In my previous articles, we discussed how Swamis and Babas cleverly recognized that the primary preoccupations of ordinary people were to fulfill their heart’s desires and to protect themselves from imaginary or real evils. They met these deep-rooted psychological needs by the deception of miracles, sleight of hand or even sheer gift of the gab. To fleece the deluded masses and profit from their weaknesses, they built massive temple-casino complexes. They invested a portion of their gains in building colleges, hospitals and other institutions, which gave people the impression that they were doing great socially beneficial services. The reality is that these institutions merely served the purpose of deluding people benefiting from them and silencing their critics. In the process they fulfilled their own desires (sexual and financial) and took care of their own insecurity. Sai Baba and his Puttaparti temple-casino complex is a classic example of this web of fraud bewildering people and profiting from their delusion. Read the full story

June 2009. Itarsi, Madhya Pradesh.

I was accompanying Prof. Narendra Nayak on his tour of MP and Bihar, conducting workshops exposing the miracle-men (and women!). Itarsi was reeling under scorching heat. We regularly gulped chilled bottled water to get some relief from the debilitating heat. Power cuts and load shedding - scheduled and unscheduled - added to the misery of the people. Business establishments - including roadside juice parlors - had installed diesel generators to get over the frequent power cuts. Sitting there in a tiny room in President’s Hotel, opposite Itarsi Railway Station, I could hear the booming sound of generators. I read in the newspapers that the whole of the State was similarly affected from a delayed monsoon. Wells and lakes had dried up. The Hitavada reported (June 19, 2009, Jabalpur edition) from the state capital, Bhopal, that the water level of Upper Lake, the life-line of the city, was at 1674ft- the lowest in its recorded history. In many parts of the city, police were called in to control the crowd collecting drinking water. It is thus only natural that the state government explored all available avenues to lessen the hardships of its people or at least to divert the wrath of its citizens.

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