Thousands pay tribute to Sai Baba

Hyderabad: A flood of grief-stricken devotees of Satya Sai Baba continued to pour into his ashram (hermitage) town of Puttaparthi, in Anantapur district, for a second day running to pay their tributes to one of the most revered and influential spiritual gurus of India.

Crying and wailing men, women, the old and the young, braved the scorching summer sun and made a beeline for Prashanti Nilayam where thousands of policemen maintained a tight vigil and barricaded the entire town to ensure orderly flow of the mourners.

The body of Sai Baba lay in state in Sai Kulwant Hall in the ashram where he used to give darshan to his devotees till a month ago.

Full state honours

The 86-year-old Sai Baba, who died on Sunday, will be laid to rest in the same hall with full state honours on Wednesday.

The rich and the powerful rubbed shoulders with the poor and ordinary in paying their last respects.

A pall of gloom has descended on the town which has thrived on the name, fame and charisma of Baba for more than six decades.

The town reverberated with bhajans (devotional songs) as devotees respectfully filed past the glass coffin which contained the body.

Several top politicians including central ministers Vilas Rao Deshmukh and Praful Patel, and celebrities, including India's cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar and famous yoga guru Baba Ramdev, were among those who visited Puttaparthi yesterday.

For Tendulkar it was an emotional moment as he paid tribute to Baba with eyes filled with tears. He was accompanied by wife Anjali. Sachin is known to be an ardent devotee of Baba and had visited Baba just before the World Cup.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to visit Puttaparthi today to pay his respects, before the darshan of Baba comes to an end by 6pm today. Two helipads were readied at the Puttaparthi airport for the arriving VIPS.

Other important politicians expected to show up include former deputy prime minister and senior BJP leader L.K. Advani, and the chief ministers of several states including Narendra Modi of Gujarat and B.S. Yeddiyurappa of Karnataka.

Special buses and trains were being run from different parts of Andhra Pradesh and India to ferry Baba's devotees. There were also a large number of foreigners among the devotees who queued up for a last glimpse of Baba.

Security arrangements

Deputy Inspector-General of Police, Anantapur range, Charu Sinha, said that foolproof arrangements had been made to ensure the smooth flow of mourners.

"We have made the arrangements, including the barricading of the town and the diversion of the traffic for the convenience of the people," she said.

The key points in Baba's life

Satya Sai Baba was born in a poor family on November 23, 1926, to Eshwaramma and Peddavenkamma Raju Ratnakaram in Gollapally village of Anantapur district in the then Madras Presidency. The boy, the fifth child in the family, was named Satyanarayana Raju.

It was while studying in high school in Uruvakonda that dramatic changes started appearing in the child. He stood out for his extraordinary intelligence, his mystical bent of mind, his interest in Hindu mythology, and music and dance.

It was after he was stung by a scorpion that the boy changed completely — he lost interest in the materialistic world and declared that he was re-incarnation of Sai Baba, a spiritual leader in Shirdi, Maharashtra, who died seven hours before Satya Sai Baba was born.

What started with curiosity to look at the boy soon turned into devotion as people started thronging his village on hearing about miracles, which included his ability to heal. The village, which was renamed Puttaparthi, became the young spiritual guru's abode where he started his mission of "love all serve all".

By 1950 he had become so famous that more and more people started visiting him, so an ashram — Prashanti Nilayam — was built for him.

Gradually, Sai Baba's fame started crossing the borders of India, and people from across the world began visiting him in the belief that he had healing and other miraculous powers.

His ability to conjure up things ranging from sacred ash to gold rings and necklaces from thin air left his devotees awestruck but it also started attracting criticism from rationalists who described it as a sleight of hand. However, Sai Baba never replied to any criticism or allegations.

With the growing multitude of devotees came a flood of wealth as people liberally donated money and valuables, property and land to him and a myriad of his organisations.

Sai Baba, who remained a bachelor, used the resources to launch welfare projects like hospitals, schools and colleges and drinking water schemes for the parched villages. He ran several trusts and more than 1,200 service centres across the globe with a central trust at the top of all the organisations. They were all involved in rendering service to the needy in accordance with his philosophy that service to mankind was service to God.

The material legacy he left behind is variedly estimated to be between Rs400 billion to Rs 1,500 billion. Now the same legacy appears to have become a subject of tussle