Refuting Deceptive 'News' About Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba Released On Anti-Sai Websites
JUNE 2005
A Visual Guide:
- The Article Is True Or Mostly True And Seems Sincere.
- The Article Has Truths And Untruths And Seems Insincere.
- The Article Is False And Has No Proof To Support It.
- The Article Is Fluff, Filler Stuff, Not Relevant.
SATHYA SAI BABA NEWS (With Updates And Comments):
Memorandum to the Home Minister of Andhra Pradesh on Sathya Sai Baba
http://home.hetnet.nl/~ex_baba/engels/shortnews/memorandum.html
Comment: This is a screen capture to the Indian Skeptic magazine, which is addressed to Basava Premanand. It says, in part:
"We called on the home minister Mr. K. Janareddi on 2 feb in Secretariat and submitted a memoradum asking him to revive criminal cases against Sai Baba, Kalki Baba, christian faith healers, and other babas and maathas in the state"
Sri K. Jana Reddy is the Andrah Pradesh Minister for Home, Jails, Fire Services and the Sainik Welfare project.
This article also makes reference to "A. P. Rajan" and "Lokendar Sarma", who were allegedly police officers who allegedly submitted a report on the police shootings that occurred in June of 1993. The article stated:
"The reports of Mr. A P Rajan and Lokendar Sarma, police officers who investigated and submitted report on murders in Satya Sai Ashram were to be revealed and action should be followed up."
Their names are not mentioned on the F.I.R., the Remand Report, the Writ Petition, Police Reports, Court Records or any other Reports! There is no supporting information or documentation to substantiate the claim that these two police officers ever submitted any sort of report about the 1993 police shootings. Nor is there any evidence that these two alleged police officers even exist!
Basava Premanand, FARA Members and Anti-Sai Activists have not been able to provide any evidence that any report was ever submitted (to whom?) about the 1993 police shootings. They also fail to provide any information about these alleged police officers. Which police department did they work for? In which state? Why and how were they involved in the investigation? When did they allegedly write and submit their alleged report? To whom was their alleged report submitted? These are all unanswered questions.
For the full article, from the Indian Radical Humanist Association, Click Here. More unsubstantiated claims by Anti-Sai Activists and Anti-Sai Atheists and Radical Rationalists. I also emailed Dr. Innaiah with these questions and he refused to respond. It is also amusing to point out that the webmaster to ExBaba.com (who publishes these articles on his website) is a Christian. The people who publish and contribute to the "Indian Skeptic" believe that Jesus was a fraud magician! I guess when it comes to Sathya Sai Baba, any ends justify the means.
Religious survey shows the Sathya Sai Organisation's membership in Denmark is halved
http://home.hetnet.nl/~ex_baba/engels/articles/surveydenmark.html
Comment: This is another speculative and misleading article written by Robert Priddy in which he cited a survey printed in the Denmark Newspaper, Kristligt Dagblad. Robert Priddy said:
"It reports a clear tendency that spiritual and philosophical movements like Theosophy, The Golden Circle, and Martinus study circles are in advance, while religious movements including the Moonies, ISKCON and the Sathya Sai Baba Organisation are in strong decline. On the other hand, about 2000 Danes attend study circles on Martinus' cosmology, as against 1200 ten years ago. The same applies to the Theosophical Society in Copenhagen, which registers a membership of 270, compared to 180 a couple of years ago. The number of those who dedicated their lives to the Hare Krishna movement has in the last 5 years sunk from 45 to 10. In the same period, the number of Sathya Sai Baba members has halved, from about 200 to 100. No mention is made, however, of what must surely be a main cause of disaffection by Sai followers in Denmark, where national TV showed the most revealing one-hour documentary 'Seduced by Sai Baba' on three occasions."
Robert Priddy (like the erroneous speculator that he is) thinks that the drop of Sathya Sai adherents was due to the Seduced Documentary. However, Robert Priddy failed to explain why the Hare Krsna movement experienced a 77% decrease, when no documentary was released about them! Click Here to view an article that shows the number of "dedicated followers" of Sathya Sai Baba to be one hundred, in 1996. This means that the number of Sathya Sai adherents in Denmark has remained constant for the past 9 years (despite fluctuations). The fact of the matter is that Denmark has always had low numbers of Hare Krsna's and Sathya Sai adherents. Click Here to view Religious Adherents in Denmark. The percentages are as follows:
- Evangelical Lutheran 95%
- Other Protestant and Roman Catholic: 3%
- Muslim: 2%
- Other: less than 1%
Consequently, Robert Priddy's comments about the drop of Sathya Sai adherents is another one of his conspiracy theories. The fact of the matter is that the drop of Sathya Sai adherents was due to a trend in religious attitudes, and has absolutely nothing to do with the Seduced Documentary (which was why the documentary was never mentioned in the article Priddy cited).
As a matter of fact, the article said:
"Prof. Margit Warburg (sociology of religion at Copenhagen University) says that the tendency the survey shows has been marked since the mid-90s. Warburg holds that the tendency reflects current Danish attitudes towards religiosity. Movements which allow one to select what suits oneself are on the increase, whereas new religious movements where one has to accept the whole set of dogmas and rituals are losing ground."
Clearly, this is indicative of trends among religious attitudes. Leave it up to Robert Priddy to try to skew the facts with his speculations and conspiracies, despite the fact that the number of dedicated Sathya Sai adherents followers has remained constant since 1996.
An Annotated Working Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba
http://home.hetnet.nl/~ex_baba/engels/shortnews/bibliography.html
Comment: In true Brian Steel fashion, these three voluminous pages (that deal with Sathya Sai Baba's "Annotated Working Bibliography") are not only poorly structured, difficult to navigate and impractical for all practical researching purposes, they are also biased and contradictory. There is also an abiding inconsistency in all of Brian Steel's arguments against Sathya Sai Baba. For example, click here to read how Brian Steel made a strong case against the integrity of the English translations to Baba's Telugu Discourses. Steel claimed that the English translations were "packaged, highly edited, polished, condensed, enhanced, inaccurate, distant, different, adorned, significantly added to, snipped and hybridized". After making this argument, Steel then uses these very same faulty English translations as accurate and literal references to what Sathya Sai Baba actually and literally said in Telugu! Most of Brian Steel's arguments and research are based on the English translations. Consequently, most of Brian Steel's points of contention are based on assumption and conjecture (since he does not speak, understand or write Telugu). Also, do not expect Brian Steel to reference this website in his biased "bibliography".
My View, the testimony from of Sri
http://home.hetnet.nl/~ex_baba/engels/witnesses/sri.html
Comment: The link does not work. It appears that the ExBaba website attempted to publish another anonymous article from an alleged "victim". Strange enough, Anti-Sai Activists think it is reprehensible when Pro-Sai Activists or Sai Devotees remain anonymous and refer to them as "cowardly creatures". The hypocrisy and double-standards never end with ex-devotees and critics of Sathya Sai Baba.