ROBERT PRIDDY REBUTS ASIAN VOICE ARTICLE

Unfortunately there are a number of serious errors in the article New Allegations of Abuse Against Sai Baba, written by Payal Nair which recently appeared in the London-based paper, Asian Voice For example, that John Lennon was ever a follower of Sathya Sai Baba is ridiculous. It is a fact that he and Yoko Ono visited the ashram, but the American lady of Indian origin who was given the job of chaperoning them there, Indra Devi, had never heard of them! She kept mistakenly calling John, 'Mr. Lemon'. They never even saw Sai Baba from a distance and left in a bad mood, Indra Devi reported in her hagiographic book, Sai Yoga, published in the early 1980s by the Sai Publications and Books Trust, Puttaparthi, India.

It is technically correct to say that Sai Baba's ashram is said to be visited by more than is the Vatican in Rome. However, this is what devotees say, repeating Sai Baba's own boast that 3 million attended his 70th birthday celebrations. However, the ashram engineer, Mr. Ashok, told people that the maximum capacity of the entire arrangement was 300,000. On the main day, everyone who could walk or crawl was in the Hillview stadium, which was only 3/4 full. It has a capacity of maximum 250,000. Now the crowds at St. Peters on annual occasions far, far exceed those numbers. To see the crowd filmed at Mecca on international news media, allegedly 3 million, was to see a vastly greater number than at Sai Baba's biggest event (70th birthday). I was there and estimated the numbers myself. The photographs and films of the Sai crowd can be examined and compared by anyone who doubts this simple fact. It is all a case of the massive totally-positive propaganda and systematic misinformation sent out by ashrams for many years and by the Sathya Sai Organisation (within which I was a national leader for the best part of two decades, in Norway).

Bill Clinton was most certainly never a follower of Sai Baba, there is no shred of evidence anywhere to support this. However, Hillary Clinton was said to be intending to visit Sai Baba (a persistent rumour in Sai circles) during a visit she made to South India in the late '90s when she travelled from Chennai to Bangalore. However, in the event she never went near the place. There is no evidence of her being anything remotely like a Sai Baba follower either. Dr. Goldstein made the claim some time after Bush won the US election, that Al Gore was a follower who would make an announcement supporting Sai Baba. Such an announcement never came, of course. Goldstein claimed this while being filmed in Argentina, where he tried to defend Sai Baba against similar serious sex abuse allegations from several other persons than the BBC interviewed.

Of famous people who have been to sit at the feet of Sai Baba, who Asian Voice did not mention, were Goldie Hawn, Stephen Segal and the Duchess of York. The persistent rumours among Sai followers that Prince Charles visited Sai Baba in secret have been refuted to journalists, such as Mick Brown, by his Press Officer and are totally unsupportable, since Charles was reported in the British press as having had an application to visit rejected by the ashram authorities. One of Sai Baba's closest attendants, the well-know Indian journalist V.K. Narasimhan, told the undersigned that he had been handed a letter by Sai Baba from Charles to which he was told to reply. Narasimhan scoffed at the idea that Charles had ever met Sai Baba.

As to the refutations of the allegations by diverse followers (none of whom, incidentally, have been able to monitor Sai Baba in his bedroom which he is well known to share with several college boys every night) nor young men in interviews, since I have seen a number go in for longish periods quite alone behind a closed door. The extent and number of the allegations is legion and the circumstantial and corroborative evidence is massive. Extensive documentation can be examined on my website at http://home.no.net/anir/Sai/enigma/SaiSex.htm to one's heart's content. The truth about Sai Baba is not popular with Sai followers, we see from the comments published!