British Press reviews BBC

Other British Press reviews BBC ‘Secret Swami’ documentary

Sanjay Dadlani

Saiexposed420@yahoo.com

To the uninitiated, Sai Baba looks like a cheap trickster with a Jimi Hendrix haircut. He is, in fact, the most influential of India’s spiritual gurus. Politicians, peasants and Westerners, all mesmerised by his otherworldly charisma and propensity to manifest sacred rings out of nothingness, revere him as a God in human form. He might also, according to the allegations in tonight’s ‘The Secret Swami: This World’, be a serial abuser who preys on his young male devotees.

Tonight’s unsettling documentary is underpinned by the heartfelt testimony of an American family who once ran a spiritual community based on Sai Baba’s teachings. Alaya Rahm, the son of the family and now an adult, alleges years of systematic abuse by the man he was brought up to believe was God. All the time, his mother, flattered by Baba’s praise and gifts, was saying to him, ‘God is paying attention to us. Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it right.’ Those comments clearly break her heart now that she is convinced of Baba’s ‘betrayal’.

Baba has undoubtedly helped millions: In the ‘90s he piped clean water into Indian villages. The shared street taps are still in use. The rural poor, still grateful. Supporters such as Michael Goldstein, the international chairman of Baba’s organisation, deny the rumours: ‘I don‘t believe it’s possible that he could do anything like that. Baba’s also, with funding from Isaac Tigrett, the hippy-entrepreneur who founded the Hard Rock Café, built a 500-room hospital that provides free heart and kidney surgery. Assistant producer David Saville sums up the ethical conundrum thus: “The question is, do you let him get away with it for the greater good?’

As for Tigrett, some of his candid responses disarm, while others chill to the core. When asked whether he’d still admire Baba even if the charges of paedophilia were proven beyond doubt, he laughs before calmly explaining, ‘He could go out and murder someone tomorrow - it’s not going to stop my evolution…Absolutely, I believe there is truth to the rumours.’

‘Tigrett believes that every great person has a dark side,’ says Saville. ‘He says that if Jesus was alive he’d probably be an adulterer.’ It’s not quite the same thing, but on a certain level the comparison makes sense: ‘This has parallels with the oddity of following a man who was crucified on the cross,’ says Saville. ‘The difference is that Baba is alive and we can hold him morally responsible.’

What was it Van Morrison once said about no gurus? To the followers of Sai Baba, he’s a living god bringing clean water and salvation; to those who’ve fallen from his path, he’s a “Teflon God” an untouchable who’s abused both his power - and his young followers. This World sets out to uncover the real “face of God.”

To millions of believers in India and the West, swami Sathya Sai Baba is a living god, whose word is truth and whose actions are beyond question. Hugely influential and vastly wealthy thanks to a ceaseless flood of donations from devotees, his organisation has many outposts in Europe and North America. Sai Baba’s main centre of influence is still in India, at his ashram at Puttaparthi near Bangalore. A veritable city in miniature, the ashram has a permanent population of 10,000, boasts its own hospitals, schools, planetarium, and university and even its own international airport to cater for the three million pilgrims who visit every year. Tonight’s edition of BBC2’s new Correspondent-style foreign news strand is one of the first films to report from inside the famously media-shy ashram in years, on how a new round of sex abuse allegations against the great guru is being greeted by his followers.

On first impressions, you can understand why 30 million devotees in 165 countries think Indian guru Sai Baba has come up with the perfect religion. All he asks of his followers is that they are truthful, charitable, peace-loving and embrace other faiths.

If his acolytes happen to be impressionable young boys, all he asks is that they drop their pants, allow him to rub oil in their genitals while kissing them hard on the mouth. Understandably, this has caused consternation among some of his followers, not least from the Rahm family of Arkansas whose teenage son was ritually abused for several years by their so-called “living god”.

Sai Baba declared himself a deity at 14. While most people would be told to shut up and get on with their homework, strangely people believed him. His magic tricks are hailed as miracles by the crowds who flock to see him and now the 78-year-old pervert one of the most revered figures in Indian religion.

In this fascinating film, Tanya Datta travels to India and America to talk to survivors of the cult - including Isaac Tigrett, co-founder of the Hard Rock Café whose Love All, Serve All motto the company shares with Sai Baba.

THIS strand of documentaries has a record of impressive investigations from around the world. Tonight, it promises tough reporting and unique access from the Indian headquarters of the Indian leader Sathya Sai Baba. This charismatic ‘Teflon god’ is worshipped by Indian prime ministers and peasants, with western followers having included the likes of Hard Rock Café co-founder Isaac Tigrett. Yet tonight’s programme speaks to former devotees who suggest the ‘Godman’ is all too human. One recalls: ‘I remember him saying, if you don’t do what I say, your life will be filled with pain and suffering.’ Strange words from a guru of peace and love.

Indian guru Sai Baba calls himself a living god - he really believes he is a divine incarnation - and this belief is shared by 30 million devotees around the world. A family from Arkansas was among them, until the son told his parents that this living god forced him to have oral sex. The young man isn’t the only victim, yet his family came up against closed ranks when they tried to make their allegations. Whatever powers Sai Baba claims to have, he certainly has had the Indian government in his thrall for the past few decades.

India’s biggest spiritual guru, Sai Baba, looks like a cross between Liz Taylor on her way to rehab and a superannuated member of an acid rock band. And if you think that’s being rude, you should hear what Sai Baba allegedly gets up to with some of his younger male disciples. Sai Baba claims to be a living god, has brought clean water and healthcare to thousands and counts prime ministers and presidents among his 30 million followers. According to some disillusioned former devotees (and this film), he’s also an abusive old goat, who uses cheap stage illusionist tricks as “miracles” to spice up his bland , catch-all religious philosophy.

Sai Baba, an Indian mystic with 30 million followers worldwide, claims to be a living god. It is now alleged that he has been involved in the systematic sexual abuse of his disciples for years. According to a former follower: “The being which I called Sai Baba - the living god that I had taken into my heart - had been truly abusing my son for so long. I felt completely betrayed.” Responding to the claims is Isaac Tigrett, owner of Hard Rock Café, who made Sai Baba’s mantra Love All, Serve All as his corporate slogan. For him and other devotees, the allegations are simply a test of faith.

Frankly, in my view, anyone who seriously claims they are God is either a charlatan or a cheating South American footballer. And anyone who magics up gold rings and necklaces out of thin air is much more likely to be Paul Daniels than the Almighty.

So it is hard to imagine why people are so keen to fall at the feet of Sai Baba, an unlikely-looking guru who is scarcely five feet tall and sports a hairstyle which might have been created by sticking his toe in an electric socket.

But, amazingly, millions of people are devoted to him. Most are in his homeland of India, but he has followers all over the globe, from the humblest village dwellers to Isaac Tigrett, co-founder of the Hard Rock Café chain, who made Sai Baba’s mantra, “Love All Serve All” into a company slogan and sent it around the world.

Sai Baba’s claims to be a living God may be too far-fetched, but his organisation and followers have built hospitals and brought fresh-water supplies to impoverished parts of the globe, so where’s the harm?

Let Alaya, a young American man who is one of Sai Baba’s former followers, explain about a private meeting he had with the guru while a boy: “He took me aside and put oil on his hands and told me to drop my pants and rubbed my genitalia with the oil. Then he pulled me close and started kissing me hard on the mouth.”

And this is just one of the milder allegations of abuse. Sai Baba, it seems, has been doing this sort of thing for years, but no one ever dared question him (Alaya’s father, also a devotee, had the same thing happen to him - but thought it was part of the spiritual experience).

This revealing documentary talks to Sai Baba’s followers and his critics, including those who claim to have been abused by him - resulting in reporter Tanya Datta asking perhaps the most surreal question you’ll hear in a TV interview: “Why would God want to put his penis in your mouth?”

It paints a picture of a man who has been fooling people for a long time. He may not be all-seeing and all-knowing, like his fans believe, but he certainly knows the truth of the phrase “there’s one born every minute.”

If it is true that each age gets the god it deserves, and, furthermore, if Sai Baba, a self-declared living god, is really the one this age deserves, then we are clearly in worse shape than we thought. For all the manifest sincerity of their quest for spiritual enlightenment, in fact partly because of this sincerity and the openness that renders them utterly gullible, there is something faintly comical about westerners arriving in India and accepting spiritual guidance from the first dark-skinned person who declares him or herself to be divinely inspired. Were it not for the horrendous crimes of which he stands accused, Sai Baba would be a perfect example of this laughable phenomenon.

Sai Baba opened his first ashram in 1950 and since then his message - whatever it is, because in the film we learn mainly of his peculiar stunts and the serial assaults of which he stands accused - has attracted millions of adherents. It is said that the complex and very wealthy organisation built around him boasts upwards of 30m devotees around the world. Among these is Isaac Tigrett, one of the leading lights in the Hard Rock Café business who has ploughed tens of millions of dollars into initiatives that further the influence of Sai Baba.

Sai Baba’s chief talent appears to be his ability to materialise objects - and he is a notably materialistic guru - from magic dust to “gold” watches, which he presents as gifts to astonished audience members. But aside from the fact that he has reached a prominent position as a spiritual leader thanks to his conjuring skills, Sai Baba is allegedly given to subjecting some of his young male acolytes to a “ritual healing process” in which he rubs oil into their genitals. Those seeking a definition of denial should tune in to hear Tigrett insist that his devotion to his guru would be undiminished even it were proved beyond question that these accusations are well founded.

With hilarious regularity, American televangelists are revealed to have feet of clay - an illegitimate child here, a few million embezzled there.

It would certainly be possible to laugh at the Indian guru Sai Baba - although his message is worthy (if bland), his Western followers are the types who claim to have ‘met Sai Baba psychically 21 years before I met him physically’, his miraculous powers are sub-Paul Daniels and he bears an unnerving resemblance to Leo Sayer. Yet this is no barmy swami. His 30 million devotees view him as ‘God in human form, the avatar’. And while this godman’s claims are more serious than those of his American rivals, so are his alleged crimes.

According to past followers from the US interviewed in this BBC documentary, the guru sexually abuses his young male followers. Os, as the interviewer indelicately puts it: ‘Why would God want to put his penis in your mouth?’

Predictably, his followers and, more alarmingly, the Indian government, brush off such allegations angrily - so untouchable is Sai Baba that the gunning-down of four intruders in his rooms was swept under the carpet. More polemic than debate, but worrying viewing nevertheless.