From disciple to godman: The rise of a polarising Sathya Sai Baba protege

Flipping through the contents of her 17-year-old son’s belongings upon his return from a hostel in Puttaparthi – a pilgrimage town in Andhra Pradesh popular as the birthplace of spiritual guru Sathya Sai Baba – the woman’s gaze fell on a book with a reddish cover. The author’s name, Madhusudan Naidu, made her head swim. She imagined the worst-case scenario – her son getting sacked from the Puttaparthi school on getting caught with the book, and the family being ostracised by devotees.

Two years later, the woman speaks in hushed tones. “The name is not even uttered in our home,” she said, requesting anonymity.

Her caution is not misplaced.

Over the past decade, the emergence of a new godman and his ashram – following the death of Puttaparthi’s Sathya Sai Baba in 2011 – has divided devotees and threatened the legacy of his ashram which was frequented by thousands of devotees and has centres in 114 countries. Dotted with hospitals, educational institutes, ashram, cricket stadium and airport, Puttaparthi grew from a tiny village to a spiritual town that once had prime ministers, movie stars and cricketers as regular visitors. But within a decade, the new godman, who was Sathya Sai Baba’s student and devotee, replaced him in the eyes of thousands of devotees.

Just as Sathyanarayana Raju once became Sathya Sai Baba, accepted by his devotees as a reincarnation of the Shirdi Sai Baba, Naidu is now Sadhguru Madhusudan Sai. He copies his former teacher’s clothes and mannerism, performs similar “miracles” (conjuring vibhuti and ornaments from thin air), and runs an ashram in Muddenhalli, 100km away from Puttaparthi in Karnataka’s Chikkaballapur district. When starting out in 2011, he claimed Sathya Sai Baba spoke through him, but now calls himself as another version of the godman. “I do not have a body, but I shall use your bodies to do my work,” Madhusudan Sai’s article in the ashram’s website quotes Sathya Sai Baba as telling him after his death in 2011.

Madhusudan Sai’s emergence has caused much friction in the devotee community – rival camps avoid each other. “Madhusudan presented himself as a solution to devotees who craved for Baba’s physical form. Now he is too big to be controlled,” says Anil Kumar Kamaraju, 80, Sathya Sai Baba’s translator and former confidante.

Aided by a “corporate” working style and a PR machinery, the rise of Madhusudan Sai is dramatic and rapid, but not an overnight phenomenon. While his confidantes say his “transformation” is organic, his critics say he seized an opportunity presented by the death of Sathya Sai Baba in April 2011 at 84. In public discourses, Sathya Sai Baba had said he would live till he turned 96 and be reborn as Prema Sai Baba in Karnataka’s Mandya. For devotees, therefore, his was an untimely death.

The rise

Madhusudan is now 43. According to old devotees in Puttaparthi, his rise was driven by three devotees – Narsimha Murthy, C Sreenivas and Isaac Tigrett – who shifted camps and loyalties soon after Sathya Sai Baba’s death.

Madhusudan pursued bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Chemistry from Sathya Sai Baba’s institute in Bengaluru, and an MBA from Puttaparthi. “He was an eloquent speaker, outstanding in studies and excelled in music, dramatics and paintings,” says Aruni Kumar Mahapatra, his MBA batchmate. Today, Mahapatra’s mother serves at the Muddenhalli ashram, but he sees Madhusudan only as Sathya Sai Baba’s “earnest disciple”.

Madhusudan had easy access to Sathya Sai Baba. He sought academic and career directions from him, painted his parents’ portraits, and has multiple photos with him. Kamaraju says Madhusudan was a good mimicry artist. “He would entertain the hostel by making hand movements like Baba and speak in his tone.”

After completing his MBA in 2003, Madhusudan pursued a banking career, but kept returning to Puttaparthi. His biographer, Bhuvana Santhanam, a former corporate communications professional, wrote that Sathya Sai Baba began manifesting at his Raipur home daily from March 2011, weeks before his death.

“While Baba was being buried, Madhusudan told us the casket would open and Baba would come out,” says Vinay Kumar, convenor of Sathya Sai Baba’s college in Bengaluru, around 165km from Puttaparthi.

Days after the godman’s death, such statements by Madhusudan became more frequent. “He would repeatedly visit Puttaparthi, gather devotees, stare at them, and suddenly announce he felt Baba’s presence. He claimed Baba spoke through him,” said Madhusudan’s former flatmate and a senior staff member in Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust (SSSCT). Several devotees did not take Madhusudan’s claims seriously – they believed he was traumatised by his guru’s death.

This was a time when events were fast unfolding. Since Sathya Sai Baba left no will, a controversy erupted over the trust’s wealth and future, even as Puttaparthi officials struggled to contain bad press.

Puttaparthi to Muddenhalli

By late 2011, Madhusudan moved to Muddenhalli, 30km from Bengaluru airport and 8km off the Bengaluru-Hyderabad Highway. The 120-acre Muddenhalli ashram, dotted with coconut trees and hillocks at a distance, was run by Sathya Sai Baba before his former disciple took over – triggering an ongoing court battle.

What followed was the rapid setting up of a new ashram, Sathya Sai Grama, marked by wide streets, swanky buildings, and manicured lawns. From food outlets to shopping facilities, an under-construction stadium to a cowshed, and from daily spiritual schedule to the communication channels, the new ashram replicated Puttaparthi – thanks to hundreds of crores of rupees in donations, much of them from foreign devotees.

Madhusudan’s progression from grieving over Satya Sai Baba’s death, to becoming a godman himself, was gradual.

By 2011-12, he emerged as Sathya Sai Baba’s “messenger”. He donned simple clothes, prayed to a chair dedicated to his guru, and conveyed to devotees “messages” from him. Gradually, he began indicating that he could see the Baba. He would open the doors of a Mercedes and act as if he was ushering Baba from its rear seat that otherwise appeared unoccupied. With folded hands, he would then walk behind empty space – indicating that he was escorting his former guru, show videos of these events.

It attracted devotees, many of them from Puttaparthi, a town with hillocks with 2,000 ashram residents and a floating crowd of 10,000.

Foreign devotees were also attracted by Tigrett’s move to Muddenhalli. Tigrett, a well-built man with long white hair and a beard, was among the most visible foreign faces around Baba.

As Muddenhalli grew, taxi drivers made merry – ferrying curious devotees to and from Puttaparthi and Muddenhalli, sometimes multiple trips a day – until devotees decided to stay in Muddenhalli itself.

Several were attracted to Madhusudan’s charisma, particularly when he granted them interviews in which he would reveal their past. “When I first saw guru in 2014, there was a Baba-shaped halo around him. Then he narrated something about my birth which very few people knew,” says David Cornsweet, a 71-year-old American who sold his Puttaparthi house to donate the proceeds to Madhusudan.

Cornsweet, who serves as the director of a US-based NGO, lives in a well-furnished two-bedroom Muddenhalli ashram apartment whose walls are adorned with Sathya Sai Baba’s photos.

Gradually, Madhusudan began dressing like Sathya Sai Baba in orange, yellow or white robes, but incorporated Kannada culture by donning a lungi and angavastram. To Muddenhalli devotees, it was Sathya Sai Baba living the 12 remaining years of his life by “entering Madhusudan’s body and carrying out the tasks as per what Baba wanted”.

Transformation

On July 16, 2019, Madhusudan occupied the chair left vacant for Sathya Sai Baba in Muddenhalli ashram. “On Gurupurnima, I handed over the remote control to Madhusudan, which means he can be in the ascended state 24×7 if he chooses to,” Madhusudan said in a post-2019 interview, posing as Baba.

Some devotees refused to accept it and returned to Puttaparthi. “He was acceptable to me as Baba’s messenger until he occupied that chair,” says Kristina Popov, a Russian devotee who frequented Muddenhalli before cutting ties.

Inside Muddenhalli ashram, Sathya Sai Baba’s name and photographs are used prominently. But the transition is visible too. Large images of Madhusudan now grace the roadside hoardings. He features solo in calendars, and where he shares space with Baba, their images are of the same size.

In Puttaparthi, devotees struggle to comprehend the developments.

Many were convinced that the “shifting of bodies” was a “grand design” by Sathya Sai Baba. Some felt guilty of “missing out” on seeing him back in a physical form. And some others were angry.

Some devotees filed multiple petitions against Madhusudan and his ashram. Ex-students shot off emails to the alumni community, cautioning them against “falling in the trap”. Satish Naik, a local hotel manager with 27,000 Youtube subscribers, spent hours daily broadcasting “expose” videos.

Puttaparthi ashram authorities were more proactive. Office-bearers and employees who visited Muddenhalli were sacked, even if they returned.

“This is not a corporate job you jump for better opportunities,” says K Chakravarthi, a retired IAS officer who is an SSSCT trustee. The functionaries said they were sending out a “message” to prevent devotees from getting “corrupted and negatively influenced”. Ashram-hopping devotees were ostracised in Puttaparthi.

Govinda Reddy, Sathya Sai Baba’s former 58-year-old driver who became the liaison officer in Muddenhalli, felt unwelcome in Puttaparthi. “I feel strongly connected to Puttaparthi, but never visited it after 2016.”

Kamaraju defends such a response. “By honouring such claims (by Madhusudan), you are disrespecting and betraying Sathya Sai Baba”.

In Puttaparthi, devotees don’t want to be seen having anything to do with Muddenhalli – resident devotees not seen in Puttaparthi for long are viewed with suspicion.

Muddenhalli ashram doesn’t have similar restrictions. “We welcome all. We want devotees to visit both the ashrams,” says Murthy, a 78-year-old composed man who wears white, sports “vibhuti” on his forehead, and remains a bachelor.

They point to Sathya Sai Baba’s former driver, Reddy, who was appointed as chairman of Madhusudan’s two educational institutes. Today, Reddy is in the top five of the ashram’s hierarchy.

Muddenhalli is now expanding at a rapid pace. “Guru has visited 40 countries,” says Murthy. When contacted for this article, Madhusudan didn’t respond to phone calls and messages requesting an interaction.

The Muddenhalli ashram now has robust public service schemes – free schools, hospitals, a medical college, and daily breakfast for hundreds of thousands of children in Karnataka. Puttaparthi, on the other hand, primarily focuses on running the existing system. “Puttaparthi already has a system in place. We just need to continue running it perfectly,” says RJ Rathnakar, Sathya Sai Baba’s nephew and SSSCT’s managing trustee.

What no one disputes is that, at Muddenhalli, donations are coming in thick and fast.

Between 2012 and 2018, for which comparative data was available, Puttaparthi received only ₹37 crore annually on an average as foreign donations, as compared to Muddenhalli’s ₹61 crore, according to donations data provided by SSSCT office bearers. Muddenhalli’s Murthy refused to confirm or deny this data. But Muddenhalli devotees remain a few thousand while Puttaparthi devotees run into hundreds of thousands.

Many Puttaparthi devotees continue to take refuge in Baba’s recorded discourses. “…there are some who proclaim that I am ‘coming upon someone’ and speaking through them…Now hear this. I never speak through another…,” Sathya Sai Speaks Volume 5, a compilation of Baba’s discourses published in 1967, quotes him as saying in 1965.

Murthy offers his own analysis of this. “Baba said that when he was alive, some people claimed he spoke through them. But Baba also said that (a devotee akin to) Swami Vivekananda would take his work forward. The context is important.”