Will a political tantric twist India's destiny?
June 10, 2011
By Kancha Ilaiah
DC
The movement against black money, including that which is stashed away
in safe havens like Swiss banks, is more difficult than the movement
against corruption and putting a Lokpal Bill in place.
Baba Ramdev, a Hindu spiritual and yoga guru, has taken up this issue
with a long-term political objective.
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government seems to be more
scared of him than of Anna Hazare because Baba Ramdev has a large
network of followers. In addition, Baba Ramdev has the backing of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in his campaign, which is likely to
widen its base.
Baba Ramdev's rise is rather miraculous. Having been born in a lower
middle-class Yadav family of Haryana, he built a yoga empire by
teaching it to health-conscious people of the middle and upper middle
class.
He combined yoga with a bit of science and an interesting mix of
Buddhist dialectics and Hindu tantra.
Though formally educated only up to the eighth standard, in an
ordinary government school, he learnt Sanskrit and English to
communicate his yoga techniques. His body movements and the skills he
employs to explain yoga made him very popular rather quickly.
In fact, Baba Ramdev's yoga empire expanded at a rate much faster than
Sathya Sai Baba's spiritual empire, and he now commands the loyalty of
millions of people who are ready and willing to be converted into a
cadre for a movement against corruption and also for mobilisation of
votes when the party he is to set up contests elections.
Unlike other gurus, Baba Ramdev combines politics, morality and Hindu
idiom. Apart from his yoga followers who cut across caste, parties and
religion lines, a vast number of other backward castes (OBCs) in the
country see him as "prime ministerial material".
The Anna Hazare team emerged from the middle-class brahmanic morality
of non-corruption without any mass base. Baba Ramdev is the opposite
of that. He has a massive middle-class mass
base.
This mass base can shake the system big towns upwards, if not from the
village upwards. His on-going hunger strike will take his image even
further, to villages. Baba Ramdev is Gandhi in saffron, with a
handsome body, black hair and a beard.
Anna Hazare looks like a farmer of the outmoded type. More people want
to see Baba Ramdev than Anna Hazare. If his movement clicks, Baba
Ramdev's party will have a head start.
However, the key question is whom does the anti-black money movement
rattle — the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)? It would be
a headache for both.
The supporters and leaders of both the parties have black money.
If Baba Ramdev turns into a political leader, one does not expect him
to win the Parliament elections straightaway. But his party will be a
potential force, like what Kanshi Ram's Bahujan Samaj Party used to be
for a long time in Uttar Pradesh.
At one place it could harm the Congress and at another it could harm
the BJP as Baba Ramdev's middle-class followers are likely to be the
BJP's traditional voters.
While the RSS is supporting him, the BJP has to keep its fingers crossed.
As far as the RSS is concerned, Baba Ramdev is a better all-India
package than Narendra Modi, because Ramdev is a very credible OBC
Hindu. If he aligns with the BJP, the Congress will have a serious
problem.
The fact that a four-member Cabinet team, headed by none other than
finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, waited for him, received him and
talked to him at the airport on June 1 shows the amount of fear he
generated.
Baba Ramdev is a good example of tantric modernity. If he can twist
the arms of the state like this today, he can twist the destiny of the
nation tomorrow.
We do not know in which direction the nation would go under the
leadership of such yoga leaders. But one thing is certain. We produced
a Gandhi and we have produced an Ambedkar. We now seem to be on the
way to produce a Baba Ramdev.
If Gandhi and Ambedkar were spiritual politicians who shaped the
destiny of the nation in two different modes, Ramdev is a tantric
politician who might take it in an opposite direction altogether.
Good luck, Baba Ramdev.
Kancha Ilaiah is director for the study of Social Exclusion and
Inclusive Policy, Maulana
Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad
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