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2.3 Sathya Sai, Sects & Sociology
WHAT has sociology or the social sciences to do with the sciences of the spirit
or the inquiry into the human spirit? This is a question that is commonly raised.
So too, many do ask: What has the spiritual student and saadhaka (spiritual aspirant)
to do with society and its problems? It must be said, that both these attitudes are wrong.
1
In this section I will focus upon a number of scholarly articles that explore socio-
logical aspects of, or present sociological explanations for, Sathya Sai Baba’s divine
persona. The issue of Sathya Sai Baba’s sectarian alignment, which I have already
touched upon, looms large in these. In 1982, Raymond Lee published the first of a
series of sociological studies of the Sathya Sai Baba movement in Malaysia. Lee
(1982:131) has little to say about Sathya Sai Baba in himself, but he does note the
presence of allegations of sexual abuse dating back to 1977—and that this has
been a big issue for the movement in Malaysia. He further writes that in a cam-
paign to discredit Sathya Sai Baba, ensuing from such allegations, some former
devotees have attempted a ‘re-examination of the Hindu scriptures to highlight the
assumed contradictions in Sai Baba’s claim that he is a joint incarnation of Shiva
and Shakti’—specifically: ‘Because there is little avatar doctrine in Shaivism, some
members have capitalised on this to point out to Shaivite devotees that Sai Baba’s
claim is invalid’. Evidently, the (supposedly) Śaiva background of Sathya Sai
Baba’s identification of himself as an avatar is more than merely a matter of aca-
demic debate; there is confirmation for us here that the details of Sathya Sai Baba’s
avatar claim have a bearing on the ongoing controversies surrounding him.
Sociologist Donald Taylor (1986:85), writing on the Sathya Sai Baba movement
in the UK, states that: ‘The movement seems to have appealed to South Indian and
Sri Lankan Saivites rather than Vaishnavites’—in accordance, he says, with ‘the
fact that he had claimed to be the incarnation of Shiva-Shakti who would not be
recognized as the supreme deity by Vaishnavites’. This, however, is problematic—
for, as we have seen, and will further see, Sathya Sai Baba very much also, indeed
even predominantly, presents himself as the supreme deity in Vaiṣṇava terms. In-
deed, Taylor (1986:92,n2,86) himself qualifies his claim by noting that:
The reasons why Sathya Sai Baba became popular among South Indians are com-
plex… there is probably an element of ethnic pride involved. Sathya Sai Baba is a
Telugu speaker and is regarded as a South Indian rather than a North Indian, so his
appeal would be to South Indians generally.
Furthermore, he goes on to write of Sathya Sai Baba’s following that ‘it was not
1
Sathya Sai Baba (1-3-1974) http://www.sssbpt.info/ssspeaks/volume12/sss12-29.pdf [1-5-2007]
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confined to these alone, and gradually devotees were to be found from a broad
spectrum of Indian immigrants’.
Taylor (1987a:122,131) elsewhere cites Sathya Sai Baba’s ‘announcement that
he was the universal god, so that devotions made to any form of godhead in the
universe eventually came to him’ (see p.148 below), suggesting that ‘Sai Baba ad-
vanced this claim in 1968, at a time when the movement was expanding into for-
eign countries, such as the United States, Australia, and Britain’. But Sathya Sai
Baba’s statement, I would note, is a close paraphrase of a claim attributed to Kṛṣṇa
in the Bhagavad-Gītā (see p.148 below). And, since, as we will see, Sathya Sai
Baba made several statements portraying his identity in Vaiṣṇava terms (and espe-
cially aligning himself with Kṛṣṇa) well before the time of the expansion of his
movement, his more dramatic statement here can hardly be seen as presenting
much of a disjunction with the earlier stages of his career. Indeed, Taylor
(1987a:123) himself acknowledges something akin to this—albeit that he does not
pick up on the parallel to the Bhagavad-Gītā. He writes that Sathya Sai Baba’s:
claims… were made within the framework of Hindu belief. Even the assertion to be
the incarnation of the universal god forms part of [Neo-]Hindu claims about itself
[sic] (that it is the oldest religion, hence the source of authority for all other relig-
ions in the world). And these claims were accepted by his followers on traditional
grounds legitimated by the sanctity of eternity.
Another example of this comes via a passage that Taylor (1987a:122) cites (with-
out comment) in which Sathya Sai Baba defines sixteen ‘marks’ of the avatar:
control over the five elements (earth, air, fire, water, and space); control over the
five motor organs of the body; and control over the five sensory organs of the
body… the triple powers of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.
Srinivas (2001:298) connects this with Sathya Sai Baba’s alignment of himself with
Kṛṣṇa as a ‘purnavatar’ (a “full-avatar”)
2
, concluding that: ‘for this reason …it is
difficult to unambiguously state that Baba’s dominant identity is with Siva, as has
been done by other scholars’.
As we will also see (p.331), Sathya Sai Baba claims to have preached universal-
ist ideals from the earliest stages of his mission—even before he made his claim to
be Sai Baba. And this further undermines the validity of Taylor’s suggestion that
Sathya Sai Baba substantially modified his views to cater to the expansion of his
movement into other countries. The same holds true of some ideas presented by
Srinivas (1999b:95-96) that closely parallel Taylor’s reasoning:
2
See p.121 (cf. p.228) below.