From: "Frank Conlon" <conlon@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2011 3:40 AM
Subject: H-ASIA: Sathya Sai Baba, a preliminary obituary
> H-ASIA
> April 24, 2011
>
> A preliminary obituary for Sathya Sai Baba, noted Indian holyman
>
> (x-post RISA-L)
> **********************************************************************
> Ed. note: Very few scholars who have worked in or on modern India will
> not be familiar with the career of Sathya Sai Baba who attracted a world-
> wide following of devotees, and who was one of the significant
> constituents of modern Hinduism in contemporary India. Professor Tulasi
> Srinivas of Emerson College, who has published studies of Sathya Sai Baba
> and his movement, postedd a brief obituary notice for the RISA-L list and
> has kindly agreed to permit cross-posting on H-ASIA. FFC
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: Tulasi Srinivas <Tulasi_Srinivas@emerson.edu>
>
>
> Redeeming Faith: Sacred Life, Moral Death and Institutional Change in the
> Global Sathya Sai Movement
> Tulasi Srinivas, Emerson College
>
> April 23, 2011.
>
> According to news reports Shri Sathya Sai Baba, godman, guru, mystic,
> saint, and charismatic religious leader (Srinivas 2008) "passed away" or
> "died" today at 7.40 am Indian Standard Time at the Sathya Sai Seva
> Institute for Higher Medical Sciences in his home town of Puttaparthi in
> rural Andhra Pradesh in South India. As a devotee said to me in sadness
> "on this day of faith and remembrance--Easter Sunday--Bhagawan left his
> body". According to devotees Shri Sathya Sai Baba known as Bhagawan
> (God) attained Samadhi at his chosen time. The reports on Indian NDTV
> state that Shri Sathya Sai Baba's body will lie in state at his 100 acre
> ashram called Parsanthi Nilayam (Abode of Supreme Peace) for the
> estimated one million devotees (this is a conservative number) that will
> be expected to pay their last respects for two days and then he will be
> given a state funeral on Wednesday. His body will be interred in the Sai
> Kulwant darshan hall at Prasanthi Nilayam thereafter.
>
> Shri Sai Baba was admitted to the SSSIHMS Hospital on March 28, 2011
> suffering from what was termed "breathing difficulties" by doctors. He
> had a pacemaker installed and until April 7, 2011 seemed to be
> progressing fairly well. Thousands of devotees poured into Puttaparthi
> upon hearing of his illness and camped outside the hospital. The hospital
> director Dr. Safaya gave daily medical bulletins circulated by the Sathya
> Sai Trust on their official website for his global devotional base. A
> specialist doctor and devotee from the University of Southern California
> School of Medicine flew into Puttaparthi to be part of the team of
> doctors taking care of Sai Baba. On April 7, 2011 reports suggested that
> Sai Baba's heart and kidneys were being affected and on April 8th Dr
> Michael Goldstein the Chairman, Sri Sathya Sai World Foundation, as well
> as the Chairman, Prashanthi Council – the international body that
> oversees the activities of Sri Sathya Sai Organisations worldwide—gave a
> talk to devotees on the Radio Sai network about Sai Baba's health in
> which he exhorted devotees to pray that Sai Baba "would decide to remain"
> with them, his earnest wish. Devotees were worried and saddened by the
> urn if events but hopd that "Swami would cure himself" as they believed
> he had done in 1963 when he suffered a series of strokes and stated he
> had taken on the illness of a devotee. But by April 18th, 2011 it was
> reported that Sai Baba had suffered "multiple organ failure". The Andhra
> Pradesh government and the Chief Minister Mr. Kiran Reddy deputed the
> minister of Major Industries Geetha Reddy to take charge of the site and
> to oversee "the medical treatment being administered to Baba by the Sai
> Seva Trust" as they also closed travel to Puttaparthi and drew in several
> thousand police units from across the state to prevent "untoward
> incidents". Doctors indicated in the daily bulletin on April 21st 2011
> that Sai Baba was in an "extremely critical condition" giving the
> government, devotees and national politicians time to prepare. Devotees
> across the world gathered in Sai temples and centers to pray for a
> miraculous recovery and devotees in Puttaparthi took out a procession and
> led a day long chanting and singing of bhajans (hymns) for his health.
>
> Shri Sathya Sai Baba's life was extraordinary by any description. Born
> Sathya Narayana Raju to a poor peasant family on November 2, 1926, he
> became a nationally recognized guru and mystic who counted leading Indian
> politicians, sports figures and media celebrities as well as the poorest
> among his devotees. In 1940, he declared himself an "avatar," or
> reincarnation, of another Hindu holy man called the Sai Baba of Shirdi, a
> town in the western Indian state of Maharashtra who had died in 1918. In
> the 1960s and after, riding a wave of popularity in the West he became a
> celebrated global guru, often providing solace through his twice daily
> darshan (sacred sighting) to the tens of thousands of devotees,
> interacting with them, magically manifesting healing vibhuti ( sacred
> ash) or talismen for those who sought his blessings. Devotees scrambled
> to get a good seat during darshan often waiting hours in long queues
> enacting "proxemic desire" (Srinivas 2010). His devotional base grew to
> an estimated 20 million in 160 countries around the world and they were
> predominantly middle class and professional. Sai Baba used his enormous
> influence to harness this human power to do seva (charitable works)
> including raising money for educational institutions, hospitals to treat
> the poor and drinking water to parched rural districts in and around his
> home town. He grew the Sai Movement into a transnational phenomenon
> allowing people to remain in the faith they were born into yet offering
> them hope and solace as his devotees through a strategic set of embedded
> practices, multivalent symbols and ambiguous performances.
>
> But he was also the eye of the storm as controversy swirled around him.
> Skeptics and non believers accused him of being a "mere magician" and
> using presdigitation of trinkets and conjuring acts to increase faith in
> him. He never denied the magic but rather claimed that the talismen
> produced were magical merely a pathway for his larger maya (divine magic)
> of devotional transformation to occur. In the 1970s a Commission to
> investigate Miracles and other Superstitions was set up by Dr. H
> Narasimaiah, the Vice Chancellor of Bangalore University to investigate
> Sathya Sai Baba. The BBC documentary Sai Baba: Godman or Con man detailed
> the so called "tricks" but this did not deter devotees and followers.
> More recently ex-devotees and former devotees have accused Sathya Sai
> Baba and the Sai Trust of more serious infractions including
> embezzlement, fraud and sexual abuse of young boys which they claimed
> culminated in the death of four young men within the ashram in 1996. A
> series of films and internet websites detail these allegations. But
> neither Sai Baba nor the Trust were ever convicted of any wrongdoing.
> Rather Sai Baba and his devotees, on his behalf, claimed that he was
> vilified in the public arena by disaffected devotees. The Anti Sai
> movement has been appropriately silent about the current happenings in
> the ashram.
>
> His passing has brought the problem of transition and rationalization of
> charisma to light. Devotees asked that video bulletins of Shri Sathya Sai
> Baba's health be transmitted so that they could "see" that he was being
> looked after. Sai Baba's health has been an issue since he broke his hip
> six years ago and was confined to a wheelchair and started giving darshan
> in a porte chair and car. The Trust including Sai Baba's nephew R.J.
> Ratnakar and other core devotees has been reported to be holding high
> level meetings about finances and continuation. The estimated worth of
> the trust is thought to be $ 8.9 billion and so a great deal is at stake.
> Devotees meanwhile discuss Sai Baba's prophecy that he would be reborn as
> "Prema Sai" (the sai of love) and wonder about his next birth as they
> mourn the passing of "this body". For them he is a divine poorna avatar
> (incarnation) of God and therefore "all pervading and all knowing" and an
> embodiment of divine love.
>
> My own ethnographic work on the transnational Sathya Sai Movement over
> nine years has led me to a valuable and cherished group of friends and
> informants both within and without the community, whose sense of loss
> and pain both today and over the years I have come to respect. It is to
> them and for them I write this today.
> [With reporting from NDTV, Times of India, The Hindu, News of the World,
> The BBC, The Economic Times and the Straits Times]
>
> Tulasi Srinivas is the author of _Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization
> and Religious Pluralism Through the Sathya Sai Movement_, New York:
> Columbia University press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-231-14932-7.
>
> Tulasi Srinivas, Ph.D.
>
> Assistant Professor, Anthropology
> Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies and
> Department of Communication Studies
> Emerson College
> Boston, MA
> email: Tulasi_Srinivas@emerson.edu
> Vice-President, New England and Maritime Association of the American
> Academy of Religion (NEMAAR)
> Book review editor: Journal of Asian and African Studies
> Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization and Religious Pluralism Through the
> Sathya Sai Movement
> http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14932-7/winged-faith/reviews
>
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