Email from Barry Pittard to Keith Bradsher
----- Original Message -----
From: Barry Pittard
Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 10:50 PM
Subject: Your Article Dec.1. NYT on Sathya Sai Baba
Dear Keith,
Not so great as the fame (symbolised in the felicitously named "Bradsher bars") as you have achieved in so gutsily exposing the SUV motor car is another fame your have achieved as of a week ago, among perhaps millions of followers of Sathya Sai Baba, and many hundreds of his grievously dissenting former followers.
This is by virtue of your article "A Friend in India to All the World" in the New York Times, December 1.
No doubt, in your writing it, virtue indeed was more than intended, and although a great many former followers of Sathya Sai Baba are - with sometimes tragic reason - upset by it, it is a humbling thought that we former followers of his were, and for a great deal longer, far more enticed by him than your were in your highly laudatory article on him.
I and many others have sent much documentation to the senior executives of NWT showing quite another - and inexpressibly unsavoury side - to Sathya Sai Baba, India's most controversial guru, and his profoundly implicated associates in, as we aim to show, most dire crimes. These include not only a vast scale serial sexual molestation of boys and young men from around the world but also involvement in murders, and in cover-ups and lack of accountability on a staggering scale.
Some of this you will see expressed in our Petition calling for official investigation of Sathya Sai Baba, at: http://www.PetitionOnline.com/saibaba/petition.htm. For much documentation, including by academic researchers of distinction, you may also consult www.exbaba.com and www.saiguru.net
I am going through reviews of your High And Mighty—The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles And How They Got To Be That Way. I see the obvious - that it is a work in the grand tradition of Ralph Nader, one of my formative heroes. Therefore, I trust that we can have a mutually informative interaction, as I and many others go very hard at your article, and at what we believe to be your and the NYT's awful incaution in letting it through despite the manifest availability of responsible dissenting evidence against Sathya Sai Baba.
Barry Pittard
See also Letters regarding Keith Bradsher