The ‘five values’ omit central moral and legal standards and universal human rights upon which civilised modern, society relies. Excluded are human justice as expressed in civil and international law (i.e. neither God-given commandments or laws, nor Koran-dependent ‘sharea’ law); the intrinsic values and precepts of democracy, including respect social fairness and the goal of social equality, women’s rights, gender rights and much more.

The five values – which originally were written off-handedly on the back of an envelope in answer to a question by Sai Baba – are declared to be inflexible, set values. Yet no human values are like that – they develop with advances in morality and changes in civilised circumstances and are delineated and expressed differently from time to time accordingly. Attempts at rigid codification of moral have always led to suppression of people throughout history. There are natural, human reasons for this and the changing and progressive development of human laws express this fact historically.

The values are stated in such sweeping general ways and are mostly explained through simple examples (insufficiently clear to make their wider application feasible) that they are virtually unusable. They can be interpreted in many diverse and conflicting ways according to local cultures, which does not make the viable as “universal values”, on the contrary – they become too arbitrary.  There are no simple answers to the multifarious nuances of real human behaviour, the intricate moral dilemmas that arise from it, but this is not recognised.

The educational courses and institutions set up in the name of Sathya Sai Baba work in complete isolation from modern educational research, pedagogy and developing scientific understanding of the learning process, for his doctrine is considered as based on omniscient wisdom, and is thus sufficient for everyone and all situations. Being taken as unchanging Truth, the entire undertaking is immune to analysis, debate or any modification other than that based on Sai Baba’s words and teachings, which are frequently erroneous and lacking in credibility.

Sathya Sai Baba insists that all teaching is worthless unless the teacher practices what is taught to the full. Those who become educators of these values are largely non-qualified and untrained persons who are not subjected to any independent evaluations as regards whether they practise unity of word and act. The figurehead of this value education, Sathya Sai Baba, has moreover been shown to diverge in many ways from his own teaching, which would disqualify him as a teacher on his own teaching! (These acts include many proven untruths, numerous subtle deceits, outright fraudulent claims, sleight-of-hand, sovereign unaccountability for all his actions and words, and  many crimes it is credibly alleged he has committed for which he cannot be brought to justice due to constant governmental protection in India).