Sathya Sai Organisation - features summarised

SUMMARY OF MAIN FAILINGS AND DECEPTIONS OF THE INTERNATIONAL SATHYA SAI ORGANISATION

by Robert Priddy - founder member and former leader of the Norwegian Sathya Sai Organization between 1983 and 2000

I can attest from my long experience as the National leader in Norway of the Sai Organisation that there are many good and doubtless well-intentioned persons who are members of the Sathya Sai Organization or who work for it or within it, without realising its true nature and without having been able to access the facts about it and Sathya Sai Baba's many nefarious and deceptive activities. This is because he is so well protected at the highest levels in the Indian government and so is altogether extremely difficult to investigate. The followers are mostly not responsible for - or aware of - most of the following facts, it is the top leaders and passive office-bearers who have the responsibility for the situation and the secrecy and unaccountability - along with Sai Baba himself.

The Sathya Sai Organisation is entirely authoritarian in its Charter, directives and administration, with a top-down structure which allows of no critical feedback, however constructive. It excludes members who question anything seriously, especially the actions or words of Sathya Sai Baba. It exercises total censorship on all public meetings, publications, official websites and other media. It is unaccountable both as to finances, questions from members or outsiders and its policy is silence before all criticism. It systematically acts to covert up all untoward incidents at the ashram - suicides, deaths, sexual abuses, disappearances, as well as the many alleged sexual molestations and murder complicity of Sathya Sai Baba. The Sai Organisation and movement generally funnels massive donations and testaments worldwide to Sathya Sai Central Trust, which is wholly unaccountable, without published minutes or accounts. (see more on this here)

The Sathya Sai Organization promotes many grosss exaggerations (eg. membership and attendance figures in the Sai Organisation) and false propaganda repeatedly published by the Sai Organisation through many years are never corrected. It promotes huge and expensive building projects - often very wasteful and 'white elephant' showpieces simply to glorify Sathya Sai Baba. It supports and promotes publications of pro-Sai books, journals, newspapers, films, tapes, internet sites etc. which often present totally unchecked accounts of amazing miracles, healings etc. as if they were all real events, however fantastic. The organisation promotes a voluntary system of value education (under the names Educare and/or Education in Human Values') which - though laudable in its aims, is based on an absolutistic set of values as 'divinely-instated' by God qua Sai Baba. These are largely simplistic and limited to represent fundamentalistic religious moralism, indirectly to promote Sai Baba's esoteric cultist teaching. (See more here)

The monolithic and hierarchical structure of the Sathya Sai Organisation model reflects the patriarchal and class-ridden culture of underdeveloped India. Most well-qualified persons with experience of democratic values in modern management principles leave after some time.

The Sathya Sai Organisation's main function is evidently the channeling of funds to the Sathya Sai Central Trusts, even though the collection of monetary donations is formally against the regulations of the SSO and is actually seldom openly allowed except among members. Neither entrance money nor membership fees of any kind are allowed, but many centres operate with pledges of monthly financial support from members. However, the SSO provides a very broad network which functions as a channel for money and property from those who wish to donate, so providing a very wide catchment area among followers worldwide. (See more here)