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PART 2: SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

The article by Haraldur Erlendsson in an on-line newspaper published from Bangladesh has essentially two components; the first is a repetition of standard allegations, repeated perhaps for the “benefit” of a new audience, this time in Bangladesh. The second component is the alleged anti-Muslim attitude of Swami. In this part, I shall offer comments on the “old stuff” by which I mean allegations, which, though duly demolished, are being repeated once more, perhaps to compel the attention of Bangladeshi readers. Some reference to those familiar allegations is necessary because this time, we take a few of them and answer them point by point. Through this exercise, I wish to bring to the notice of our readers what the anti-Swami lobby is generally trying do. Their plan is the following:

That, in a nutshell, is how demonisation is successfully practiced these days. First target the soft underbelly of the listener/reader, and then go for the total conversion. It helps if this is done repeatedly and by as many people as possible. A well-orchestrated chorus delivers the goods better! Please keep all this in view as I walk you through some of the allegations of Haraldur Erlendsson.

Ridiculous Allegations

Let me start with the following sentence, which occurs in the article:

"In a bold style, a Mr. Venkatamuni of Madras, India was killed in Madurai by the “Sai Baba gang” and then after getting death certificates from doctors taken by Sathya Sai Baba in his own car, he was cremated without giving any information to the police, and thus hushing up the matter."

Mr. Praveen Venkatamuni

When I first read this, I literally fell down from my chair! Those of you who have read my trilogy of articles in H2H about Swami’s visit to Madras/Chennai in Jan 2007 would recall my description of a visit made to the house of late Mr. Venkatamuni.

I was absolutely stunned by what was written by this Icelander and decided to do some serious checking to set the record straight. It was ridiculous. I mean, would a family that had lost a dear one due to what is alleged to be gang-style killing so lovingly receive the one allegedly responsible for engineering it? It was simply bizarre.

So, with help from friends, I got in touch with one of Venkatamuni’s sons, who kindly came to our Studio and did a video interview. Elsewhere, we present a full transcript of our interview. Below we offer a link that would play for you a short extract from the interview we recorded.

Please see it, and when you do so, you would be able to judge for yourself how non-truths can be skilfully packaged and presented to those who do not know as the “sole truth and nothing but the truth”.

Praveen_01

"My father breathed his last on Swami’s lap on June 13, 1966" - Mr. Praveen

Praveen_02 "Swami suddenly came to the terrace and held my father"

Praveen_03 “Venkatamuni, everything will be alright. Don’t worry, I am here” - Baba

Here is another sample from the article written by Haraldur Erlendsson for the Bangladeshi on-line newspaper:

Mr. Basava Premanand, founder of the Indian Rationalist Association has a record of over a hundred people killed by the Sai Baba Organisation in India.

Can you believe that?It is stunning, is it not? I mean describing the Sai Organisation to be something like a mafia gang engaged in contract-style killing? Many may say, “Listen, these people are out to malign; why waste time on contradicting such people?” Generally speaking, I too take that view and have in fact done so frequently in the past. But you know, these are days when people frequently check on the internet when they want to know something about an organisation they are unfamiliar with; and when they are confronted with repeated statements of this kind with absolutely no rebuttal of any kind, it can and does produce adverse consequences.

One devotee with connection in high financial circles overseas told me that one of his clients was very much inclined towards making a substantial contribution to Swami’s Hospital project. However, when the prospective donor checked in the internet, most of what he got was so negative that he was immediately turned off. I call attention to this because it imposes on us the duty to inform far more actively than we are doing at present the deep inspirational nature of the work done by members of the Sai Organisation. Here is an example, a profoundly stirring one, about which not even many in the Organisation may be aware.

Sri Sathya Sai Organisation Engages in Soul-Stirring Seva

Every year, at the time of MakaraSankaranthi [which usually falls on January 14th], almost a million people come to the place where the holy River Ganges enters the Bay of Bengal, to participate in a festival called Ganga Sagar.

The high point is a dip in the sea. The festival commemorates the feat of Bhaghiratha, who, through intense penance, made Ganga [the Ganges] descend from the crown of Lord Siva in Kailash, flow on earth and towards a huge depression that represented the gateway to the nether world. There, in that depression, lay in agony, the souls of thousands of ancestors of Bhaghiratha, earlier cursed to ashes by a sage.

Seva dal removing the 'night soil' along with other garbage		Replacing dawn prayers with 'love in action'

These ancestors of Bhaghiratha were doomed to remain in the nether world, until the holy waters from Kailash bathed them. And it was to bring Ganga from Kailash to earth that Bhaghiratha engaged in fierce penance. In commemoration of that event, devout pilgrims go to where Ganges merges with the sea [formed when Ganga originally filled the huge crater on earth]. Now what has the Sai Organisation got to do with all this? I am coming precisely to that.

Imagine a million people coming to one spot on the beach during a spell of about three days, with no place to stay. The beach becomes a huge, sprawling tent city, parts of the beach itself becoming a massive toilet! For years, the civic authorities struggled with this huge sanitation problem and were at their wits end until one District Magistrate, whose father had served in the Organisation realised that maybe the Organisation could be roped in to help. He got in touch with the branch of the Sai Organisation in West Bengal, and thus started a saga of massive service that is unparalleled in terms of sacrifice.

Every year for the last fifteen years or so, ordinary men and women of the Sathya Sai Organisation in West Bengal go to the festival spot and for nearly a week do sanitation work, physically collecting night soil in buckets and carting it away. It is all manual work, and considered most demeaning; but here they are doing it as a public service. Do they get paid for it? Absolutely not. Then why on earth are they doing such a dirty job that many would not do even for money? Because these Sevadals believe, like all of us, that service to man is service to God.

I did not know anything about it until a few years ago the then President of the Sai Organisation in West Bengal showed me a video they had shot during the Seva camp. The movie was absolutely stunning, and moved me to tears. It reminded me of the life-long struggle that Mahatma Gandhi had waged to make India realise how cruelly it was treating scavengers who were doing the menial task of removing night soil. Such work was shunned by all except those whose lot it was to do, for the sake of sheer survival. [It is a different matter that the conscience of this society had not been awakened to the extent it should have been! Even today, there are all kinds of exploitation of the poor and the down trodden but that is a different story.]

Anyway, getting back to my narration, here we have a different story. These Sai volunteers were not required to do this kind of “menial” work but they did it nevertheless. Can there be a greater example of “Love without duty is Divine”?

02_Ganga_Sagar_Service

The stunning service being done by the sevadals of West Bengal

Dear reader, there are thousands of such examples of ordinary men and women engaged in all kinds of demanding Sai Seva; yet all volunteers work without a thought that they are in anyway engaged in sacrifice. This happens all over the world, wherever Sai brothers and sisters come together to serve God via service to society. But do these activities make headlines? No. Do the people in the Organisation know all about it? Not many. Indeed, it is to spread this awareness and inspire more and more to engage in selfless service that we started our online journal Heart2Heart. In spite of this, the world hardly knows anything about the tremendous amount of good work being done.

A crop cultivation education for the locals		The Andhra Youth have set up houses for the villagers
To read the story of how the Sai Youth from Andhra Pradesh are reaching out to the poor and illiterate, please click here.

Peddling Untruth is Easy

Taking advantage of our desire to generally maintain a low profile, some people seek to tarnish us by writing anything and everything. Should we allow them to get away with spreading outlandish lies again and again? Should we let the innocent public to be misled so easily? Until recently we hardly bothered; but that seems to have acted as an incentive to these negative forces to become bolder, to the point that they now peddle untruth with utter impunity.

Long ago, Dr. Goebbles, the infamous Nazi inventor of spin, propagated the idea that if a falsehood is repeated often enough, people would begin to perceive it as the truth. Indeed, the swallowing becomes easier if falsehood is allowed to get away with it repeatedly without any challenge whatsoever. In a sense, that precisely is what is happening now. There once was a time, when we preferred to remain absolutely silent about our work. The time has come to emerge from that shell and inform, not by way of seeking any publicity, but to place on record the facts, so that those in doubt can see, check and verify, and thus judge for themselves what is true, and what is fabrication.

In this spirit, we offer you below a few more video clips so that you can get a better feel of what I am talking about. As you watch these clips, please keep asking yourself one simple question:

“Is it at all possible that an Organisation that is supposed to be involved in Mafia-style activities could ever get involved in such activities? Is it even conceivable that such an Organisation would have wiped out over a hundred people as Premanand alleges? Or is this also a huge fake, and a set up [as is often alleged]?”

I am sure you yourself have been involved in service activities at various times in various places. Does it not strike you as incredible that blatant lies are being propagated with amazing impunity, emboldened by our desire to do our work quietly?

Here is another sample of the travesty that is being spread:

The whole Sai Baba Organisation behaves shockingly like a brainwashed, tightly controlled cult - a very dangerous one at that. Well, doesn’t it look like it when defenders of Sai Baba slander the good name of former devotees and his other critics who have spoken out?

Former devotees have gone to great lengths to produce documentation of their shocking revelations to the internet, governments, Interpol, FBI, various police forces [who have their hands tied because India will not act], UNESCO and the world media.

Defenders of Sai Baba threaten with dire consequences, sometimes even death.

I am simply astonished by the above remarks. Frankly, I personally know very little about the spokesperson for the anti-Swami group; I am sure this is equally true of almost all devotees. I can personally state that most people I know who hold positions of importance in the Organisation are so busy that they hardly have enough time even to do their own work, let alone read our magazine Heart2Heart. That being the case, what do you say of the allegation that defenders of Sai Baba threaten the opponents with “dire consequences”? Who are these people who are supposed to have issued such threats, and what exactly are those threats? And by the way, how exactly were these threats issued? Is there any evidence? Maybe there is plenty of spam evidence, but real evidence? I wonder...

Here is an example of how facts are cleverly twisted to make it appear as if something diabolical and Machiavellian is going on around here. Mr. Haraldur Erlendsson writes:

In Baba’s spiritual hermitages there are usually security agents and before you can get close to him you must pass through metal detectors. Heavily armed state and federal police forces and his own security and intelligence force, some of them specially trained in Israel and the USA guard him with a protection tighter than a drum.

This is typical of remarks tossed in without any basis. Why? Because when half-truths and falsehood are tagged on to one sensitive remark calculated to inflame [in this case, an anti-Muslim bias] the reader would automatically accept the entire package. This is a standard technique used in propaganda war. Politicians do this all the time, companies use it for putting down competition, the media uses it for promoting its interests, and political establishments the world over for polarising public opinion.

Now please take a minute to reflect on the true facts. Yes, we do have security these days but was it so in the olden days? Take a look at the sample video clip by following the link below.

03_Darshan1

A routine darshan in Prasanthi Nilayam, about 10 years ago

The Government’s Security Policies

Let us now enquire when exactly the current security measures came into vogue. Clearly, back in the old days, there was no security whatsoever. As far as I can remember, serious security steps started to be taken only towards the late nineties and early part of this century; prior to that, there was hardly any security worth the name.

It all started really with an increase in the traffic of VIPs coming here. In the beginning, only the very high profile VIPs had any significant security; sure they came with a retinue of officials – all a relic of the old feudal British Raj – but in terms of security, it was only the Prime Minister who had high security. I remember that in those days, several Presidents of India used to come here; one of them, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma, came regularly, in fact in various capacities. He first came as the Governor of Andhra Pradesh, then as the Vice President and finally as President. In the beginning, his security was nominal but as the years went by, it became stiffer and stiffer; and this increase was mandated by the Government – the Ashram had no say in it whatsoever.

I myself recall the security that President Abdul Kalam received during his two visits to Prashanti Nilayam as President. I was with him on both occasions; in the first visit, the security was nominal but in the second visit, the security was much more enhanced. For the record, I should mention that before Dr. Abdul Kalam became the President, he made one visit in 1997, when he was a national hero. At that time, he had been given the highest security referred to as Z category. Dr. Abdul Kalam came here via Bangalore, where he was visiting in connection with some official work. He did not relish the idea of coming here surrounded by gun-toting security guards and so he skilfully gave them a slip, got into a car belonging to the laboratory he was visiting and rushed here.

I was the Vice Chancellor then, and I took him around to visit our college here, where he spent time freely with the students. Later, he walked around in the Ashram and many who recognised him [because he was a national celebrity] were able to approach him for autographs. I was a witness to this. In fact, during his first visit as the President – he came as the Guest of Honour for the Institute convocation in 2002 – I was with him quite a while; Mr. S. V. Giri was the Vice Chancellor then. After the Convocation and the drama that followed were over, President Kalam took a leisurely and casual walk inside the Ashram, along with some of those who had come with him, just like that, mixing with the huge birthday crowd.

Bhagavan Baba with the former President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam		Dr. Abdul Kalam accompanies Bhagavan as the Chief Guest of the Sri Sathya Sai University Convocation

I am mentioning all this to stress the following:

There is one important fact I should call attention to at this point. In recent years, there have been many deadly attacks by terrorists in several temples in the North. Keeping this in view and the overall security situation in the country, the Central Government has issued various guidelines to State Governments regarding security measures in holy places; the State Governments have to implement these security measures, and the list of holy places requiring protection includes Prasanthi Nilayam. In other words, some of the Police Force we now see regularly in Prashanti, especially at festival times, is mandated by the State and the Ashram has no say in the matter.

Let me now turn to Swami and the personal security provided to Him. It has been a practice from the early days, that someone or the other would accompany Swami during darshans. There was a purpose in this. Devotees invariably gave letters to Swami, who obviously could not hold all the letters in His hands; He would therefore periodically hand them over to the person with Him. Other things like garlands [which devotees used to offer in the old days], various artefacts, invitations of various kinds, books, etc., would all be received by Swami and handed over, just like letters were. In addition, the person walking alongside Swami would also help to control devotees when they crowded around Bhagavan a bit too much. In short, the assistant played many roles; and in due course, as the crowds increased, more than one person was needed to handle such matters.

As years passed, these responsibilities were taken over by teachers of Swami’s Institute and during the last decade, by students, both past and present. Meanwhile, once or twice there have been some incidents causing concerning to Swami’s physical security. For example, during a Brindavan darshan a few years ago, there was a person who flashed a gun; there were a few other similar incidents. Such occasional happenings have led the State Government to provide a certain amount of security to Swami. Indeed, this has become the norm not only in the Ashrams in Puttaparthi and Bangalore, but also in places visited by Swami like Chennai, Kodaikanal, etc.

It must be said that whether one likes it or not, Swami is a public personality, and lapses in His security can put local governments in a spot. Hence, in accordance with the accepted norms in such matters, local Governments give some security of their own, supplementing the assistance that Swami’s students’ offer. Several points need to be underscored here.

Please see the video clips by following the links below. They show Swami moving in crowds in recent times in Chennai, in Kodaikanal and over here. Can you see heavily armed guards protecting Baba? If security was as tight as alleged, would the crowd be allowed to get so close?

04_Sundaram_Darshan

Baba reaches out to everyone on the street in Sundaram, Chennai

Dear reader, those of you who are regular visitors to this place would know for a fact that there is hardly any security surrounding Swami when He goes around giving darshan. Yes, we do have some screening at entrance, but most of these are mandated by State authorities. In fact, even our students have to undergo frisking. And all of us here do get subjected to inconvenience [sometimes even considerable], when VVIPs come, but mercifully it all ends the moment they leave! All this you know, as I do too. But think of someone who has never been here, has read hardly anything about Baba and comes across this deliberately falsified account written up for the Bangladesh on-line newspaper; that reader would tend to believe what he or she reads. That is the disturbing aspect of this distortion deliberately peddled by those hostile to Swami.

Courtesy Call to a Head of State

General Idi Amin

Many are the slanted items planted in the article that I am referring to. Here is an example. It is stated that Sai Baba gives interviews to major criminals like Idi Amin of Uganda. Consider the facts. In 1968, Swami went to East Africa. He flew from Bombay into Nairobi in Kenya.

He hardly spent any time there because His destination was Kampala in Uganda where He went because of persistent invitations from a devotee [now no more] named Dr. Patel. As you might be aware, Kampala is the capital city of Uganda, and the country extended the courtesy of providing security escort and various arrangements needed at public meetings and so forth. The local host Dr. Patel suggested that it would be in the fitness of things if Swami visited Idi Amin and blessed him; which Swami then did. Why should anyone read more into that?

Idi Amin was no doubt a controversial personality, thanks to his coming down heavily on people who he thought exploited the natives. By the way, the local Indian community was one of the worst affected. That said, let us remember that Idi Amin was also the Head of State at that time. Good, bad or indifferent, various governments of the world had diplomatic relationship with him. Where diplomacy is involved, one cannot always act in a judgemental way; instead, one does that which might help in smoothening matters.

Did not Neville Chamberlin go to Munich to meet Hitler? Did not Roosevelt meet Stalin in Yalta at the height of World War II? Did not Harry Truman later meet that same Stalin in Tehran? Did not Richard Nixon go to Peking [now Beijing] and meet Mao? The fact that Swami met Idi Amin despite the latter’s hostility to the Indian community speaks for itself. By the way, our critic seems to be unaware of the fact that when he was deposed, Idi Amin, a Muslim, sought refuge in Saudi Arabia where he finally died after many years. If Swami was anti-Muslim, why would he meet Idi Amin?

Dr. S. Radhakrishnan’s Tryst with Stalin

Dr. Radhakrishnan

In this context, I would like to recall a little known incident that highlights the importance of not demonising people, if one is interested in a healing process. This happened in the early years after World War II. The Cold War had been declared and the feeling of suspicion and hostility between the two superpowers was intense. Stalin was very much in the saddle and hated widely in the West and, I dare say, by many in his own country. He was a mystery figure, hardly seen in public, and he received practically no foreign dignitaries. All the ambassadors accredited to the Soviet Union had to deal solely with the Kremlin bureaucracy. Even the American Ambassador could not get an appointment with Stalin.

At that time, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan [Dr. SR] was India’s Ambassador in Moscow. For the record I must proudly state that Dr. SR was an alumnus of the college where I studied namely, the Madras Christian College. [Parenthetically I might add that in those days, there were very few colleges in Madras Presidency and everyone had to pass through just one of these half a dozen colleges!

So it is really no big deal that I studied where Dr. SR also did!]. Now Dr. Radhakrishnan was no ordinary person. An outstanding philosopher with international reputation, he was earlier the Spalding Professor of Philosophy in Oxford. He was an excellent speaker and the author of many books. There is today a road named after him in Madras city – if I am not mistaken, earlier it used to be called Edward Elliot Road.

One fine day, Stalin stunned the world by granting an audience to Dr. Radhakrishnan. The international press was agog with rumours as to what the dictator said to the professor and vice versa. What transpired between them was known only to the Kremlin and the South Block in Delhi [where the Prime Minister’s office is located]. To get on with the story, Dr. Radhakrishan was recalled after a time because he was being groomed for higher responsibilities. Incidentally, he later became the first Vice President of India and the second President of the Indian Republic.

Joseph Stalin

As Dr. Radhakrishnan made the standard farewell rounds in the diplomatic circles, he asked the Kremlin if he could pay a courtesy call on Stalin to say goodbye. Now protocol-wise, this was not required since Stalin was not the Head of State. However, he was the man who wielded power and Dr. SR thought may be he could take some sort of a message from Stalin to Nehru.

For those of you who do not know about the times, Nehru was the Prime Minister of India but he insisted on handling foreign affairs because that was his favourite subject. Moreover, Nehru took a neutral stand in Cold War, which made him unique in those days. Normally, Stalin never said goodbye to any foreign diplomat but in the case of Dr. SR he made an exception.

And so to Kremlin, the Indian Ambassador went, had tea with Stalin, exchanged pleasantries and when it was time to leave, he walked up to the Generalissimo and shook hands with him. And then he did something totally unthinkable. Dr. SR was a tall man while Stalin was quite short. Radhakrishnan just put his hand on the shoulder of Stalin – he was certainly elder in age – patted Stalin gently and said softly, “Don’t worry! Everything would be alright!”

Everyone present was absolutely shocked. This sort of thing was simply not done, not with Stalin in any case. Everyone was waiting for an explosion: How was Stalin going to react to this most presumptive gesture? Do you know what happened? Stalin actually broke down and began to cry!

It was Dr SR’s turn now to be totally surprised. With deep distress he asked, “Have I done anything wrong? If so, please forgive me. I am extremely sorry,” and so on. Wiping his tears Stalin said, “In all these years, you are the first person to treat me as a human being.” This is the point I was trying to get to.

You see, we have today many who are demonised by a section of the world opinion. This is nothing new and goes back a long time ago in history. Yes, there have been characters that have been utterly cruel and ruthless. They have been roundly condemned and rightly so, and in many cases, even been brought to justice. But hardly has anyone seriously examined the past histories of such people. I raise this point for an important reason. Many psychiatrists have carefully studied the cases of criminals sentenced for brutal acts and so forth. Often they find that the seed for such behaviour was sown much earlier during the childhood period when these criminals were themselves brutalised. In other words, frequently, it is denial of love that young people are desperate for that often shapes the destiny of such unfortunate individuals. What I am trying to say is: Who knows how different the history of the world might have been if Stalin’s childhood had been full of love?

Just imagine what is happening in hundreds of thousands of homes right now, all over the world. Husband and wife in bitter conflict, husband being violent to his wife or the wife demolishing the husband with her domineering, children subject to constant scenes of hate and violence; who knows how many criminals, gangsters, and even dictators are being shaped right now by poverty of love when love is most needed?

Only the Sick Need to See a Doctor

Haraldur Erlendsson makes the allegation that black-marketers come to see Swami. There are some subtleties that one must bear in mind in this context. I remember Swami Himself saying something about this when one day many years ago, He was talking to students about His first ever visit to Gujarat. He said that He was accused of receiving many people who were notorious for shady business practices; commenting on this Swami said, “When I was told about this I said, ‘Yes, I did grant interview to many such people. But why do you automatically assume that by doing so I am approving of what they are doing? You know, it is only sick people who call on doctors, not the healthy ones. I am a spiritual doctor; is it any wonder that people with moral sickness are, unknown to themselves, drawn to Me? Have not in the past, people known to be imperfect changed for the better when they were given good advice? What is wrong with giving good advice to those who seek it?’”

Indeed, and I have myself seen Swami chiding some businessmen, advising them to resort to ethical practices, and warning them that they would be denied access if they persisted with their bad habits. Sure enough, this did produce a change in them; and those who did not follow the advice, lost their access.

Another complaint that Haraldur Erlendsson has is: “Farmers are committing suicide all over Andhra; why does not Sai Baba do anything about it?” If problems are what one is looking for, this country is full of them, from North to South, from East to West. Many of these problems are terrible, and even gruesome. Yes, they do need attention and society must do something about them. But is Sai Baba supposed to be the “fix-it-all person”, who takes care of all problems everywhere? To expect Him to do so would be to completely misread the purpose of the Divine Incarnation.

For the benefit of many young devotees who have not had enough time to get acquainted with Swami, His Message, and the purpose behind His different projects, I would like to make a few points clear. Let me start with Swami as a Teacher. Good teachers everywhere, and indeed at all times, train students in facing the problems of life, helping them to acquire the tools they need for doing so. Even specialised education is based on such an approach. Medical schools train students to become doctors and heal patients. Law schools train students to go out into society and help the public with their legal problems, and so on.

In the same way, a Spiritual Teacher, at least in India, always focussed on helping disciples to discriminate between the transient and the eternal, and adhere always to the path of Sathya and Dharma. Swami does all this, and adds, “Dear one, it is all very simple really. Just be utterly selfless and most loving in all that you do; you would then be automatically adhering to the path of Truth and Righteousness. It is following Dharma that would help you to radiate Prema, and when that happens, there would be less trouble in your neighbourhood. If more and more people do this, there would be fewer problems in the world.”

In other words, Swami has made Prema the anchor for modern times – Love is His life and also His Message. Yes, He does deal with a few specific problems just to demonstrate to us how Love can and does solve problems. However, problem-solving is not His Mission. A teacher only teaches how to solve problems; he does not go around solving all problems under the Sun; it is as simple as that, but detractors do not seem to understand even these basics.

This article has five parts:
Part 1	Part 2	Part 3
Part 4		Part 5

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