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. |
