Shirdi Sai Baba was an aulia, Sufi mystic saint

[Dipika]

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.

In her Ph.D. thesis from the Toronto University, soon to be published as a book, Marianne Warren argues that Shirdi Sai Baba was an aulia, Sufi mystic and saint. Meher Baba, Sai Baba's contemporary based near Shirdi, had given him the Sufi honorific of Hazrat and placed him at the head of a spiritual hierarchy of five perfect masters on a spiritual mission.

Practically speaking, Sai Baba's appeal lies in the experiences of innumerable devotees that prayers to him yield tangible worldly results, as well as in the more esoteric areas of transformation of character and spiritual benefits. Yet, most people approached the Baba during his lifetime for material, not spiritual, gain. And Shubha Verma, a Hindi journalist-turned-Baba devotee, says it remains the case till date.

Baba's mission was, however, to restore belief in god. As he himself said: "I give people what they want in the hope that they will begin to want what I want to give them (knowledge of the Ultimate)."  

 


dipika duggal