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Godman to
the rescue
Khushwant Singh
August 30
I do not have much time for godmen or godwomen. I know they bring
solace to a large number of their disciples and open schools,
colleges and hospitals from the offerings they receive. But most of
the time they raise new places of worship and go round giving
darshan to their admirers, sing bhajans and deliver sermons. What I
have against them is that they do not involve themselves in problems
facing our country like telling their followers not to have more
than two children (one would be better) and to plant trees on
birthdays, weddings and in memory of the dead etc. Their word will
count much more than ministers, exhortations.
Sri Sathya Sai Baba has always been an enigma to me. He probably has
the largest following in the country, among them highly intelligent
and well-placed men and women, including my friend Nani Palkhiwala,
retired chief justice Bhagwati, retired air chief marshal O.P. Mehra,
retired general Chibber and Ambika Soni. He has set up many
educational institutions and hospitals, as well as Sai temples,
across the country which people throng in thousands. They regard him
as an avatar (incarnation of god) and call him bhagwan. His latest
bequest is to bring potable water to thirsty Chennai.
Chennai has had an acute water shortage problem from the time it was
Madrasapatnam and Madras and its population was no more than 4.7
lakh. A British engineer, Fraser, solved the problem by damming a
stream and conserving monsoon water in three reservoirs. Since the
population of the city almost doubled, the search for more water
increased. The two possible sources were the Krishna river in the
north and Kaveri in the south. The Kaveri project was aborted
because of corruption and did not yield a drop.
M.G. Ramachandran, then chief minister of Tamil Nadu, made a deal
with N.T. Rama Rao of Andhra Pradesh. Waters of Krishna were brought
to a reservoir on the border of Tamil Nadu. A 150 km long canal was
dug to take the water to one of Chennai’s reservoirs. It was given
the grand name, Telugu Ganga Project, and was completed in 1996. It
proved a non-starter: the canal was in fact a narrow ditch which
subsided at many places and farmers en route stole water from it and
so, precious little trickled into Chennai. It was then that Sai Baba
came on the scene. On January 19, 2002, he sanctioned trust money to
open up the ditch and made it into a proper canal, had its sides
lined with stone and brick to prevent seepage and get all the water
to the Chennai reservoir.
It is not the government, that had nothing to do with this attempt,
but the people who have given it the name Sai Ganga. At the end of
this month (August), the Sai Ganga Project will be finished. Despite
being a non-believer in godmen or godwomen, I raise my glass to him
with the invocation, “Jai Bhagwan!”.
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