The Land That Chose Him: Miracles, Innocence and Renewal

Most people say they chose a place to serve. Sadguru Sri Madhusudan Sai says it happened the other way around that Karnataka, and its own goddess, chose him. That single admission set the tone for three more Divya Sanje evenings this week, held in Hosapete, Tumakuru and Chikkamagaluru, where the conversation travelled from a mobile phone in a child’s hand to a disease quietly damaging a farmer’s crop, and from a question on gender equality to what Sadguru himself calls a miracle. Here is the story of those evenings, exactly as they unfolded.

In Hosapete, Dr B.N. Narasimha Murthy opened the evening with a reflection on why enlightened beings walk among us at all, to protect dharma, he said, reminding the gathering that Vedic sages once declared every human being an amrutaputra, a child of immortality, and that India earns the title of Vishwaguru through its spiritual strength alone. He went on to trace Sadguru’s own journey, noting that although Chhattisgarh remains his birthplace, Karnataka has become his Karmabhoomi, the land of his life’s work, now home to twenty-five campuses, the world’s first completely free university, and a free medical college.

Tumakuru brought a different chorus of voices. Siddaganga Mutt’s junior pontiff, Shivassiddeshwara Swamiji, mentioned Sadguru as one of India’s great saints, pointing to the hospital at Muddenahalli that has no billing counter as proof of what a healthy, service-driven nation could look like. Union Minister of State for Railways V Somanna went further, comparing Sadguru’s outlook to the late Sri Shivakumara Swamiji’s and noting that an organisation built in just fifteen years now serves people “without considering caste, religion, language or boundaries.”

Shri TB Jayachandra, the Karnataka government’s Special Representative in Delhi, called the work at Sathya Sai Grama nothing short of a miracle to witness firsthand. Amid the praise came a direct appeal too, KPCC vice-president Muralidhar Halappa, welcoming the gathering, asked Sadguru to consider a well-equipped healthcare centre for Tumakuru, an expanded campus at Sira taluk, and a new institution for the Tumakuru-Nelamangala region.

By the time the series reached Chikkamagaluru, Dr B N Narasimha Murthy returned to frame the evening once more, this time comparing Sadguru’s bond with Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba to Swami Vivekananda’s with Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. He recalled words Baba himself was said to have spoken to a young Madhusudan Sai: 

“If you give up everything that belongs to you and dedicate yourself to selfless service, your service activities become mine. No one can stop them.” 

It was, Murthy said, a promise that has quietly shaped everything that followed.

Each evening carried its own marker of how far this work has already travelled. In Hosapete, it emerged that the SaiSure nutrition programme now reaches more than two lakh children across 1,200 schools in Vijayanagara district alone, a scale that drew visible appreciation from the gathering.

Sadguru began the week by naming the very ground beneath him. 

“I did not choose Karnataka for my service activities; the state of Karnataka and Goddess Kannadambe herself chose me. This is God’s will and His divine resolve,” 

he said in Hosapete, recalling how his very first institution in Kalaburagi grew only because Kannadigas joined hands with him. “Baba taught us that our work should speak, not us,” he added, pointing to hospitals with no billing counters as evidence of a return to an older, uncommercialised idea of care. 

On a question about children and social media, he turned the responsibility back to the room itself: “Who first placed a mobile phone in the child’s hands?” he asked, before urging parents to give their children time rather than screens. Asked about inclusion, he was equally unambiguous, transgender individuals receive treatment in every one of the Mission’s hospitals, and children of any background, including those of Devadasis, are welcome in its classrooms, because “Indian tradition never marginalised these communities.”

In Tumakuru, his tone softened into something closer to a father’s. He described every child as a “VIP — Very Innocent Person,” insisting that their upbringing belongs not to one family alone but to society, the country, and ultimately the world. 

“I am not spending money on children. I am investing in the future of the country,” 

he said, adding that a child raised knowing someone cared for them would grow up wanting to care for others in turn.

In Chikkamagaluru, the conversation turned toward the soil itself. Responding to concerns over a leaf spot disease affecting Malnad’s arecanut growers, Sadguru offered to formulate a research programme, provided government and society joined the organisation in what he called a Triveni Sangama, a confluence of three forces working as one. Asked later about the miracles associated with Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, he offered an answer rooted as much in science as in faith: 

“Everything in this world is a quantum field. Everything around us is matter and energy. Some people have the ability to change its form. That is what we call a miracle”

One, he cautioned, should never be sought for public display.

Each of these gatherings closed the way they began — in devotion, with Veda chanting giving way to a cultural dance performance in Hosapete, and similar notes of music and movement carrying the other two evenings to their close. But the real closing, if there is one, seemed to happen earlier in a request from Tumakuru still waiting for an answer, in a research programme yet to be built in Chikkamagaluru, in two lakh children in Vijayanagara already being fed because someone decided they mattered. These are not stories that end when the applause does. They continue, quietly, wherever someone chooses to lend a hand to what was set in motion here.