devotee in a previous life - he just poured it on.'

 

During the course of that visit, the Youngs were called for seven

interviews, while Sam had some 20 private meetings. The family felt blissfully

privileged. Baba advised Jeff on his business, signed the bylaws for their

community and told them that one day he would come to their home. He

materialised rings, watches, bracelets, gave them robes and the silk lungi he

wore next to his skin. 'People were saying, what's with you guys?' said Jeff.

'One guy actually said to me, when I die I want to come back as you. And Baba

was telling us not to talk a lot, to keep it quiet, because it causes jealousy

in others - which is true.'

 

The following year, the family returned to Puttaparthi three times. On

each occasion they would be gifted with two or three interviews. Sam had twice

as many. 'We had no idea what was going on,' said Jeff. 'We'd ask Sam, and he'd

say Baba was talking about his future. Every day there'd be another watch, a

ring. We thought maybe our son deserved this attention because he'd done so

much for Shirdi Sai. We just rationalised things. You can rationalise

everything.'

 

In 1995, Sam had come to his father. In a private interview, he said, Sai

Baba had 'materialised' some oil in his hand, unbuttoned Sam's trousers and

rubbed his genitals. Jeff told his son he had had a similar experience when he

first met Sai Baba at 18. 'I said to Sam, what did you think about it? He said

he didn't feel there was anything sexual about it; it was like Sai Baba was

doing his job. And I'd kind of had that experience. A doctor gives a boy an

exam. I'd taken it as some kind of healing.' Thereafter, Sam said nothing about

his experiences.

 

What had actually occurred was this: from anointing with oil, Sam told

me, Sai Baba's advances had grown progressively more abusive and forceful. Sai

Baba, he said, had kissed him, fondled him and attempted to force him to

perform oral sex, explaining that it was for 'purification'. On almost every

occasion Sai Baba had given him gifts of watches, rings, trinkets and cash, in

total around $10,000. He had told him to say nothing to his parents.

 

So why had Sam continued to go into interviews, and to say nothing? From

the day he was born, he said, he had been raised to believe that Sai Baba was

God. 'All my life, that was my goal, to get an interview and have Sai Baba talk

about my life. And then I get in there, and my mum's so happy out in the crowd,

and then I see what's really in there for me. I'm thinking, maybe this is for

love, and he might want to be experiencing that with me, but I don't want

that.'

 

When Sam asked Baba why he was doing this, he would tell him it was

because Sam was 'a special devotee - that it was a great blessing'. When Sam

attempted to resist, he said, Baba would threaten not to call his parents for

any more interviews. 'I felt obligations, to my parents, our friends, all the

thousands of people sitting outside who all wanted to be in the position I was

in, not knowing what was really there.

 

'And then the big thing was the concept that he is God, from day one, so

when he says, don't tell anybody.'

 

In fact, Sam did tell somebody. He confided what was happening to two

other American teenagers who were students at the Puttaparthi college. They had

had similar experiences. 'They justified it as a divine experience. But we

didn't talk about it too much because of the idea that he was omniscient, that

he'd know what we were talking about and what was in our heads.

 

'If you listen to what Baba says, he's talking about taking charge of

your life, and I was thinking, "I'm with you, so everything must be good." But

he was doing things to me that I didn't want to do, and I was just letting it

happen.'

 

In 1998, according to Sam, Sai Baba attempted to rape him. The following

year, the day before the family were leaving for Puttaparthi, he told his

father he did not want to see Sai Baba alone, without specifying why. Jeff

sensed something was amiss: 'I told him, you must always be true to your

conscience. The family don't care if we never have another interview again.'

 

In Puttaparthi Sam was again called for a private interview. When Sai

Baba attempted to get him to perform oral sex, Sam walked out for the last

time, although it would be some months before he summoned the nerve to tell his

parents. Jeff said it took some weeks to 'process' what they were hearing. 'We

knew that Sam was telling the truth, but I still asked myself, what could this

mean?'

 

The Youngs contacted a leading figure in the American Sai Baba

organisation. 'He said it must be some kind of test,' said Jeff, 'and for a

moment we felt better.'

 

Then Dr Michael Goldstein, the man in charge of the entire Baba

organisation in America, flew in from California to meet them. 'He said, we've

got to talk to Baba about this; words are not enough; faith must be restored.'

Goldstein immediately flew to India. He returned to tell the Youngs that Sai

Baba had told him 'he is pure', and that Goldstein accepted that. He asked Jeff

if he thought his son might be 'delusional'. The Youngs no longer speak with

Goldstein.

 

I attempted to contact Goldstein in America, but was told he was away, in

Puttaparthi. However, another senior devotee, a trustee for the Sathya Sai Baba

Society of America, did return my call. Jerry Hague told me that he and his

wife had been devotees for 25 years. He said he was deeply shocked at the

allegations and could not begin to understand them.

 

'All I know in my heart is that Swami is the purest of the purest, and

that everything he does is for the highest good of everybody. If other people

feel something else, that's how they feel. It's a mystery to me, and that's how

I'm leaving it. I just know in my heart what I've found.'

 

This denial - Sai Baba is God, God doesn't do these things - was a theme

that was echoed by innumerable other devotees I spoke to in America and

Britain. One woman told me the allegations were 'utterly inconsistent' with her

experience of Sai Baba over the past 30 years. Others said they were convinced

they were a result of 'delusions', or 'the projections' of boys and young men

at a difficult time sexually.

 

Surfing the internet, I came upon a site called The Sai Critic,

established by some devotees to answer The Findings and to 'counsel' those

whose faith might be wavering in the face of the allegations. The anonymous

authors of the site urge devotees to believe only their own experiences and

quote an aphorism of Sai Baba's: "When doubt walks in the front door, faith

walks out out the back door. Keep your doors closed."

 

Addressing the allegations of sexual abuse, the authors state that

because 'Sai Baba is a divine incarnation, one cannot attribute human sexual

motives to him, nor interpret him in the light of human sexual experience.' In

other words, because Sai Baba is divine, whatever he does is beyond

understanding and beyond accountability.

 

Among those people named in The Findings is Dr D Bhatia, the former head

of the blood bank at the Sathya Sai Super Speciality Hospital, who, it is

claimed, had a longstanding sexual relationship with Sai Baba. Bhatia resigned

from his post at the hospital in December 1999 and is now an administrator at a

hospital in New Delhi.

 

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 had sexual relations with Sai Baba

for a total of '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.

 

Bhatia said he had never questioned Sai Baba over his conduct, or Baba's

explanation that it was 'God's activity'. 'Devotion,' said Bhatia, 'doesn't

need any justification. In my philosophy of life, everything good and

everything bad belongs to God. That is my belief, and that is why whatever he

does, does not affect me in that way.' Was he saying that he still believed Sai

Baba is God? 'Yes.'

 

Like many people I spoke to, Isaac Tigrett described himself as a

spiritual seeker. Among devotees, Tigrett is famous as the man who built Sai

Baba's hospital. Co-founder of the Hard Rock restaurant chain, Tigrett sold out

his share in the business in the early Nineties and donated $20 million to

build the Sathya Sai Super Speciality Hospital. He went on to found another

chain of club-restaurants in America, the House of Blues, and now lives in

London, where he is setting up the Spirit Channel, an internet site dedicated

to exploring spiritual teachings.

 

A large, barrel-chested man in his early 50s, dressed in an immaculate

double-breasted suit, Tigrett has the ostentatious appearance and expansive

charm of a theatrical impresario. We met at his London club. Tigrett drank beer

and smoked cigarettes; a man, it seemed, firmly grounded in the real world.

 

By normal standards, Tigrett's story of how he came to Sai Baba is

extraordinary; by the standards of stories one hears of Sai Baba, it seems

almost commonplace. Born in the American South and raised as a Baptist, Tigrett

had always had a curiosity about spiritual matters. In 1974, he told me, he was

travelling in India, checking out the guru scene. Eating breakfast one morning

in the dining-room of a hotel in northern India he heard a voice clearly

saying, 'You've come at last; I've been waiting for you.' Turning round, he saw

a picture on the wall of Sai Baba, whom he had never heard of and knew nothing

about.

 

He travelled immediately to Sai Baba's ashram. It was a festival day, he

remembered; 5,000 people were gathered for darshan. 'He just came right over to

me and said, "You've come at last; I've been waiting for you." ' Sai Baba then

'materialised' vibhuti in Tigrett's hand. 'He said, wait here; we have many

things that we are going to do together.' It would be another 15 years, he

said, before Baba spoke to him again.

 

Tigrett said he was 'very cynical and very suspicious. I believe in the

inner guru - following your own heart - not the outer guru. It had never

occurred to me that it would be some sort of outer master that would draw me

down the path.'

 

Over the next 15 years, however, he found himself subject to a range of

'amazing teachings' that he attributed to Sai Baba. The most extreme occurred

in 1976. It was a time, he said, when his doubts about Sai Baba were at their

greatest. Driving a Porsche Turbo through the Hollywood Hills after a

late-night party, he came off the road at 80mph and crashed through a barricade

into a 200ft gully. 'I had no seatbelt on. At the moment I knew I was going to

die I could feel pressure on my shoulders, and I look and, seemingly to me,

there is Sai Baba sitting beside me with his arms around me. The car hits the

ground and turns more than a dozen times before it lands upright, totally

demolished. And there's not a scratch on me. I'm thinking, this can't be true.

Was it him? Was it my imagination? Did I call him and somehow create this

belief in my mind that he was there?'

 

The next day Tigrett flew to India, 'to thank him'. Tigrett spent three

months sitting in darshan, 'and he didn't so much as look at me once'. It would

be another 13 years, he said, before Sai Baba finally summoned him for an

interview.

 

'I said, why did I have to wait so long? He said, "Big ego." '

 

These things were difficult to explain, Tigrett said, impossible to

explain. He does not believe that Sai Baba is God, he said. He would not even

describe himself a devotee. 'But to me, it's as simple as this: whatever it was

I experienced changed my life; whatever it was he did kept me on a spiritual

path, for which I am ever grateful. And I will never be able to deny that

experience; nothing he could do could change that.'

 

How then could Tigrett square his experiences of Sai Baba with the

allegations of sexual abuse? 'I can't. There's two camps here. Are you against

Sai Baba or are you for him? I think if you say you're for him, you're just in

denial, saying these things didn't happen, that it's made-up stories. I don't

believe that. I believe the allegations are true. And if you're against, you're

supposed to take up your sword and kill him. I'm not in either of those camps.

For me, the only meaningful relationship with him is the personal one, and

everyone has to make a personal decision based on that.'

 

As to trying to understand Sai Baba, Tigrett said he had given up on that

many years ago. 'I know that he materialises things, because I've seen him do

it. And I know he fakes materialisations, because I've him seen him do that

too. I don't know why. Maybe it's just a game.'

 

Tigrett said he believed that everything Sai Baba does is 'a teaching'.

Perhaps, he said, the growing scandal was also a teaching, a way of forcing

devotees to stop worshipping the form of Sai Baba, and instead consider the

divinity within themselves. 'I remember him telling me three or four years ago

that people would be leaving him in droves. He said, "I'm not a new religion;

I'm not a personality cult. People come here to see miracles, to have a

vacation, and they don't even get the teachings." He said this several times,

it's about following the inner guru, not following Sai Baba.'

 

Tigrett has been back to the ashram several times since then, he said,

but he has never again been called for interview. He sipped at his beer. For

those who worship Sai Baba as a god, he said, the allegations 'must be totally

devastating. Because they've lost their god, their master. But I never saw him

as God.' How then would he describe Sai Baba? Tigrett shook his head: 'A total

and complete enigma.'

 

Among the most remarkable facets of this controversy has been the role of

the internet. Even 10 years ago, it is doubtful whether the allegations against

Sai Baba would have spread so far and so fast. In a discourse in October 1999,

Sai Baba instructed devotees that 'Swami has nothing to do with internet [sic].

Not only now, even in future [sic] also. You should not indulge in such wrong

activities.' But in the realms of cyberspace the accusations, the

justifications and the denials continue to multiply. Alongside the lurid

accounts of abuse, there are accounts of miracles, healings and calls to faith.

 

Conny Larsson has set up a support group for those claiming abuse by Sai

Baba, and says he receives some 20-30 emails a day from victims 'crying out for

help. You cannot leave these people in the desert.'

 

In America, the campaign organised by Glen Meloy has concentrated on

'e-bombing' copies of the allegations to senators, the White House, the FBI and

Indian newspapers. The most conspicuous success of the campaign came in

September when Unesco withdrew its co-sponsorship and participation from an

education conference at Puttaparthi, citing 'deep concern' over the allegations

of sexual abuse.

 

Meloy is also attempting to bring a class action lawsuit against the

leaders of the Sai groups in America that, he said, have 'conspired to cover

this up'.

 

In this country, similar representations have been made to the Charity

Commissioners (there is a British branch of the organisation registered in this

country) and to the Home Office, urging them to issue a public warning to

visitors to India about the allegations, and pointing out that failure to warn

could constitute a breach of the Government's international obligations under

UN Human Rights covenants.

 

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?

 

Among former devotees, there is a sense of shock, betrayal, anger - a

hunger, if not for revenge, then for accountability. We know that many victims

have been physically molested,' Glen Meloy told me, 'but in reality all the

former devotees have been spiritually raped because we chose to believe that

this man was the highest. I certainly considered him to be the God of gods, the

creator of all creation, my friend, my everything. The intense desire I have to

expose him now is directly proportionate to the amount of devotion I gave him.'

 

Meloy said he shredded all the pictures he had of Sai Baba in his house

the moment he heard the allegations. He knew of former devotees who were now

selling their homes, determined to purge any taint of association with Sai Baba

from their lives. 'We completely gave away our power.

 

And now we can look back and see what we did. You cry and out and wonder,

how in the world could this happen?'

 

How does this happen? In an imperfect world, we crave some evidence of

perfection, some symbol of ineluctable goodness. The guru becomes the

expression of the dream.

 

Sitting in the restaurant in a small, homely Midwest town, Jeff Young

struggled to understand what had led him to believe that an Indian guru could

be God. Thinking back to his first interview - 'I remember feeling peace like I

had never felt before' - he now thinks he was simply deluded. 'There were so

many people who desired to have that interview, I convinced myself it was so

extraordinary and special and I must be in bliss, because I'd been chosen.'

 

Now, he said, he could see how he had ignored all the contradictions,

manufactured explanations for anything that didn't fit. 'I knew the

materialisations were fake. I'd sit there and watch him pulling things from

under a pillow. It was totally obvious. And he'd see that we saw and he'd kind

of laugh. But I just thought, he's testing me to see if I'm focused on the love

or on the external. Because Baba says, love my uncertainty. You'll never be

able to understand the avatar.'

 

Looking back, he said, when Sam finally told him about the sexual abuse,

he didn't find it difficult to believe at all. 'I realised, I'd really known

this for a long time but didn't really know it.' Jeff shook his head. 'It goes

so far into your mind. You ask yourself, how could millions of people be wrong?

How could millions of people be tricked? I think a lot of people deny these

things are happening because they're afraid of being embarrassed. I felt that

myself. We'd spent 23 years raising our family to believe in him, going

upstream against a river. You think, how could I have been so wrong?'

 

When Sam told Jeff and Carrie the truth about his meetings with Sai Baba,

Jeff said, both of them threw their arms around him. 'We said, that's it; we

don't care if we never see Sai Baba again. He told us it was the happiest day

of his life.'

 

Since leaving Sai Baba, he said, the family had been trying to find a

basis for faith in their own hearts. He believed following Sai Baba's teachings

for 23 years had made him a more humble, honest and kind human being. 'My wife

hates him for what he did to our son. I feel betrayed. I think it's despicable.

But as I look back over my life I would have to say that I honestly don't

regret anything that's happened and that I've grown through all of it.' Finding

Sai Baba, and then discarding him, 'I'm happier now than at any point in my

life.'

 

Sam said the experience had brought him to see his life in 'a whole other

perspective. It made me realise, all my life I've spent following some other

human being around, trying to do what he says.' Freed from the prison of false

belief, he said, 'I'm just trying to live up to myself.'

 

Whether he is divine, 'a demented demonic force', as Glen Meloy now

describes him, or simply the most accomplished fakir and confidence trickster,

Sai Baba has said nothing publicly about the allegations laid against him. When

the Telegraph Magazine contacted K CHAKRAvarthi, secretary of the Puttaparthi

ashram, he said, 'We have no time for these matters. I have nothing to say' and

terminated the call.

 

Sai Baba's principal English translator, Anil Kumar, was more

forthcoming. Every great religious teacher, he said, had faced criticism in

their lifetime. Such allegations had been levelled at Sai Baba since childhood,

'but with every criticism he becomes more and more triumphant'. Kumar said he

considered the controversy 'all part of [sai Baba's] divine plan. It's a paddy

field with husks around the rice. Eventually all the unwanted parts will go to

leave the true substance inside.'

 

Jerry Hague, the American trustee, seemed to share that view. Sai Baba,

he told me, would never say anything about all this. 'Why would he? That's the

human way. That's not his way.

 

'You can try and write about this,' he cautioned me, 'but you won't be

able to make any intellectual sense of it. Nobody can.'

 

'Some people,' said Jeff Young, 'when we tell them our story, they drop

Sai Baba like a rock. Some just don't want to hear it. And others hear it all

and say, well, he's God! It's all a test. I laughed when I heard that. Because

to me, passing the test is having the courage to stand up on your own two feet

and say this is not acceptable.'

 

It's a curious thing, said Young, but when he first told his friends and

fellow devotees he was leaving Sai Baba, he had the sense - 'and I still feel

that way' - that Baba was 'standing over my shoulder, saying, 'Good boy, you're

doing a good job.'

 

Some names have been changed.

 

Additional research by Chloe Veltman

 

© CHAKRA 17-November-2000

 

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