Pranayam Revolution & the Baba

Varuni Bhatia The Strange Case of Baba Ramdev A young Yadav lad, the son of a low-income Haryana farmer, grows up in the decade of the seventies, the low-point of Nehruvian socialism. He is put through middle school with considerable financial strain on his family. The young boy goes through impressionable years of his life learning of an India of historical greatness, the dreams and aspirations that history textbooks routinely weave in telling a heroic narrative of the nation’s struggle to come into its own. A picture of Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’ and Subhas Chandra Bose allegedly hang in his room. Perhaps he is taken out of the government school that he attends and sent to a gurukul-type private school for a better education. As an adolescent, this boy continues to be influenced by the kind of ascetic masculinity that had spurred early twentieth-century nation building and anti-colonialism—his heroes from the canon of the freedom movement are militant nationalists such as Ram Prasad ‘Bismil’ and Subhas Chandra Bose, as well as hardliners such as Sardar Patel—not a usual fare of Gandhi-Nehru dominated freedom struggle. Thirty years hence, a vernacular godman grips the attention of the world, claiming almost-miraculous powers to yoga and Ayurveda. Breath practices and disciplined living, we are told, can sure diseases such as AIDS; allopathic medicine, we are told, is a charade and must be replaced by Ayurveda; yoga is the answer to all problems. This Swami wows recent spate of Indian diaspora in the first world with his ability to contort his body and subject it to seemingly impossible tortures. The nation, on the other hand, already knows him as a familiar figure, waking up with his call to yoga on Aastha channel every morning. The Swami emerges, already famous, having seemingly bypassed the usual route of a gradual rise to popularity. His online hagiographies already show elements of obfuscation. Lack of particulars notwithstanding, we get a picture of a Swami who has not merely risen as a traditional godman pandering to the elites, but a veritable saffron-clad warrior for vernacular democracy who has done an excellent task of guaranteeing himself a core support group amongst lower income, middle classes of the Hindi belt—precisely the same background that he emerged from; a tour de force that differentiates him from other godmen, as we shall see. Today, this low-income boy who turned into a godman heads an empire of traditional healing practices, that include an Ayurveda university, a traditional healing retreat cum medicine facility, and a yoga retreat (all three near Haridwar); yoga workshops run by trained yoga instructors in various small and large towns of north India; an enormously popular brand ‘Divya Mandir’ of herbal products; a vast internet presence through websites, facebook pages, blogs, and youtube videos; and a sizable and growing support group for his programs both within and outside India. His current worth is estimated at over 1000 crores, and he has successful organizations and centers in various parts of the world especially targeting the Indian diaspora. The Swami’s meteoric rise in popularity and his heady mix of faith-based practices with a program of rejuvenating the nation beg the question as to how is he different from others of his ilk. Purveyors of a new and global Hinduism such as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Swami Nityananda, Sathya Sai Baba, Ma Amritanandamayi and so on have also amassed a significant following of celebrities and the general public in recent years. Different he is, and it may be of vital importance for us parse out his ultra-nationalist vision, so as not to confuse him with any other godman or woman who largely seem satisfied with doling out Hindu ecumenism for consumption in the global marketplace of spiritualism. The key to Ramdev’s success lies in his projection of himself as a rejuvenator of the Indian nation. He is at the helm of a movement (a self-proclaimed andolan, no less) that has turned him from a savvy businessman and traditional healer into the most contemporary face of neo-Swadeshi and neo-Hindutva nationalism in India. Liberal and left-leaning intellectuals and journalists have condemned him for holding the country hostage to an improbable, laughable and socially conservative agenda, drawing attention to fascistic tendencies underlying his programs. Much of the critique, however, reverts to portraying him as a traditional godman and a charlatan, out to con the intellectually-challenged lower middle class Indian populace who have readily abandoned rational thought to pledge support to this mystic. However, we can no longer ignore a sustained analysis of this contemporary face of Swadeshi socialism and Hindutva culturalism that emerges through the Baba phenomenon. The Baba has been able to cleverly revive and older RSS program based on national pride, majoritarian social justice, and punitively hardline agenda combining it with a savvy use of a keen business-sense, new media practices, and located as its enemy a well-honed notion of corruption, both moral and financial. He has also been able to tap into older RSS networks, which the BJP had alienated in its projection of a ‘Shining’ India, and from where he derives the core of his popular support. As the face of India’s neo-Hindutva movement, the Baba phenomenon is significant enough to merit a sustained analysis of the discursive and operational networks. What is even more remarkable is that these networks have arisen in less than a decade. The Baba may not be a mere passing fad or a momentary fancy, but a new player on the India’s Hindu rightwing spectrum, so any ignorance about his organizational network and capacities will be at our own peril. Structure of a ‘Revolution’: Unpacking Corporate Neo-Swadeshi Underlying Baba Ramdev’s anti-graft movement is a program of Swadeshi economic reform. It is worth considering his network of organizations to see the kind of Swadeshi that is being imagined there. Baba Ramdev’s umbrella organization is called the Divya Yog Mandir, or the Patanjali Yog Peeth, and it is headquartered in Haridwar. The Yog Peeth claims a hoary origin, as an extension