Rising above religion, Shirdi Sai Baba, the Indian sage preached simple moral and spiritual laws. While his message appeals to many in this age of complexity, others take refuge in him because of his promise to help devotees in times of crisis
Shirdi Sai BabaA fakir in a tattered kafni (long robe) who begged for alms till his last day. Who founded no religion or sect, developed no trademark spiri
tual philosophy or system of practices, started no movement, initiated not a single disciple, left behind no apostles. Who breathed his last eight long decades ago and about whom very few had heard till the 1960s. The Sai Baba of Shirdi. Today, he has millions of devotees in India and other parts of the world. Shirdi, the obscure village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, in India, has become a pilgrimage destination much as Bethlehem, Jerusalem or Varanasi. The number of pilgrims go there average 25,000 a day and can climb to over a hundred thousand on holidays and festival days. They belong to every strata of society and all religions, and include politicians, film stars and rich businessmen. By conservative estimates, there are over 2,000 major Sai temples in different parts of India and 150 abroad in places as far-flung as Canada and Kenya, Singapore and England. Significantly, all these temples have been constructed and consecrated by local initiative. Indeed, the growing Sai phenomenon is not orchestrated by a central organization, though there is the Sri Sai Baba Sansthan, which manages the affairs at Shirdi. The Shirdi phenomenon defies easy explanation. It perhaps owes itself to the will of Baba himself, who is considered an avatar of no less than the Almighty. More specifically, he has been called an incarnation of Shiva and Dattatreya (the triune Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva deity worshipped in Maharashtra) and is said to appear to devotees as their deity: Jesus Christ, Rama or Krishna (Vitthala). Scholars and devotees verily associate him with the Nath tradition of great yogis as well as poet-saints of the Bhakti movement, particularly Kabir, who decried ritualism and preached the transcendence of caste and creed differences.