Sai Baba Researchers’ Huge Debt To Scholar Brian D. Steel
 

Date: 09-01-08

By: Ex Baba admin

At http://barrypittard.wordpress.com/ Barry Pittard has posted his article:

Sai Baba Researchers’ Huge Debt To Scholar Brian D. Steel

Permanent Link:

http://barrypittard.wordpress.com/2008/01/16/sai-baba-researchers-huge-debt-to-scholar-brian-d-steel/

The Australian academic linguist Brian Steel has posted his Research on Sathya Sai Baba and the Sathya Sai Organisation. New Factors for Researchers to Consider, December 2007. The 'New Factors' is an integrated part of an extensive 3-part bibliography, which included succinct comments on certain works. Steel refers to: 

‘An Annotated Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba in Three Parts. Part 1: Sources of public information, including items of a scholarly or academic nature or provenance, with an Appendix on entries in works of reference, surveys and textbooks  An Annotated Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba
 

Part 2: Alternative Sources of Information and Opinion about Sathya Sai Baba and his Mission  An Annotated Bibliography for Research on Sathya Sai Baba  Part 3: A Bibliography of Apologetic Writing about Sathya Sai Baba. Presenting Sathya Sai Baba to the World Sections 1-5.   Sathya Sai Baba’s Teachings, etc.

Section 6. New Factors for Researchers to Consider’

Subheaders to Barry Pittard's article:

Brian D. Steel’s Huge Project
Steel’s overview

Continuum of Sai Scholarship Which Now Includes Dissent
William ‘Bill’ Aitken - A Non-hagiographic Hagiographer?
Aitken Accepted By Top Sai Baba Official
Serious Omissions and Commissions?
 

Note: More on Brian Steel’s work shortly!

Quotes

"M
any readers look to Brian Steel’s work which, with its habits of a lifetime of scholarship, shows cool appraisal and lays great emphasis on care over detail, close textual comparison, verification of sources, and so forth"

"I think that there will be no independent scholars or other investigators of merit who will be able to find serious fault with his project. He will nevertheless be targeted, I think, by fervent  pro Sai Baba polemicists, who increasingly undo themselves wherever there are attentive, sober critical readers"

"I shall shortly review a section of Part 3 (See, link above) of this December 2007 series, which analyses the book William McKay Aitken’s book ‘Sri Sathya Sai Baba. A Life’ (New Delhi, Penguin Books India, 2004. Paperback edition, 2006)"

"‘Bill’ Aitken is extolled as an authoritative intellectual by Dr G. Venkataraman, Sai Baba’s deputy world chairman and head of Sai Global Radio (via WorldSpace International Satellite Radio Service)"

"In his endnote to ‘New Factors', he examines the efforts of an individual of extreme zeal who, assisted by some of Sai Baba’s servitors in various countries, has spearheaded Internet attempts to discredit  those who have publicly presented evidence which openly conflicts with Sathya Sai Baba’s Divine Claims"