6.1-Expansion of Worship

We have seen so far how the worship of Sri Sai Baba expanded during his lifetime. This did not stop with 1918 but continued to expand further and further. It further extended in its inwardness and attained high results. Modes of worship spread Sai faith to all parts of India and beyond. Any one touring the Indian States can observe the results of Worship of Sri Sai. There are over hundered institutions named after Sai, carrying on Sai Puja, Sai Bhajan, Sai Prachar, often called Sai Samajs or Sammelans, Bhajan groups. Most of them have Sai Mandirs with decent buildings suitable with gopuras or towers with compounds. In Madras city alone we have the Mylapore All India Sai Samaj Sai Mandir, the Guindy Sai Mandir and the Egmore Sai Mandir. At Kurnool, Coimbatore, Ventrapragada, Tenali and other places there are notable Mandirs attracting thousands to worship there. Sri Sai Baba has foreseen all this expansion.

Baba allowed his own worship with the forethought that it would be the means for providing temporal and spiritual benefits to millions of individuals and also the means of solving India’s national problems of communal and religious unity as Sarva loka malapaha. In India we have not merely Hindu and Mohammadan divisons but various subdivisions of religion, among their major communities also. They differ widely from one another in their ideas and modes of worship. Till recently, religion meant differences between group and group and, therefore, mutual conflicts, preventing the unification of India or even of Hinduism, urgently calling for its purification and unification. Sri Vishnu and Siva conflicts have been going on for centuries (also Hindu-Muslim conflicts). Credit must be given to Akbar for trying to solve the problem of religious disunity in India by using his powerful position and influence. He tried to unify and consolidate the two chief religions, namely, Hinduism and Islam, by making the representatives of both gather at one place to worship the common father for all, Din Ilahi. Akbar’s attempt though slightly successful during his days, perished with him. His successors did not take up the idea and some of them took up the opposite idea of oppressing the non-Muslims and compelled them embrace Islam. Aurangazeb did so.