Paul Lewis of The Guardian newspaper investigated the Duke of Edinburgh award to Sai Baba Youth UK, a division of the Sathya Sai Organisation and published the findings (Saturday, November 4, 2006) under the heading: "The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards."

This was a minor local project by a few youth in London who received a certificate for the awards at a Buckingham Palace garden party. This kind of award has been made to countless thousands of participants around the world. A news story which appeared on the official International Sai Organisation website exaggerated the significance of this small local award at length, even claiming that it was made to Sathya Sai Baba himself. The Radio Sai report stated - "instead of bearing the name of the Sai Organisation, the certificate instead bore the name of Divinity - 'Sri Sathya Sai'. This was a thrilling example of Swami's Omnipresence and guiding hand". This was not so, for the Awards' Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Peter Westgarth, told The Guardian that "the event had been misrepresented".. . The notoriously deceptive and secretive Sathya Sai Organisation's main propaganda website (Radio Sai, run by a Dr. G. Venkataraman was made to remove it after an intervention by Mr. Westgarth. Dr. G. Venkataraman is the Deputy Chairman of Sathya Sai Baba's international organisation and one of five beneficiaries of donations given to the Organisation - in the form of a brand new Japanese saloon car this year). However, a substantial section of the same Duke of Edinburgh report has appeared on an official Australian Sathya Sai website instead, yet again showing the Sathya Sai Organisation's agenda for what it is... to try to gain credibility on bogus grounds.

Sathya Sai Baba has been credibly accused by many young men from around the world for decades of sexual abuses. Sai Baba's alleged role in the murder of four of his young male followers in his own bedroom on June 6, 1993 was never cleared up since the Central Bureau of Investigation's case was quashed by the Sai-devoted government of the day (see the BBC's 'The Secret Swami' documentary).

The Duke of Edinburgh Award executive, Peter Westgarth, reportedly stated that this is just another "religion accused of paedophilia" and that young people (many from a North London Sai-oriented school) "choose" to visit Sai Baba, but their devotee parents and more Sai Baba indoctrination at school have surely conditioned most of them. His comparison of this secretive cult to harmless "Church Lads" is tendentious and his failure to take proper action when warned about this cult makes The Duke of Edinburgh appear to be endorsing a charlatan guru. A vital issue in the current faith debate is raised: Should extreme fundamentalist 'Godmen' and unaccountable cults be given any oxygen by British institutions?

The rest of the world can only view with hilarity an absurd spectacle - that of these devotees of this self-proclaimed God Creator of the Universe, Sathya Sai Baba, who pretends he is the Father who sent Jesus etc. etc., eagerly seeking for their guru the endorsement (and blessings?) of the Duke of Edinburgh through getting a certificate from his award scheme for youth!

Only one unfortunate myth is perpetuated in the Guardian article: that the number of Sai followers is an 'estimated 30 million. However, having been a leader within the organisation 18 years with privileged access to internal memoranda, I can state authoritatively that there is absolutely no public statistical information of any kind available which gives anywhere near this figure; it is simply the inflated propagandising of Sai Baba and his officials who, already in the 1960s, made it the official line that he had 60 million followers! Even 600 million has since been claimed by some! I would reckon the total to be between 10 and 15 million through all the 65 or so years he has been a guru.

The Guardian article has been referenced by several websites around the world, including Wikipedia and /'wiki news', The Taipei Times and The Kuwait Times See also: "A Holy Furore Rages in Britain", 'Cybernoon: "Superstition; A Crutch"
also the website of the cult expert Rick Ross and on diverse bulletin boards and blogs.

Robert Priddy, Oslo, Norway.
9/12/06
(Retired lecturer in philosophy, University of Oslo. Former national leader (resigned) of the Sathya Sai Organisation in Norway, 1986-2000)
Websites:
http://home.no.net/anir/Sai
http://home.no.net/abacusa/

An irrational attempt by a pro-Sai fanatic on the Internet to make The Guardian's Staff Reporter, Paul Lewis, appear to have been subjective and biased has been throughly refuted.