Neither Sai Baba nor his devotees have ever asked for his 'god' status: Uma Bharti

NEW DELHI: BJP leader and Union minister Uma Bharti has reaffirmed her belief in Sai Baba, seeking to distance the party and the government led by it from Dwarkapeeth Shankaracharya Swaroopanand Saraswati’s controversial call to Hindus to stop worshipping the “Muslim fakir”.

“In India we have a varied tradition of worshipping our parents, our teacher or the guest. It is entirely a personal choice,” water resource minister Bharti told ET on Thursday.

The minister, who is often referred to as ‘Sadhvi’ and ranked among the popular faces of the party’s Hindutva movement in the wake of the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation, had earlier written to the Shankaracharya in a bid to put the lid on the matter after the seer declared that Sai Baba should not be worshipped in Hindu temples and called upon Hindu saints to unite in the cause of appealing to Sai devotees to either “wean themselves away from the Hindu tradition” or stop the worship of Sai Baba as though he were a Hindu god.

Responding to the letter, the Shankaracharya had said the tenets of Hinduism did not permit the worship of Sai Baba, who was most probably a Muslim. “They are using Vishnu Sahasranaam and Gayatri Mantra to worship a Muslim Fakir, which is not right. When we do not have a single temple for someone like Adi Sankaracharya and other Dharmagurus, why should there be temples for a man who believed ‘Allah is Malik’ all his life?” he had asked.