Spiritual leader & vegetarian advocate Sathya Sai Baba dies at 84
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2011:
PUTTAPARTHI–Sathya Sai Baba, 84, died on April 23, 2011
after three weeks in critical condition due to cardio-respiratory
failure.
Called by the London Daily Telegraph “India’s most famous and
most controversial holy man, and one of the most enigmatic and
remarkable religious figures of the last century,” Sai Baba was
“thought to have been born,” the Telegraph said, “as Sathya
Narayana Raju, on November 23, 1926, into a poor farming family in
Puttaparthi, Andhra Pradesh. According to legend, as a child he
would avoid places where animals were slaughtered and bring beggars
home to be fed.”