Strains of ‘Sai Ram’ echo in the meditation hall of Prashanti Nilayam. Thousands of devotees sit in silence. They are praying for Sathya Sai Baba—or ‘Bhagwan’, as the godman is referred to—who is in a critical condition in the ICU of the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences. The 84-year-old swami was admitted to the hospital on March 28 with respiratory, cardiac and kidney problems and is now on ventilator. The hospital has turned into a virtual fortress, with heavy police guard. Bulletins issued twice a day say he is responding to treatment despite multiple-organ failure. Brenda, a decade-old devotee from Ireland, sums up the mood of several thousands of the swami’s followers: “There’s no vacillating between hope and despair. There’s only hope.”
Members of the Sathya Sai Central Trust (SSCT), however, have so far not issued a single statement and are pretty much inaccessible. Family members say the swami will surely recover, though it may take time. Sai Darshan, a television channel owned by the godman’s nephew, R.J. Ratnakar, tries to soothe nerves. It scrolls messages from the swami, such as “My body may be suffering but my atma is unharmed. My devotees’ prayers are my medicine.”
Yet, one question on many minds is the future of the mammoth Sai empire, said to be worth anywhere between Rs 40,000 crore and Rs 1.5 lakh crore. The SSCT manages medical and degree colleges, schools, a Sadhana Trust (books and publications), a Women’s Welfare Trust, superspeciality hospitals (in Puttaparthi and Whitefield, Bangalore), general hospitals and drinking water schemes in Anantapur, Medak, Mahbubnagar, East and West Godavari and Chennai. Its presence extends to 186 nations and it has 1,200 organisations worldwide. In Puttaparthi itself, there is a huge Sathya Sai University complex, a Chaitanya Jyoti museum, a planetarium, indoor and outdoor stadiums, a hospital, a music college and an airport, apart from the superspeciality hospital and the main Prashanti Nilayam complex. It is difficult to conceive that Puttaparthi was once a remote village named Gollapalli.
Every project is managed by the central trust which is exempted from taxes as it is registered as a charity. While Sathya Sai Baba is the chairman, retired IAS officer K. Chakravarthi is the secretary. He grew close to Sathya Sai Baba when he was Anantapur collector and has been associated with the swami since the 1980s. The swami’s nephew, Ratnakar, son of younger brother Janakiramaiah, is the only one to represent the family. “His nomination was announced suddenly on Ugadi in 2010,” says Shravan Kumar, a grand-nephew. “Perhaps trust members felt he fits the bill. I myself have nothing to do with the trust or its activities.” Janakiramaiah, too, was a trust member, till he passed away six years ago.
Donations pour in from various quarters. It is said that Isaac Tigrett Burton of Tennessee, a founder of Hard Rock Cafe and House of Blues, donated Rs 300 crore to set up the Sathya Sai Superspeciality Hospital in 1991. But Sathya Sai’s nephew R. Shankar Raju puts this figure at Rs 20-25 crore. When contacted by HNN, Tigrett’s assistant said he was in meditation and in no mood to speak. Last year, there were two huge donations: an NRI donated Rs 300 crore for the hospital and a foreigner Rs 200 crore.
The accounting system of the Sathya Sai Central Trust remains shrouded in ambiguity. While people admiringly cite the fact that services in all institutions are free of cost, nobody knows how the trust money is being spent or where the donations are going. Official sources say there has been no proper accounting in the trust in the last five years. Following the swami’s illness, Andhra Pradesh chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy deputed a five-member team to Puttaparthi, including L.V. Subramanyam, the principal secretary (finance), and P.V. Ramesh, the health secretary. Subramanyam’s presence triggered talk that the government was trying to assess the trust’s financial affairs. But the CMO explained that the IAS officer was a former student of Sathya Sai University and was only there to help. Revenue minister N. Raghuveera Reddy said there was no move by the government to take over the trust.
Puttaparthi Urban Development Authority chairman Kota Satyanarayana, an ardent devotee, says that no government can run the trust with the kind of discipline with which it is now run. The swami’s nephew Shankar Raju tells HNN, “The trust’s activities are an ocean and there may be some negligible flaws. But tell me who on earth will provide so many services for free? This is not the time to talk about the trust or its finances. Let swami recover first.”
Sathya Sai’s public appearances have been few for about a year. Born on November 23, 1926, the swami’s appeal lies in his spiritual speeches, his magical whipping out of sacred ash, gold rings, watches and chains. On Shivratri day, he coughs up Shiva lingams, an event many flock to witness. On November 22, 2010, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pratibha Patil attended the Sathya Sai University convocation. Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi’s son Stalin was also present, as were many other VVIPs. When Sathya Sai inaugurated the Kandaleru-Poondi drinking water scheme in Tamil Nadu, Karunanidhi, a known atheist, is said to have remarked that “anyone who serves people is a god for me”. Among the swami’s VIP devotees are the late P.V. Narasimha Rao, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, A.B. Vajpayee, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sachin Tendulkar, V.V.S. Laxman, Sunil Gavaskar, Clive Lloyd, Rajnikanth, Mohanlal, and many more. Puttaparthi is also full of a large number of devotees from abroad.
Even as the medical bulletins spell hope, the devotees go about their routine with a practised calm as prayers ring across Puttaparthi. But a huge question mark hangs over the multi-crore spiritual enterprise of the swami, who had once predicted that he would live up to the age of 96.
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