Sathya Sai Baba promoted marriage
yet held cynical, and negative views on it

Sathya Sai Baba identified marriage only with the first flush of love (in which sexuality is but one central feature) and equates human love in marriage to that of dogs and foxes. He was never married, so it is also evident that he knew nothing or little about (heterosexual) conjugal bliss between man and woman and not much more about married life, which can and does grow more and more happy and unselfish as life proceeds especially when based on love rather than parental choice. This is not to say that all achieve this, of course, but nor do arranged marriages work in too many instances.

Sathya Sai Baba's was (outwardly) extremely puritan in his views on sexual relations to the extent tnat he seldom said much about sexuality. Such religious sentiments are all too often shown to be lip service, while the promoters themselves have secret sexual liasons and are often also abusers, as Sathya Sai Baba was known to be throug overwhelming testimonies (despite total government protection by compromised worshipping Prime Ministers and Presidents). His puritan advice and eanting was complicated by the many signs, reported through the years by many devotees (not only by ex-devotees!) of his misogyny and even hatred of women and his outspoken cynicism about heterosexual marriage. This was visible to all visitors to his ashram in his frequent avoidance of women on many occasions at and the minimal time he spent on their side of the compound and the comparative infrequency of his talking to them during his rounds. This he cleverly explained away merely by saying that he gives women equal attention in reality, meaning that they received extra attention on an invisible (astral or subtle) level. Nor does the hagiographical literature - in accounts of such contacts (dreams, visions, leelas etc.) - indicate that women received more such perveived but doubtful attention than males. Pattivularly in interviews, Sai Baba not only most regularly made fun about marriage and of married couples,  but spoke disparagingly of marriage and family in frankly ignorant and immature ways. The scanned quotation header compares human physical love in marriage to that of dogs and foxes! This clearly showed his revulsion of heterosexual contact. Little did he know of married life, which can and does grow more and more happy and unselfish as life proceeds! Admittedly, not all achieve this or even believe it possible, but I and world literature can assure that it is! What does Sai Baba know even of conjugal bliss (between heterosexual man and wife)?
Much of his stunted understanding of people is due to his rigid belief since childhood in the validity of the supposedly "holy" scriptures of India - with all their fantastic and non-credible stories and spiritual "self-sacrifices" of the kind for which Sita was subjected, having been put under undue suspicion and banish by the supposed 'ideal husband' Lord Rama'!

Some of his well-known derisive comments to married people are:-
"Marriage is 23 hours of problems, 1 hour happiness" (or sometimes he says only 5 minutes happiness); "Marriage is a sickness"; "The real marriage is with God"; "One man is alone walks on two feet, when married he walks on four, then children come and after a while he needs to crawl"; "First man has 2 legs, he gets married and becomes an animal with 4 legs. They get one child, a six-legged scorpion, then another, an 8-legged cockroach. One connection leads to another and you lose your freedom"
(Note: I noted this down directly when Sai Baba said it in my presence in an interview on 7th September, 1988 - the first interview given to anyone after he had fractured his hip after slipping on the soap in his bathroom, ofwhich he told us openly. I have also heard others report him using the same analogy about married life in interviews. It is known that he told several of those on whom he practiced sexual molestation that they were married to him etc., such as Conny Larsson and others, as I have personally heard from several male devotees! Further than this, however, there are many reports in books by devotees - and on the internet and ex-devotees - on how Sai Baba tried to break up male-female relationships, especially between young men and women (see the linked account by Jens Sethi of germany, here belwo.  He also very regularly tries to sow strife between man and wife - in almost every interview he brings up negative things he supposes occur between a man and his wife.  There are literally dozens of instances of which one can read in books about him.  I have heard him do this and he even tried it on me by saying,  "Your wife is angry with you", which we now agree was a wholly unfounded claim.  (I replied "Not so bad, swami", to which he countered 'Not so good'.  This again shows how he hates to lose in any encounter and can't tolerate any discussion or give and proper explanation).

India still overwhelmingly favours arranged marriages, and 'love marriages' are looked down on by the huge majority. Fathers even disown sons who have married for love (without permission). Marriages are arranged betwen two families, basing choice on considerations about caste, social rank, income, dowry settlement, and almost always on supposed compatibility as indicated by astrological charts(!)  etc.. Indian newspaper are full of marriage advertisements which set out the requirements and often also the dowry demands by the prospective husband's family. This is a traumatic time for most parents, especially in poor families (weddings must preferable be ultra-luxurious and expensive too). Brides who the bridegroom's family dislike or reject are often murdered (dowry deaths in India are astonishingly many. One dowry death per hour is still the average (in 2012. Unofficially at 25,000. BBC World (TV) In one year 8,233 women were killed because her family failed to meet her husband and in-laws' demands for higher dowry payments and lavish gifts.

All this expresses how the caste, class, male-centered system and has made India known to the developed world as a retrograde culture regarding women's rights. A young German devotee, Jens Sethi, who had visited the ashram for years and was planning to settle there was taken in at last for a private interview. He has testified on affidavit in his report to the Hamburg police how Sai Baba started to kiss him, stroke him and go into the trousers. When he rejected Sai Baba, he openly called this poor fellow  'a Hitler' in front of the entire darsan crowd, because he had refused Baba's demand to reject his woman friend who was with him. This couple was warned by a friendly soul in the administration to flee the ashram immediately for their safety. They escaped with their lives, as related on the Internet by Jens Sethi. They fled and were nearly caught before they got out of India, all of which they reported to the German Embassy in Delhi and they later laid a formal charge against Sai Baba with the German police.  (Apropos the credibility of this, I am in contact with a Danish man who told me how his life was also in jeopardy at the ashram and who was saved from a threat to his life by a person involved with security there: plans he knew were underway against him for trying to get video evidence of Sathya Sai Baba's sexual relations.  The number of missing persons from India and abroad who disappeared while visiting the ashrams is not recorded,  for such incidents are hushed up immediately by all means at the disposal of the Sathya Sai Central Trust,  but about a dozen such cases have been reported either in the press or by the skeptic,  Mr. B. Premanand of Podanur, Tamil Nadu.)