SATHYA SAI BABA'S MISSION: WORDS AND FACTS
by Serguei Badaev

         A lot of people who consider themselves the followers of Sathya Sai Baba have some special expectations connected with him. These are expectations of a new era of  “Golden Age”, an age of justice, peace, love and righteousness. According to Hindu views this Golden Age is going to come after quite a dark age of wars and moral decline that we are living in now and that is called Kali Yuga.

         Proclaiming his mission of Dharmasthapana, that is the restoration of righteousness on earth, Sai Baba has repeatedly emphasized that his main concern is to improve the situation in India, as India is to demonstrate the whole world an example of righteousness and prosperity based on it. It might explain why Sai Baba has never left India to go abroad except on one occasion when he visited Africa in 1968.

         Though Sai Baba proclaimed his mission as early as in 1940, it is still unclear what time intervals are implied, when we can expect the coming of the Golden Age of peace and prosperity. Sometimes Sai Baba mentions some changes for the better but his words are often rather vague and simply contradict each other. Below there are a number of statements by Sai Baba written down by his ardent American follower Dr. John Hislop and published in his books.

(1) (J.Hislop. Conversations with Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. SSSBB&PT, India. Ch.XI, p.39)

Hislop: Swami, these young college students who are in Swami’s college here, they have a first-class external education - highest examination scores and so on. And they are also building an inner character of strong morality. Will not these students become the leaders of India? Their fine education will get them positions, and their strong morality will sustain them?

Sai: That is the purpose of Swami’s college.

Hislop: Then in 20 or 30 years we should look for a great change in the Indian nation.

Sai: Twenty years? In ten years.

Hislop: But Swami, in 10 years they are still in their late twenties. People come to power in the late thirties, in their 40’s and 50’s.

Sai: In India people reach positions of power and influence earlier in life. Even now there are a number of examples throughout the nation.

(This conversation took place between 1968 and 1978)

(2) (J.Hislop. Conversations with Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. SSSBB&PT, India. ch.XXXIV, p.111)

Sai: Countries are like carriages. The engine is God. The first carriage is India. According to the astrology of ancient times, the change in world conditions to be brought by Swami’s influence will come in about 15 years (this conversation was in December 1968). This was predicted 5600 years ago in the Upanishads. The coming of Baba, the Sai Avatar, which includes the three incarnations is all forecast quite clearly. People born in this present generation may consider themselves quite fortunate.

(3) (J.Hislop. My Baba and I. SSSB&PT, India. p.188)

SAI: Crime has become very bad in India. There is no safety.

JOHN HISLOP: Swami, this is not particular to India. The same is true all over the world. How will it end?

SAI: To the good. In a few years, all will be peaceful.

JH: But Swami, it is getting worse, and it is the Kali Yuga (a world period of diminishing virtue).

SAI: No. It is not as bad now as it was. It is like in the ocean. There is a time of high waves, and there may be some peak waves that crash heavily on the shore, but this is followed by a calm and peaceful sea.

[…]

JH: We are fortunate to be alive so that we may see this peaceful world.

SAI: You will all see it. Even the old men will live to see it.

(Interview of 1978)

(4) (J.Hislop. My Baba and I. SSSB&PT, India. p.189)

SAI: In all countries there is a rapid deterioration of the human quality.

JOHN HISLOP: When will it change for the better?

SAI: Soon there will be a change.

JH: When is soon, Swami? Twenty years? Ten years?

SAI: No. Now. Already there is some slight improvement in India. One cause of the general deterioration in the world is rapid communication. This allows advertising and publicity to have a strong influence on people. Your American election is an illustration of how the leaders are television actors.

JH: Swami, there is no evidence of a change for the better.

SAI: If there is a change, it will be a universal change. Not local. It will occur every place.

(Interview of 1980)

Those changes which Sai Baba talks about and which are expected by his followers obviously have to be reflected in social and economic indicators of India, if they are really taking place or have happened already. If they are going on and not complete yet there should be at least a visible trend, some dynamics that in comparison with other countries will imply a presence of a powerful systemic factor influencing all spheres of Indian life. Taking into account all the above-mentioned, I felt confused that the world media which recognised a long time ago an effect of economical miracle in some countries of the third world have not been able to recognise any serious changes or unusual trends in the development of India.

I decided to analyse international statistics to clarify this question. For comparison I have taken such countries as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are historical and cultural neighbours of India, as well as another country from a different region (Indonesia), which is among the 10 countries with the most numerous population and geographically quite close to India. Sampling these countries I have used very general considerations and my intuition (as I am not an economist) so I think my choice of these countries might be disputable. I could find data only for the period of 1970-1988. So those who are interested in continuing this analysis up to the present time should launch their own inquiry. Only in the case of literacy was I  able to find data up to 2000 published by UNESCO.

Among economic indicators I have chosen a GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per person. This reflects economic standard of life in a society. In India this indicator is very low. In 1988 it was 335 USD

per person, and in a world list of countries India occupied 121st position after Pakistan and Indonesia. For recent years no trend demonstrating a possibility of any economic miracle has been detected

The next important indicator is military expenditure. This indicator, especially for developing countries, reflects the moral maturity of a society and its
relationships with neighbours. Military expenditure is a part of GDP that otherwise could be spent on social programmes. In India it is about 3% of GDP and in 1988 was 8.2 billion USD. Apparently, this expenditure is partly explained by military opposition to Pakistan. All these years India kept a big army (1,362, 000 people in active service in 1988) that was about three times as big as the Pakistan army (481,000).



Another indicator is population. The demographic problem is very acute in India. The rate of growth of population in India and Indonesia is very similar (from 1970 to 1988 - 148% and 147% correspondingly), but many socio-economic indicators of Indonesia are much better than their counterparts in India.

        

An indicator which reflects the cultural development of a country is its level of illiteracy. Although in all countries presented in the table the level of illiteracy was diminishing over these years, only Indonesia managed to decrease the level of illiteracy from 27.4 million in 1970 to 19.2 million in 1988. In other countries presented in the table the absolute number of illiterate people was growing and in India it was 299 million people in 1988 against 251 million in 1970.

The last indicator is the infant mortality rate, that is the number of infants who died during their first year per 1000 born in that year. This indicator reflects the state of medical care and women’s status in society. In India the figure was very high and even in 1988 it was 98 infants per thousand. Every person who has ever visited India has been able to notice that questions of sanitation and hygiene have still not been solved. It is worth noting that this indicator for countries presented in the table correlates very well with GDP per person, that is, the higher GDP per person, the lower infant mortality rate.



Statistical data are taken from “Comparative World Data” by G.P.Muller. John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1988. For year 1988 data are taken from “Economist Book of Vital Statistics”, Times Book, 1990. Illiteracy data are taken from www.unesco.org.

Indicator

Years

India

Pakistan

Bangladesh

Indonesia

GDP/person

(USD)

1970

1975

1980

1988*

206$

214$

229$

335$

-

253$

293$

384$

-

121$

138$

179$

270$

350$

460$

473$

Military expenditure

(billions USD)

1970

1975

1980

1988*

3,243

4,137

4,453

8,247

-

1,202

1,412

2,649

-

0,077

0,179

-

-

2,259

2,084

-

Military Man-Power (thousands in active duty)

1970

1975

1980

1988*

1550

1670

1104

1362

390

502

467

481

-

100

71

102

358

260

250

284

Population (millions)

1970

1975

1980

1988*

539,08

600,76

663,60

796,60

56,47

70,90

82,14

105,41

69,77

78,96

88,68

104,53

119,47

135,67

150,96

174,95

Indicator

Years

India

Pakistan

Bangladesh

Indonesia

Illiteracy Rate %  (millions)

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

59,1 (250,6)

55,3(265,8)

51,5(279,0)

47,9(289,5)

44,2(299,3)

72,1(34,2)

68,5(39,6)

64,5(43,9)

60,6(47,3)

56,7(51,7)

70,7(33,7)

68,0(36,4)

65,2(39,8)

62,2(44,3)

59,2(49,6)

30,7(27,4)

25,2(25,9)

18,4(21,7)

16,3(21,6)

13,0(19,2)

Infant mortality rate

(per 1000 children aged under a year)

1980

1988*

129.1

98

131.2

108

139.6

118

98.7

84
Conclusions



         Despite the fact that India, as it is believed by Sathya Sai Baba’s followers, since 1940 has been under supervision of Sai Baba, Kali Yuga Avatar, who has been successfully conducting his mission there, it has not had any distinct influence on those socio-economic parameters which are internationally considered as indicators of standard of living and prosperity in a society. In contrast with the low level of economic and social development India spent huge sums of money on military programmes, including expenditures on creating and testing nuclear weapons which Pakistan possesses as well.



         From a social point of view India can be considered as a country with a high percentage of illiterate population, and a far from satisfactory level of medical care, sanitation and hygiene, which accountable for such problems in the country as leprosy, regular cholera outbreaks, people dying of starvation and water deprivation. The moral and cultural problems of India are also quite acute. They are: the remnants of the caste system, discrimination against women and corruption that has infected all levels of Indian society. For example, the former Prime minister of India N. Rao, who is a follower of Sai Baba, has been accused of corruption and is now in prison.



         When faced with these statistical data, it is very hard to guess that the spiritual, social and economic development of India has been guided for several decades by the Divine Will of the Avatar, i.e. the Divine embodied in a human form. It is especially hard if we take into account that other countries - in our analysis, Indonesia - manage to deal with those problems much more successfully without claiming such Divine guidance.



         So, it is extremely difficult to see any beneficial influence of Sai Baba on Indian society in general or are we to assume that it is going on somewhere on a subtle plane and has not been manifesting itself yet in thoughts, words and deeds for India’s inhabitants. Therefore, if we can’t see any signs of distinctive improvement in the social and economic life of India from 1970 till 1988 as a result of Sai Baba’s mission, it is hardly reasonable to expect to find it in the world as a whole.

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