If proof were needed of the guru-devotee relationship (see Amin's Sai Baba picture on his wall!)and its warmth, this original 1968 photo in
Kampala helps provide it. Sathya Sai Baba has repeatedly recounted his meeting with Idi Amin in what can only be called 'glowing terms'
The myth about Amin in the Sai movement, told me many times when I was
the national leader for Norway in the Sathya Sai Organisation for close
on 18 years, was that Sai Baba had gone to stay with a Mr. Patel and
not least so he could meet Idi Amin and tell him to postpone the extradition
of asians (mostly Indians) from Uganda for one year. It was said that
those few Indians who were devoted heeded Sai Baba's alleged warning
to them and supposedly left without losing their possessions, others
left later and lost most or all they had. However, this does not fit
with the dates or any know facts at all. There is no reliable testimony
to support the story
nor could I get any sensible, consistent
answers from some Indians who were Sai followers whom I met in London
in the 1980s who had fled Uganda.
Sathya Sai Baba visited Amin in 1968, while he was head of the Ugandan Army
and a well-known figure, but this was about three years before Amin
came to power and so was in any position to do expel the Asians! Not
long after he usurped power in a
military coup did Amin suddenly announce
that he would send all Indians packing from Uganda within 90 days, causing
untold sufferings to many of them. He famously claimed that
God had
instructed him to do this in a dream! Sai devotees who dream frequently
of Sai Baba have not commented on this, and one may guess why! The rumours
about Sai Baba's intervention and Amin's postponement of the event is
yet another of the many myths and stories which multiply and spread
around Sai Baba [and very often by him in the privacy of interviews]
by his blind believing followers. The following account shows what kind
of person Sathya Sai visited and makes so much of...
Sathya Sai Baba was Amin's guru In a discourse held on Christmas Day (2007) - of
all days - Sathya Sai Baba chose to talk was most affirmatively about his meetings with the despot and Dictator Idi Amin. His servile propagandist G. Venkataraman - who ought
to have known better - blithely overlooked Idi Amin is known world-wide as a most gruesome murderer who was a major philanderer (even had 'extra' wives with him
when Sai Baba met him!), One can see the man himself tell how he knew who to
eliminate among his opponents.
See Idi Amin proclaim himself and how his actions
are God-directed -
on video here (3Mb Windows media)
Idi Amin and the Indian Community in Uganda The myth about Amin in the Sai movement, told me many times when I was
the national leader for Norway in the
Sathya Sai Organisation for close
on 18 years, was that Sai Baba had gone to stay
with a Mr. Patel and
not least so he could meet Idi Amin and tell him to postpone the extradition
of asians (mostly Indians) from Uganda for one year. It was said that
those few Indians who were devoted heeded Sai Baba's alleged warning
to them and supposedly left without losing their possessions, others
left later and lost most or all they had. However, this does not fit
with the dates or any know facts at all. There is no reliable testimony
to support the story
nor could I get any sensible, consistent
answers from some Indians who were Sai followers whom I met in London
in the 1980s who had fled Uganda. Nonetheless, The Sathya Sai Organization has spread the 'story' of Sai Baba's visit to Amin as if it showed Sathya Sai Baba in a good light, as if his association with Amin had some good effect on him. It certainly did not, as history has recorded what subsequently occurred.
Sathya Sai visited Amin in 1968, while he was head of the Ugandan Army
and a well-known figure, but this was about three years before Amin
came to power and so was in any position to do expel the asians! Not
long after he usurped power in a military coup did Amin suddenly announce
that he would send all Indians packing from Uganda within 90 days, causing
untold sufferings to many of them. He famously claimed that God had
instructed him to do this in a dream! Sai devotees who dream frequently
of Sai Baba have not commented on this, and one may guess why! The rumours
about Sai Baba's intervention and Amin's postponement of the event is
yet another of the many myths and stories which multiply and spread
around Sai Baba [and very often by him in the privacy of interviews]
by his blind believing followers. Alexandro Agnostelli of Argentinian TV wrote: "In 1968 Baba traveled out of India for the first and only time: he traveled to Uganda to visit a devotee whom he anointed as a chosen man of God. The chosen – Idi Amín Dadá, better known as “the African Hitler” – gave Sai Baba a gift of a Mercedes Benz loaded with gold."
Amusing fact about the Queen of England's who, unlike Sai Baba, rightly abhorred Amin "1972, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the then foreign secretary, warned of the difficulties of the Queen being seen in the company of a “Commonwealth head of government known to be a murderer”. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/10540082/The-Queens-plot-to-bash-Idi-Amin-over-the-head-with-a-pearl-sword.html
"In 1972, he expelled virtually the entire Asian population, including about 50,000 Indians, saying he had been ordered by god to do so in a dream. He also usurped the business and wealth of the Indians, many of whom were traders, leading to the country's economic collapse." (The Hindu)
Idi Amin A Gentleman?
Reporting on Sathya Sai Baba's - so-called 'Christmas discourse' of December, 2006, Dr G. Venkataraman, second-in-command of his worldwide organisation, refers to one of the world's most gruesome men, the heartless African dictator, as "Mr Idi Amin".
At this URL, Dr G. Venkataraman speaks of how thrilling was Sai Baba's account in this 'Christmas' 2006 discourse of his 1968 visit to Uganda! But oh, what an inspiring figure was Idi Amin to refer to in a Christmas message! In case G. Venkataraman or anyone badly informed of Idi Amin's evil deeds and regime, here and here are BBC reports at the time of his death in August 2003 and a list of resources.
This strange Sai Baba 'Christmas'! discourse can be found here. In it, Sai Baba speaks as though the meeting with Idi Amin, one of the world's worst dictators, torturers and murderers, was a moving, warm and delightful event. Sai Baba has said that, in his own lifetime, he will clean up his "own backyard" (India). Unfit and pathetically doddering (though he promised he would never after 60), he has abjectly failed to do that, just as he certainly didn't clean up Idi Amin or Amin's Uganda in which this monster - for all his weeping devotion to Sai Baba - slaughtered an estimated 400, 000 people.
Happy to refer to the raping, cannibalistic Idi Amin as 'Mr', G. Venkataraman is also happy, elsewhere, to label Sai Baba dissenters as akin to the demon in the Krishna story called Jarasanda. He adds: "it was finally left to the hefty Pandava Bhima, to tear Jarasanda to pieces, literally". Indeed, should former devotees prefer to be left to a tearing-to-pieces by the likes of Idi Amin, who delighted in feeding enemies to crocodiles, or of G. Venkataraman with his gleeful wish-list for the fate of those who question his 'God'.
Or Is Dr Venkataraman Stupendously Naive? We should consider that despite his words about Sai Baba's visit to Uganda, it may be that G. Venkataraman, when not slavishly "thrilled" by his God's more ratty - perhaps age-induced - effusions, is incredibly naive rather than that he would approve of a wife-refrigerating, raping, mass-murdering, torturing monster who, though in a far smaller killing field, was in a number of ways akin to Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and so on. Is Dr G. Venkataraman so ill-informed about world events that he assumes Amin really was a marvellous devotee, as would many readers of Sai Baba's discourse? Is Venkataraman equally naive as not to know what is common knowledge among VIPs and many ashram residents - that is, the dark truth of the allegations against Sai Baba?
G. Venkataraman was also the Vice-Chancellor of Baba's University at Puttaparthi and, given his high-profile international role, he certainly has a duty to non-defensively, properly investigate the status of the allegations, as do all leaders of responsible organizations.
Would Sorely Afflicted Students and Ex-Students Trust Ex-VC Venkataraman? He speaks of how no students have reported abuses to him. This looks very like a digression to avoid admitting what he must know about the matter, But why would they dare want to tell him, given his slavish utter loyalty to Sai Baba? Students were murdered in Sai Baba's bedroom! But what good would it do for Venkataraman to ask his Lord and Master about such circumstances?
However, parents and students-ex students are not so quiet when it comes to sharing with religious and other institutional heads in India their horror stories of abuse at the hands of Sai Baba and others around him. Let readers enquire of senior leaders of noted religious organizations in India which, over the years, have been a compassionate haven for those with accounts of abuse by Sai Baba. Of course, yet again, this information (still protecting the identities of those attesting individuals) we are prepared to share, and have long shared, with bona fide third-party investigators.
[from Barry Pittard on Sathya
Sai Baba's Deputy Head, Dr. G. Venkataraman, who speaks of 'Mr. Amin']
The following account shows what kind
of person Sathya Sai visited and makes so much of...
Trevor Grundy of the Daily Telegraph wrote: http://ismaili.net/timeline/2002/20020802dt.html
During the early hours of Saturday August 5, 1972, General Idi Amin, Life President of Uganda, Conqueror of the British Empire and the Last King of Scotland, had a dream. Still in his pyjamas, the
six-foot three-inch former British Army sergeant called some of his senior military advisers into the State House in Kampala and told them that God had ordered him to expel the Indian/Asian community. That morning in Nairobi, I and other editors of the tabloid newspaper The Nation read the first news agency reports describing how The Almighty had also ordered Amin to take over Asian-owned hotels, mills, breweries, sugar refineries and cotton factories.
In Amin's dream, God told the general to nationalise all of the houses and flats owned by Uganda's 80,000-strong Indian community, made up of Hindis, Muslims and members of the Aga Khan's small but wealthy sect, the Ismailis. The Ugandan Life President gave non-citizens just 90 days to leave the country.
That same day, 18 leaders of the Indian community - wealthy, usually optimistic men - were summoned into Amin's awe-inspiring presence. They shook their heads in disbelief when they heard what he had to say. They had all "milked the Ugandan cow without feeding it", and had ripped off the economy by sending millions of Ugandan shillings to relatives in Britain. They should make plans to get all the members of their universally detested community out of the country by November 9. "If you don't go by then," Amin told them, "I will make you feel as if you are sitting on fire."
In Nairobi, the mood among Kenya's much larger and even more powerful Indian community was of good-humoured incredulity. Weren't Ugandan asians Idi Amin's best friends? He had said so dozens of times since overthrowing the quasi-Marxist President Milton Obote the year before. In January 1971, Ugandan asians had joined hands with blacks and whites and danced in the streets of Kampala when they heard that the "Redeemer" Amin had ended the corrupt and always menacing rule of Obote.
The day after Amin's thunderbolt announcement,
I joined a close Ismaili friend, who worked as an accountant at
The Nation, a paper owned by the Aga Khan, for a family picnic. Mansoor
told me that Idi Amin was so erratic, he would probably retract his
expulsion order within a few days. "He has probably had a row with
the British High Commissioner, Richard Slater," he suggested. "He
was probably rejected by some Indian beauty and wants his own back,"
said Mansoor's wife, as we laughed and enjoyed our picnic.
But Idi Amin was in no mood to retract a single word. On August 9, he
appeared on television to tell the Asian community that even Indians
with British passports must leave within 90 days. They included teachers,
doctors, nurses, business leaders, lawyers, building contractors and
the men and women who ran the twin pillars of the Ugandan economy -
agriculture and tourism.
"asians," he said, in front of a sea of beaming black Ugandans,
most of whom wore military uniforms, "have kept themselves to themselves
and as a community have refused to integrate with Africans. Their main
interest has been to exploit the economy. They have been milking our
economy for years and now I say to them all - Go!"
"I consider myself the
most powerful individual in the world" Idi Amin
But Idi Amin was a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, who claims to be the
Creator of the Whole Universe?
Idi Amin's famously self-awarded title [plus decorations] was: "His
Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin, VC,
DSO, MC, King of Scotland Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and
Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General
and Uganda in Particular"
Footnote:Trying to escape the facts, without success The pro-Sai libelers CO2000 (Lisa de Witt of Arizona) and the untrustworthy 'Joe108' who is Gerald Moreno of Las Cruces, New Mexico, tried to avoid the key facts and the above issues by making a big thing out of the composite nature of the image wherever they can, calling it a 'false picture' etc. - but in fact it is an excellent figurative representation of the actual situation. They also ignored the blog where the image was shown with the caption THIS [MANIPULATED] IMAGE INDICATES THE ACTUAL RELATIONSHIP (see here). The impostor Gerald Moreno, who actually wrote under the name of sathyasaibaba on his wordpress blog, himself manipulated images (here is his most vulgar masterpiece where he hid behind the names Equalizer and Premaperme) http://sanjaydadlaniexposed.blogspot.com/2005/12/dadlani-likes-merged-images-me-too.html and distorting people's faces! With their agenda of total denial of every single fact they wished to avoid, the mendacious pair relied almost entirely on tendentious side-issues, baseless slurs, and untrue claims as the backbone of their obsessive denial agenda.
1) Print this Page 2) Use right click here - then 'Open page in new window' to translate
Return to index menu
.