Talk:Sathya Sai Baba movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Religion Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.
Start	This article has been rated as Start on the Project's quality scale. See comments
	This article has been marked as needing immediate attention.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Hinduism, an attempt to promote better coordination, content distribution, and cross-referencing between pages dealing with Hinduism. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page. Guidelines: Manual of Style - Naming conventions How you can help: Notice board - Discussion board
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
High	This article has been rated as high-importance for this Project's importance scale.

A request has been made for this article to be peer reviewed by WikiProject Hinduism in order to get a broader perspective on how it may be improved. Please make any edits you see fit to improve the quality of this article.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject India, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of India-related topics. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page.
Start	This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. (see comments)
	This article is maintained by the Andhra Pradesh workgroup.
More information about this article... ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

Sorry

apologies accepted. the confusing title should have been changed much earlier. Andries 13:15, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

See Talk:Beliefs_and_practices_in_the_Sathya_Sai_Organisation for old discussions. Andries 13:15, 21 October 2006 (UTC) See Talk:Sathya Sai Baba movement/Comments. Andries 00:52, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

See here for the history of this article [1]

Contents 1 Proposal for renaming this article into Sathya Sai Baba movement 2 Title should be Sathya Sai Baba movement 3 Merge from Sathya Sai Baba 4 cult versus religious movement 5 Organizations section 6 Merge from Sathya Sai Organization 7 Still contains some original research/personal interpretations 8 My assessment of sources: Kent, Bowen, Swallow 9 Explanation of edits 10 Fair use rationale for Image:Sathya Sai Organisation official logo.jpg 11 Kent "wrongly" describes the Sathya Sai Baba movement in Malaysia as a "Hindu Revitalization movement."

[edit] Proposal for renaming this article into Sathya Sai Baba movement

See [2] [3] [4] [5] Andries 10:38, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from Sathya Sai Baba

[edit] cult versus religious movement

From what I understand Lawrence Babb prefers the term cult over religious movement because he asserts that the focus is on SSB's miracles, not on doctrine or teachings as he thinks should be the case for a religious movement. (I have my doubts about whether Babb's set of definitions will yield useful classifications and explanations. By the way, it is not my experience that there is less emphasis on teachings than in the Roman Catholic Church). Andries 01:16, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

By the way, the article says that he says that he will reincarnate in this century. Which one? 20th or 21st? Larry R. Holmgren 22:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Firstly the Sai Baba movement is too diverse and global to be termed a cult as there are no consistent teachings. One of the things that Sai Baba teaches in fact is that you shouldnto change your religion to follow him. If you are a Hindu, then remain a good Hindu, if you are Christian, then be a good Christian etc. There are Sai Baba Devotees all over the world who identify themselves as other religions, and see no conflict in his teachings (largely common sense goodness rather than doctrine) with their prescribed faith.

In terms of the his 3rd incarnation, as Prema Sai Baba, this is in the 21st century. I do not know if a date is given, but he has given the age that he will die at. A reincarnation may not be immediately after this though - there could be an interval. Does anyone have the references?

[edit] Organizations section

I copied the organizations section from Sathya Sai Baba because they are better suited here. I still have to check some of the sources that strike me as doubtful e.g. chennai online. Andries 22:24, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from Sathya Sai Organization

[edit] Still contains some original research/personal interpretations

I am busy removing the remaining original research and personal interpretations from the article. I hope that I will be finished before I get banned by the arbcom that will most probably lead to a complete stand still of this article. Andries 19:12, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I am bold in editing, but I want to improve the article before I get banned, because the history of the article shows that only I am interested in the article. It will probably remain in its somewhat sorry state for a long time if I abandon it. Andries 20:19, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I think I made some mistakes in citations with Bowen, Babb, Nagel, and Kent. I also have possibly misinterpreted their works. I hope that I will be able to fix it before the ban take its effect. In the meantime I will give a warning on the article page. Andries 21:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My assessment of sources: Kent, Bowen, Swallow

• Kent:
  • found only minor inaccuracies.
  • Hardly information about the life of SSB.
  • Book was published in 2005 but research took place between 1996-1998
  • Book has an index
• Bowen:
  • throughout the whole book SSB's paranormal powers are described as siddhis, though SSB denied in the 1976 Blitz interview that his powers are siddhis.
  • compares and explains Shiva and hence SSB with Dionysos in his conclusion. Implausible and unpractical; it is like explaining contemporary cars with chariots from Ancient. The conclusion is not or hardly suppported by his other writings.
  • Gives a timeline of SSB's life and the movement
  • Lengthy and no index
• Swallow
  • Implausible theoretical speculations about the meaning of SSB's claim to be an incarnation of Shiva

Andries 09:21, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Explanation of edits

• Replaced syncretism with eclecticism.
  • Syncretism is denied by Morton Klass, though I cannot write about that because I do not have the book by Klass. Eclecticism is supported among others by Kent and Bowen though I still have to find the page numbers
• Meditation shortened
  • I cannot find third party peer-reviewed articles for this, so I have used the devotee compendium by Steel and shortened this.
• Removed some redundant statements treated already elsewhere in the entry

Andries 21:50, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

The bibliography section is incomplete; few listings have the year of publication. This context is needed. Larry R. Holmgren 22:20, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

• Removed {noncompliant} and {totally disputed} tags. Please be reminded that this article belongs to the WikiProject Religion. Just imagine tagging the article on the Christian Church with tags that read "...must not include unverifiable or unsuitable material" and/or "...factual accuracy of this article are disputed." Preposterous. This article, as it stands now, is objective enough and verifiable enough. --AVM 21:09, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Sathya Sai Organisation official logo.jpg

Image:Sathya Sai Organisation official logo.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:15, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorted. Ekantik ^talk 22:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Kent "wrongly" describes the Sathya Sai Baba movement in Malaysia as a "Hindu Revitalization movement."

Kent wrongly describes the Sathya Sai Baba movement in Malaysia as a "Hindu Revitalization movement." Whilst local Hindu practices have indeed been encouraged, it would be wrong to use this term because Sai Baba has encouraged people of all religions to adhere to their own religions and has often quoted from the Bible and the Koran in his discourses. Furthermore, the official symbol of the Sai Baba organisation has the symbols of the five major world religions in each of the lotus petals so it is clear that it does not merely promote Hinduism.

sources please for the word "wrongly". Even if there are sources this cannot be written down as fact. I am aware that most (or many) devotees would disagree with Kent, but Babb disagrees with the viewpoint of the devotees on page 174 of Redemptive Encounters he writes that "this cult [is] deeply and authentically Hindu". Andries (talk) 08:13, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

The viewpoint of devotees is already in the article, properly attributed and sourced, (but with bad grammar)

"According to Kelly, they [ Sathya Sai Organization ] see its founder as the "living synthesis of the world's religious traditions" and prefers to be classified as an interfaith movement."

Andries (talk) 10:20, 13 April 2008 (UTC)