{"id":4936,"date":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:feeds.feedburner.com:\/\/cc1ce8b1b2d40948406d491ee2793fc4"},"modified":"1999-11-29T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"1999-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"holy-man-sathya-sai-baba-dies-aged-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/1999\/11\/29\/holy-man-sathya-sai-baba-dies-aged-86\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy man Sathya Sai Baba dies aged 86"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>  <script type=\"text\/javascript\">var addthis_product='wpp-252';<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/js\/250\/addthis_widget.js#pubid=kanglaonline\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Hyderabad, April 24 : Hindu guru Sathya Sai Baba, worshipped as a god by millions of followers worldwide, died Sunday morning in a hospital near his southern Indian ashram. He was 86.<br \/> Sai Baba had spent nearly a month on breathing support and dialysis while struggling with multiple-organ failure after being admitted March 28 to the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, near his ashram in Puttaparti village in Andhra Pradesh state.<br \/> Women selling marigold garlands broke down in tears outside the ashram when the news of his death was announced, and followers began trickling into the temple complex where the guru`s body would lie in state Sunday night through Tuesday. Hundreds of thousands of devotees are expected to pay last respects. A funeral with state honors is planned Wednesday morning.<br \/> The saffron-robed Sathya Sai Baba had a huge following, with ashrams in over 126 countries and Indian devotees including high-placed politicians, movie stars, world-class athletes and industrialists.<br \/> He was said to perform miracles, conjuring rings, watches and &#8220;vibhuti&#8221; &mdash; a sacred ash that his followers applied on their foreheads &mdash; from his overgrown and unkempt Afro-style hair.<br \/> But rationalist critics led campaigns against him, calling him a charlatan and his miracles fake. Several news reports also alleged he committed sexual abuse against devotees &mdash; allegations he denied as vilification campaigns.<br \/> Officials and celebrities expressed sadness at the guru`s passing, remembering him as a &#8220;great pious personality&#8221; who worked selflessly to help others.<br \/> &#8220;Sri Satya Sai Baba was a spiritual leader who inspired millions to lead a moral and meaningful life, even as they followed the religion of their choice,&#8221; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a statement. His death is &#8220;an irreparable loss to all, and the nation deeply mourns his passing away.&#8221;<br \/> A heavy police deployment, in place for weeks as Sai Baba`s condition worsened, was using barricades to restrict road traffic Sunday, while shopkeepers were told to close to limit the number of people in town.<br \/> Andhra Pradesh state declared four days of mourning, with its top official calling Sai Baba &#8220;a symbol of love, affection and passion.&#8221;<br \/> &#8220;Sri Satya Sai Baba has given his great self to the service of humanity,&#8221; Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy said. &#8220;He will be remembered for ages to come by all sections of people all over the world.&#8221;<br \/> Born Nov. 23, 1926, as Sathyanarayana Raju, he was said as a child to display a tendency toward spirituality and unusual intelligence, which he expressed through music, dance and writing poetry and plays.<br \/> In 1940, at the age of 14, he declared himself an &#8220;avatar,&#8221; or reincarnation, of another Hindu holy man called the Sai Baba of Shirdi, a town in western Maharashtra state, who died in 1918.<br \/> As the young guru attracted followers, his home of Puttaparti grew from a sleepy village into a vibrant town with the sprawling &#8220;Prasanthi Nilayam&#8221; ashram built in 1950, as well as a large hospital, a university and schools run by his Satya Sai Central Trust, set up in 1972 with donations from devotees.<br \/> The trust &mdash; estimated to be worth at least $8.9 billion and possibly much more &mdash; also established spiritual centers in the cities of Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai. It built another hospital in Bangalore, where Sai Baba had a summer home, and funded water supply projects in several southern states.<br \/> Though no successor has been named to run the trust, it has assured &#8220;there is or will be no vacuum,&#8221; according to a recent statement released after the guru was hospitalized.<br \/> Health woes over recent years had forced Sai Baba to cut down on public appearances. He survived a stroke and a series of heart attacks in 1963. In 2005, he began using a wheelchair, and a year later he fractured his hip when a student fell from a stool onto the guru.<br \/> Sai Baba was also mired in controversies, with several news reports about allegations of sexual abuse and fake miracles.<br \/> A 2004 television program by the British Broadcasting Corporation called the &#8220;Secret Swami&#8221; featured interviews with at least two American male devotees claiming the guru had fondled their genitals and exposed himself to them while claiming it was part of a healing ritual.<br \/> Though he denied the allegations and was never charged with any crime, the reports led some to break with the guru.<br \/> The ashram also said Sai Baba had survived an attempt against his life, with six devotees including the guru`s personal assistant killed in his bedroom in June 1993 after allegedly trying to attack him. Facts of the case still remain a mystery.<br \/> Sai Baba was never married and has no children.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/Kanglaonline\/~4\/zP-jCD0mZdY\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">Read more \/ Original news source: <a href=\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/Kanglaonline\/~3\/zP-jCD0mZdY\/\">http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/Kanglaonline\/~3\/zP-jCD0mZdY\/<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hyderabad, April 24 : Hindu guru Sathya Sai Baba, worshipped as a god by millions of followers worldwide, died Sunday morning in a hospital near his southern Indian ashram. He&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/kanglaonline.com\/2011\/04\/holy-man-sathya-sai-baba-dies-aged-86\/\">Read more <span>&#187;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[330,41],"class_list":["post-4936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kanglaonline","category-news","tag-kanglaonline-2","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.manipur.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}