Mr. V. Ramnath's ill-advised comments about Robert Priddy

An exposé friend forwarded to me a comment posted by my former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) acquaintance, V. Ramnath (known as 'Ramu') on a libelous pro-Sai website (see text of the comment at foot of this page). He states emphatically (but not 'clearly' as he claims) "I do not support any of his crazy and arrogant views or assumptions". My reports of Ramnath's statements were all recorded then by me at the time and are very accurate, to which my wife can bear witness. I am not surprised that he tries to distance himself from what he told me, but I note that he has not denied the factuality of any specific statement - otherwise he would have to lie outright, as both he and my wife (who was always a witness) very well know. I welcome this opportunity he has afforded me to set the record of our past connection straight.

Ramnath was a kind of government detective - then working as a 'Vigilance officer' in supervision of BEML of India - (Bharat Earth Movers Limited the Indian Administrative Service - IAS). He was considering retirement. To the pro-Sai website he writes: "Robert Priddy, the self - appointed detective of all that is wrong in the world excluding himself." However, I am concentrated almost entirely on correcting the facts in the Sathya Sai Baba issue and its background. Unlike him, I am a concerned citizen who came - despite 18 years of devoted service to Sathya Sai Baba's aims - to discover truly awful truths about his involvement in murders, later in serial sex abuses. I have written enough about my own faults here and there, and have since tried to make up for not realising - and even for successfully promoting - the huge abuse of faith Sathya Sai Baba practises and whose falsehood I had fallen for earlier.

Ramnath says he would like to dissociate himself from me altogether... while the fact is that my wife and I have wanted no association with him since 1996. Previously we had corrected his book about his 20 years of waiting for his one Sathya Sai Baba interview to try to save him from too much error, spelling faults and embarrassment (he published an acknowledgement to us) and we also found the publisher for him at last. However, when last my wife and I saw him in 1996. He got quite unpleasant towards me, and eventually even insulted my wife (in a letter, most unwisely), which is one good reason why I feel no special sympathy for him as I once did.

Unfortunately for Ramnath, should he wish to continue his calumnies, I have scans of numerous other notes taken almost verbatim after he spoke to my wife and I, and also his 1/2 kilogram of cantankerous and patronising letters and tracts written to me. If the detailed facts need to be exposed, a selection of these can be scanned and posted.  They reveal, as do his utterances (see below), a marked departure from some of the most basic teachings of his guru.

Ramanth writes: "Priddy is obviously an old bitter and frustrated man who is trying to gain some notriety before he kicks the bucket. Too bad none of his books sell! His unprovoked attacks on Baba on the internet has the sole objective of promoting sales of his boring books." I am not at all interested in the sale of my pro-Sai book 'Source of the Dream' [obviously], nor even of 'End of the Dream', which on request I gave B. Premanand a free hand to print and sell by taking my articles from the Internet. I reach a far greater public by the Internet, altogether hundreds of thousands of visitors to websites and blogs have already accessed my writings there. As to 'notoriety' (note my correct spelling) who after all would seek that?

Ramnath's connection with a "Sai VIP": In 1996 Ramnath took my wife and I to visit one of the members of the Advisory Council to the Sathya Sai Central Trust (in 1997), Mr. K. R. Prasad, an Income Tax Lawyer of Bangalore. His villa was large indeed, set amid garden grounds, but he was not at home. Mr. Prasad had told Ramnath a series of mostly unbelievable 'stories' about Sathya Sai Baba 'miracles', which Ramnath relayed to me. Mr. Prasad was instrumental in giving credence to the (obviously concocted) story that Sai Baba created a door by drawing one on the interview room wall, and then sending an Australian man back to his dying wife in Australia! [Note. My friend V.K. Narasimhan asked Sathya Sai Baba specifically about this when I referred it to him. The reply Narasimhan received was a blunt 'No comment', not a word more! So even he could not draw out Sai Baba on that one]. Ramnath was invited to lunch with Mr. Prasad when Sai Baba was to visit, as the Prasad family wanted his blessing for their son to study in California. After Ramnath watched Baba eat "heartily" from all the many dishes provided him, served by the son of the house, the son was denied the right to go to the USA. [We possess more material in Ramnath's own handwriting on this and many other 'sensitive matters'].

It is noteworthy that Mr. Ramnath also told us of a family he knew whose son they claimed had been sexually abused by the female principal of Sai Baba's Easwaramma Primary school in Puttaparthi, Mrs. Munni Kaul, which has since been backed up by other testimony including claims that she groomed or provided young boys for Sathya Sai Baba's sexual enjoyment.

Before I get down to further business, I will say that - despite his unbalanced attack on me - Mr. Ramnath is not all bad, not wholly incompetent, as some will think after reading his diatribe and other facts I shall present here. He has had a tragic life and cannot help his blind and desperate clinging to Sai Baba. For example, he thinks he was resurrected from the dead after a major jeep accident he had because he had somehow been certified dead before being treated and operated on numerous times. Sathya Sai baba had not confirmed to him that this was so. Besides, he has done some good things in his work, I know, such as in helping trap some of the many embezzlers who flourish in Indian affairs, and his work exposed him to considerable risk on at least one occasion. He also has shown understanding for the governmentally-suppressed Kacha Naga tribe in Manipur State when he was the overseeing official in their area. He showed typically Indian hospitality to us and, in seeking to understand aspects of Indian culture, we thought it good to be able to get to know an upper middle class Indian better. Unfortunately, we were gradually less and less enamored as we got to know the man through two of our India visits involving weeks of close contact. As long as I saw eye to eye with him, he was not unfriendly, but his limited knowledge and understanding became in increasing hindrance to deeper agreement on various matters. It was hard to agree with him that ghosts are real phenomena, for example, but he was an adamant believer and told a lurid story of particularly one experience that had scared him greatly in Manipur. Further, he told us both that he firmly believes in black magic and claims to have paid a black magician to get advancement for his brother, and with success! (Is this a real Sathya Sai Baba devotee at work?). He also told us how he believes that powerful black Tantric magicians operate outside the ashrams of Sathya Sai Baba to entrap the unwary. He showed us a book of mantras he has which allegedly can enable one to achieving anything one desires (including murder and worse), which he believes is effective if one has the time and energy to repeat them enough. He also believes that Indian astrologers can predict with complete accuracy (this has been shown to be completely false, for example by Basava Premanand by getting the predictions of India's top 10 astrologers before the last election. Every one got major predictions completely wrong! See report from The Indian Skeptic). I think that all this reduces very considerably the credibility of Mr. Ramnath's own 'stories' about Sathya Sai Baba in his hagiography. As Ramnath writes: "I have been and will always be an ardent Sai devotee because my faith is based on my own direct experience of Baba" which shows how he lives far too much within his own narrow "personal experience" to be able to research anything at all. He makes clear that he intends to remain as blind and as deaf as the famous monkeys are, whatever the evidence!

Ramnath's anticipated delight in the misfortune of another: Schadenfreude: He repeatedly told us how very depressed and sad and lonely he often was. His few associates besides distant family members are mostly 'blind believers' (i.e. Sai devotees). This may be why he expresses ill-concealed pleasure at the misfortune he imagines for me: "Priddy is guilty of exploiting Baba by having himself cured of a spinal disease and now he is paying back Baba with this despicable conduct. How ungrateful can one get? What if Priddys spinal disease were to recur? Will he then go crawling back to Baba and beg for mercy? Or will he offer another 6000 english pounds(as he claims he did earlier) to the SSB trust ,as the price for divine grace?"

Mr. Ramnath seems to revel in the idea of my alleged 'spinal disease' recurring and seeing me "go crawling back to Baba and beg for mercy". That will certainly never happen! A troubled back is of far less consequence than risking a troubled conscience. But knowing Ramnath as I now do, it does not surprise me that he does himself so little credit. His suppositions that my spinal problems are a 'disease' is unfounded - the condition being due to spinal subluxations caused by an accident I had in childhood and other minor injuries later which cumulatively cause tendon and muscle stresses. My back problems have not worsened, and have even changed for the better recently. I did formerly think I had been helped by Sathya Sai Baba during my first visit to him in 1984/5 - also interpreting various dreams I had in that direction. However the improvement was temporary then and proved to be due to the climate and exercise that I would otherwise not have had, for the condition returned when I was back from India to the colder North. While I was a devotee, I hoped and fondly imagined that Sathya Sai Baba was taking care of my health, as he said he would to my wife. However, I no longer consider that was the case, having been awakened from my misplaced trust in him through many discoveries... not least since I began seriously to question his genuineness and found a great number of faults in his words and actions (which I have demonstrated in these pages).

Ramnath implies that Sai Baba sells healing for cash! Ramnath nastily implies that I paid Sathya Sai Baba £6,000 for a cure. So that is what this irrational man really thinks of Sai Baba! So much for his distorted devotion! Incidentally, the major sum of £6000 was earmarked for education on Sai Baba's own request and other payments were made on two different occasions - my latest calculation shows that it amounted to over £13,600.-, which is equivalent to more or less a million Indian rupess. I have documented most of this with bank details (see http://www.saibaba-x.org.uk/13/Donations/trust.htm). The suggestion Ramnath makes is that Sathya Sai Baba is venal, he can be bought. Though I never remotely considered buying my way into his favour, I now know that Sathya Sai Baba does give priviliges to persons who donate large sums, and eventually ignores most of those who do not contribute. (See, for example, the strange case of Mr. Sinclair - see Cash for honours)

Why be 'eternally' grateful for what is claimed to be a mere bagatelle for Sathya Sai Baba? As to my lack of eternal gratitude to Sai Baba, I was most probably mistaken in believing he had even partially cured me but, as typically many other of his devotees, I certainly did a lot of service in return! Besides, how much gratefulness would anyone owe to a person who claims he can do absolutely anything he wishes with total ease, but turns out to do very little really and yet receives much in return? When one is independent-minded enough to take in that he is not at all what he claims and is accused most substantially and widely of the worst of crimes, accomplice to murders and sexual abuses of young men and underage boys, then gratitude is totally misplaced! That Ramnath does not want to know the recorded facts about this just shows his fear of having to recant - and be ostracized by his few devotee associates and distant family. This is common to all 'true believer' devotees connected to such cults.

False accusation refuted definitively by documentation What made Mr. Ramnath say he "could not stand his arrogant neo-nazi views on India"? One major incident was when he got enraged and red in the face because I suggested in informal conversation in 1996 that India might be developing nuclear weapons secretly and may soon test one, as was common opinion to informed journalists outside India. He called me a CIA agent and railed on about Gandhi and Baba. It did not take long before his beloved countrymen exploded a series of nuclear devices in a clear threat to Pakistan, not without the obvious reply from that nation later. Ramnath's rhetoric "how cheap can an Englishman get?" reflects this mentality, which is pseudo-racist and ultra Indian-nationalist, blaming everyone else for India's current militaristic regimes, as Ramnath does. Long before 9/11 and Bush, he blamed the USA as exploiters supreme for all the ills of the world, especially India's! Without considering any other evidence, he blamed the continuing India-Kashmir-Pakistan entirely on the British, including its continuation now! He believed the USA and UK had an interest in sustaining the conflict. One would think an Indian government official would have learned a bit of genuine history, not just narrow and twisted nationalist propaganda. But Ramnath can hardly ever read a book, which puts him at some disadvantage

V. Ramnath's views on Hitler and more Ramnath himself holds views which I - and most informed people - consider to be neo-Nazi! He held forth to my Norwegian wife and I that Hitler and the Germans were no worse that Churchill and the British. He had once spent a year in Austria, learned some German, and spoke of the Nazis as if they were virtually innocent of the vastest atrocity in modern Western history! My wife were flabbergasted at his ignorant and totally one-sided and bitter views on the British. My opinion on both the Raj and the Reich have been on-line for over two decades http://home.no.net/rrpriddy/Nos/RajReich.htm and War Crimes and the Wehrmacht), which proves me pro-democratic and strongly anti-Nazi in all ways, and shows Ramnath is totally wrong however much he rejects my views "in the strongest possible terms"! I have colleagues and friends who can testify that I have a nuanced and largely well-informed view on India past and present. Meanwhile Ramnath has a partly ultra-nationalistic 'brown sahib' mentality. He admired the Indian national Army under Bose in the 2nd WW, which Gandhi and Nehru opposed as it would have brought India under the truly draconian colonial rule by the Japanese of that era. Incidentally, Nehru begged Lord Mountbatten to stay on after Independence and the Governor-General was lauded by gigantic crowds everywhere he went in India, which shows things were not as black and white as Ramnath always insisted to us. VKN laughed over Ramnaths' naivety when I mentioned it, for he admired Mountbatten (whom he admired) and Churchill - even though he had himself purposely gone to jail under the British long before the war. Ramnath also repeatedly expressed hate for the USA as a main cause of India's ills and considered Britain little better! I am far from being a supporter of US imperialism or British subservience to Bush - I even used to demonstrate against US policy when I was a student of Marxian and anti-imperialistic leanings.

Exploitation by Ramnath in his own home
Mr. Ramnath is an exploiter himself, for he had a poor immigrant young man from Nepal, Bahadur, as his lowly servant who did literally everything in the household, whom Ramnath made sleep on his hard kitchen floor without a covering and work hard for a pittance, shopping, cooking, cleaning and doing every physical job - however unpleasant. He even spoke of this exploitation of a defenseless totally subservient boy as charity towards him and his family, having himself explained to him how to cook. I know this is still all too common in well-to-do Indian households, but it is not praiseworthy. Meanwhile he is privileged to own three properties around India plus a car and has a fat income as an IAS officer. So much for his guru's oft-emphasized notion that 'Service of mankind is service of God!' Mr. When we knew him, we were rather surprides that - for all his talk - Ramnath had never lifted a finger to do selfless service in the Sai group he partook in while he was in Noida.

Sharea law as good for India?
Ramnath also lectured my wife and I on how British and International law was such a flawed system that it might be better off with an Islamic sharea law, such as is practised in Saudi Arabia! Yet he is not a Muslim, but of the Hindu faith. His non-Muslim status was evident, among whatever other indicators, by his keeping a large, menacing, untrained and smelly dog as his closest friend. His pro-Sharea views caused our jaws to drop – this from a Sai devotee? He should reflect privately that a woman who has an unmarried relationship to another man qualifies for stoning to death under Saudi Sharea law, a fact we did not mention then out of politeness.

How informed should an IAS officer be?
What is the state of India's top civil service, the IAS, when one of its officials employs such immoderate language and makes such injudicious taunts and false claims against a person? How come this Vigilance Officer does not even know that one cannot prosecute a foreigner who is not in India? Why is this 'government detective' unable to do the simplest investigation on the Internet? Ramnath himself asserts that his views are all based on his own experience, but in fact they are also founded on masses of uncontrollable hearsay, rumour and wild assumptions, which my wife and I know from many conversations with him. That he thinks that the BBC documentary ('The Secret Swami') alone is the basis for criticism of Sathya Sai Baba illustrates the shallowness of his acquaintance with the facts and the Internet exposé (which began in 1991 with David Bailey's 'Findings') and continued with 30 public testimonies from young males alleging sexual abuse by Sathya Sai Baba. That he remains blind, deaf and dumb to all criticism against Sathya Sai Baba only illustrates his extreme subjectivity and unhealthy dependence on the belief in that highly flawed and untruthful megalomaniac person who he hopes will be his great salvation. I hope and rather doubt that he and his blather is not representative of a mentality within the Indian Administrative Service, among the highest-ranking government servants. Were it so, then India would be in a far worse state than hitherto imagined. Otherwise, his outburst should have consequences for him. Perhaps he will even add further insult to injury... we shall see.

Ramnath makes a patently empty threat: "I have a good mind of sueing him for defamation as he is using my name for giving Baba a bad name" That allegation is a legal non-starter showing how he is wholly out of his depth - even though he calls his contempt for unpleasant facts and their bearers "infinite". (This kind of exaggerated talk illustrates his mentality). I also have a witness who was present who fully supports my accounts of his statements and stories. [Apropos, how could a mere foreigner possibly give your Indian God Almighty a bad name, Ramu?] His ignorance of my motives - made clear on my website - in his claim that my "sole objective" is to sell books I have published is completely false. I couldn't care less about sales since I have my own independent means, well beyond what my my books could fetch. His taunts about my age and health is ageism and his anticipatory gloating over my eventual death does him no honour. What an example of a Sai Baba devotee! Seems he'll be disappointed to know I am sharp and active without serious illness at 71.

As an Indian Administrative Service official, how is it that he does not realise that the Indian judiciary has no power in Norway? Loose talk and heartless comments do not go down too well in Norwegian courts, but he could try hiring a law firm to coach him in Norwegian law and a functioning democratically-regulated legal system. He might find his unsupportable beliefs and wilful blindness towards my writings and the extensive facts contained in them would be a slight disadvantage! Unlike him, I have always watched my published words most carefully and not stated a single untruth to my knowledge.

If Ramnath or anyone else actually tries to sue me, they should realise that beliefs are no substitute for documented and testified facts, legal documents and affidavits. Further, here I have grounds to counter-sue for libel and compensation as deemed fit. I do have a group of dedicated helpers and besides, several men who will gladly testify with provision of sworn testimony - to sexual abuse of the crudest sort by Sathya Sai Baba will appear to support my case. Our world-wide media and other contacts may indeed, if many past instances are a guide, be most interested in reporting such a case.


(Allegedly posted, without e-mail address or contact details, by)
V. RAMNATH ,I.A.S.

See my already posted notebook scans of Ramnath's conversations to which he took exception:
Ramnath on the 1993 murders in Sai Baba's bedroom
Ramnath on his former contact V.J. Prabhu
Ramnath on Saxena of the Customs and Excise

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