Cancelled Sai National Conference 2003, Adelaide, South Australia.

 

Topic:Sai National Conference 2003 Advertisement

(Conference now cancelled by strong Australian former devotee protests to civil and religious Authorities)

Email: bpittard@beachaccess.com.au

Sent to: www.exbaba.com

Tuesday, February25, 2003

Note:

From my post of yesterday, you will see that Professor McWha, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Adelaide, South Australia, has cancelled the Sai National Conference 2003 from taking place in his University. Other dignitaries have said that they will not accept the invitation.

Some of you will recall another signal cancellation from South Australia. I refer to the cancellation by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Flinders of its delegation to a human values conference held at Puttaparthi in September 2000. This co-incided with a very hard-hitting Media Advisory from UNESCO, which had several contentions with the Conference organizers. This cancellation was made by Flinders along with UNESCO (Paris), after a great deal of documentation was proffered by many former devotee dissenters from Sai Baba and his Organisation.

The official Sai National Conference 2003 web page of the Sathya Sai Organisation of Australia and Papua New Guinea, which you see below, was up for many weeks, and never updated. See: http://www.saiaust.org/speakers.htm (Not available anymore? Click here!)

It states:

The Prime Minister has been invited to open the conference. Other dignitaries invited to the Conference will include Most Rev. Archbishop Philip Wilson, the Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, the Premier of South Australia Hon. Mike Rann and the Lord Mayor of Adelaide Mr. Alred Huang.

More information will be published as it comes to hand.

But why cry speakers when there were, in fact, NO speakers, other than the SS Org speakers?

You may recall the forever late and unlamented Senator Joseph McCarthy, the chief instigator of the US House Commitee On UN American Activities, and how he would shake a tuft of papers and cry out, "I have names, I have names," when the only names he had on the sheets were no names! (Of course, he did have names somewhere else, but the point is that hatred and fear, whether patriotic or any other, beget hatred and fear).

You will note that the instigators here are T.Sri Ramanathan and Ken Soman. Ramanathan is the notoriously imperious, pompous head of the Sai Organisation in our country who, like the also infamous Jagadeesan of Malaysia, goes about blessing people, as though he is Sai Baba himself. Soman, a South Australian,is - or rather WAS! - the Conference Convenor.

Far more terribly, it was Ramanathan and Soman who those in South Australia who are both devotees and former devotees deem to have acted with the most shocking nastiness towards the much-loved (then) South Australian Deputy Spiritual Co-ordinator, Stephen Carthew, now a former devotee. As he has expressed it to me, Stephen's position expressed in a specially called meeting held soon after the seminal NEXUS September-October 1999 three articles was that: "Since the allegations made against our founder are of a criminal nature, then an investigation needs to be made by the Sai Organisation. If our founder is as pure as we believe him to be, there is nothing to be feared."

Those present at the meeting say that Ken Soman repeatedly prevented Stephen Carthew from bringing any motion, or in general from being properly heard. He was then most shockingly and unlovingly cast out of the Sathya Sai Organisation essentially by Ramanathan but with the eager compliance of Ken Soman. Nor does it seem to have helped that a short time before Stephen had given a talk, enormously agreed with and enjoyed by Sai Organisation women on Mother's Day in May 1999. In this, he had voiced concern that there is a great deal of male chauvinism in the way the Sai Organisation is structured and conducted.

Barry Pittard, Australia

Email: bpittard@beachaccess.com.au