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FTR #‘s 1018, 1019 Baba Ramdev and Hindutva Fascism, Parts 1 and 2

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FTR #1018: Baba Ramdev and Hin­dut­va Fas­cism, Part I  This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR #1019: Baba Ramdev and Hin­dut­va Fas­cism, Part II  This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: The pri­ma­ry focal point of these two pro­grams and sup­ple­men­tal dis­cus­sion in the pro­gram to fol­low is the polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial career of Baba Ramdev. A major sup­port­er of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP and the Hin­dut­va fas­cist RSS, for which the BJP is a polit­i­cal front, Ramdev runs a high­ly suc­cess­ful busi­ness career cen­tered on the teach­ing of yoga and the mar­ket­ing of “ayurvedic” foods, cos­met­ics and med­i­cines. In turn, his busi­ness inter­ests are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Modi, the BJP and the RSS.

(In FTR #‘s 795, 988 and 989990, 991, 992, and 1015, we detailed the Hin­dut­va fas­cism of Naren­dra Modi, his BJP Par­ty and sup­port­ive ele­ments, trac­ing the evo­lu­tion of Hin­dut­va fas­cism through the assas­si­na­tion of Mahat­ma Gand­hi to the present time.)

With Modi and the BJP run­ning India, Ramde­v’s Patan­jali food busi­ness has also dove­tailed direct­ly with Indi­a’s mil­i­tary devel­op­ment and poten­tial strate­gic inter­ests. A thought-pro­vok­ing and pos­si­bly valid com­par­i­son might be seen between Ramde­v’s oper­a­tions and the oper­a­tions of the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church of Sun Myung Moon. In FTR #970, among oth­er pro­grams, we exam­ined the Moon oper­a­tion as an exten­sion around the world and down the decades of the Patri­ot­ic and Ultra­na­tion­al­ist Soci­eties of Japan. A reli­gious, com­mer­cial and fas­cist polit­i­cal enti­ty, the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church bears many strik­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Ramdev orga­ni­za­tion.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of Ramdev and his polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial under­tak­ings include:

  1. Ramde­v’s ide­o­log­i­cal res­o­nance with the Hin­dut­va fas­cist invo­ca­tion of an ide­al­ized mys­ti­cal past: ” . . . . [BJP head and mur­der sus­pect] Amit Shah told the crowd that the B.J.P. want­ed Ramdev to join them in reform­ing the Indi­an edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem. One of the party’s new pri­or­i­ties is an ambi­tious effort to rewrite Indi­an school text­books to assert Hin­du pri­ma­cy. Mahesh Shar­ma, India’s cul­ture min­is­ter and an avowed fol­low­er of the RSS, has said he hopes to rewrite the con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive about India as a mul­ti­cul­tur­al tapes­try, and to incul­cate the belief that the ancient Hin­du scrip­tures are his­tor­i­cal facts, not leg­ends. ‘There is a lot of work to be done in edu­ca­tion,’ Shah said on the sta­di­um floor, just after the pre­miere of Ramdev’s biopic. ‘Because of our saints and our heroes — all this needs to be brought into our edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem.’ . . . Ramdev walked to the lectern, smil­ing gra­cious­ly at the gag­gle of B.J.P. lumi­nar­ies onstage. He pledged his sup­port to Modi and Shah, and their efforts to trans­form India. . . . ‘I ded­i­cate my time and ener­gy to the cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al edu­ca­tion of the coun­try, to bring our coun­try the great knowl­edge of the Vedas.’ . . .  ‘We will see an Indi­an edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy in this coun­try . . .  Before step­ping down, he pumped his fist once again in a chant of ‘India my moth­er­land is great.’ The crowd roared. . . .”
  2. Ramde­v’s fre­quent invok­ing of the “fascis”–the “bun­dle” of accolytes and his work­ing of the crowd in Fuhrer/­Duce-like fash­ion: ” . . . . Ramdev took the micro­phone and intro­duced the pha­lanx of sev­er­al hun­dred Hin­du reli­gious stu­dents, known as brah­macharis, sit­ting in neat rows on the field. Every­one repeat after me: ‘Bharat mata ki jai!’ he shout­ed. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chant­ed the words — ‘India my moth­er­land is great’ — that have become a defin­ing slo­gan of the Hin­du nation­al­ist move­ment. . . .”
  3. The fus­ing of Ramde­v’s polit­i­cal endeav­ors on behalf of Modi and the RSS with his com­mer­cial activ­i­ties: ” . . . . Ramdev has been a promi­nent voice on the Hin­du right, and his tac­it endorse­ment dur­ing the land­mark 2014 cam­paign helped bring Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi to pow­er. He appeared along­side Modi on sev­er­al occa­sions, singing the leader’s prais­es and urg­ing Indi­ans to turn out for him. Ramdev has called Modi ‘a close friend,’ and the prime min­is­ter pub­licly lauds Patanjali’s array of ayurvedic prod­ucts — med­i­cines, cos­met­ics and food­stuffs. . . . ”
  4. The favored treat­ment afford­ed Ramdev and his Patan­jali busi­ness by the Modi regime: ” . . . . One thing is cer­tain: Ramdev has received extra­or­di­nary favors from the Indi­an gov­ern­ment since Modi was elect­ed. Soon after the 2014 elec­tion, B.J.P.-led state gov­ern­ments across India began facil­i­tat­ing steep dis­counts on land pur­chas­es for Patan­jali. . . . In the largest of these deals, Patan­jali was giv­en a 1,200-acre par­cel of land in the east­ern state of Assam at no cost. Accord­ing to state leg­is­la­ture doc­u­ments I was shown by a local aca­d­e­m­ic, the deal was made by an agency con­trolled by the Bodoland People’s Front, a par­ty aligned with the B.J.P. Last year a Reuters inves­ti­ga­tion doc­u­ment­ed sev­er­al dis­count­ed land sales and leas­es in three oth­er Indi­an states that saved the com­pa­ny a total of $46 mil­lion. . . .”
  5. Ramdev, the  B.J.P. as vehi­cles to erad­i­cate Com­mu­nist influ­ence in parts of India: ” . . . . The RSS has become more vis­i­ble since Modi’s 2014 vic­to­ry. The group and its affil­i­ates have built hun­dreds of schools and job-train­ing cen­ters in Assam and oth­er north­east­ern states in recent years. I vis­it­ed sev­er­al and saw unmis­tak­able signs of the RSS ide­o­log­i­cal pro­gram. . . . All this hard indoc­tri­na­tion work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won con­trol of Assam’s state gov­ern­ment in leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And in March of this year, the par­ty won stun­ning elec­toral upsets in two adja­cent north­east­ern states, where left­ist par­ties had dom­i­nat­ed for decades. There was talk of a ‘saf­fron wave’ that might spread to the south Indi­an regions, includ­ing Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed Ker­ala, that have long resist­ed the advance of Hin­du nation­al­ism. Many Indi­an polit­i­cal ana­lysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essen­tial to the recent elec­toral vic­to­ries. But one RSS vol­un­teer in Assam, a con­struc­tion con­trac­tor, told me Ramdev’s pres­ence and his yoga pro­mo­tion had been very influ­en­tial, too. . . .”
  6. The dove­tail­ing of Modi/B.J.P. assist­ed Patan­jali oper­a­tions with the Indi­an military–specifically, the Indi­an Air Force:  “. . . . After admir­ing the cook­ie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deli­cious­ly smooth, medi­an-free stretch of pave­ment that resem­bled a run­way. In fact, it is a run­way, built in con­sul­ta­tion with the Indi­an Air Force so that jet fight­ers can take off and land on it, Singh told me. ‘We will ded­i­cate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,’ he said, and then added with a know­ing look, ‘We are near Chi­na.’ Patan­jali seems almost to view itself as an exten­sion of the state — or rather, an illus­tra­tion of what has become a ‘state-tem­ple-cor­po­rate com­plex,’ in the apt phrase of the Indi­an author Meera Nan­da. . . .”
  7. Evi­dent sim­i­lar­i­ties between Ramde­v’s “swadeshi”–“economic nationalism”–with Mus­solin­i’s con­cept of the Cor­po­rate State and Hitler’s Nation­al Social­ism: ” . . . . Ramdev has led vast­ly pop­u­lar cam­paigns against cor­rup­tion, don­ning the man­tle of swadeshi, or Indi­an eco­nom­ic nation­al­ism, to cast for­eign com­pa­nies as neo­colo­nial vil­lains. In a sense, Ramdev has changed Hin­duism itself. . . .”
  8. Evi­dent sim­i­lar­i­ties between the “eco­nom­ic xeno­pho­bia” pro­pelling Don­ald Trump’s tar­iffs and trade wars and the swadeshi/economic nation­al­ism of Ramdev and com­pa­ny: ” . . . . When it comes to mar­ket­ing against for­eign com­peti­tors, they wield their holi­ness like a club. One Patan­jali ad runs: ‘As East India Com­pa­ny plun­dered our coun­try for 200 years like­wise these multi­na­tion­als are exploit­ing our coun­try by sell­ing their harm­ful and dan­ger­ous chem­i­cal prod­ucts. Beware!’ . . . .”
  9. Ramde­v’s seam­less meld­ing with the anti-Mus­lim ide­ol­o­gy of the RSS, man­i­fest­ing the strate­gic and tac­ti­cal demo­niza­tion of the “malev­o­lent oth­er” that char­ac­ter­izes so many iter­a­tions of fas­cism: ” . . . . Ramdev has changed Hin­duism itself. His blend of patri­ot­ic fer­vor, health and reli­gious piety flows seam­less­ly into the hard­er ver­sions of Hin­du nation­al­ism, which are often open­ly hos­tile to India’s 172 mil­lion Mus­lims. Although Ramdev prefers to speak of Indi­an sol­i­dar­i­ty, his B.J.P. allies rou­tine­ly invoke an Islam­ic threat and ral­ly crowds with vows to build tem­ples on the sites of medieval mosques. . . . .”
  10. Ramde­v’s atavis­tic pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the myth­i­cal­ly ide­al­ized past anti-Mus­lim fer­vor at times bor­ders on incite­ment to vio­lence: ” . . . . And the nation, in Ramdev’s telling, is sub­tly twinned with a his­to­ry and cul­ture that is dis­tinct­ly Hin­du: yoga, ayurvedic med­i­cine and the ancient Vedic scrip­tures from which they are said to have emerged. Some­times the hints are not so sub­tle. Two years ago, when a Mus­lim politi­cian refused to chant a nation­al­ist slo­gan, Ramdev laid into him at a right-wing ral­ly, say­ing that were it not for his respect for the law, “we would behead hun­dreds of thou­sands” of such peo­ple. A court lat­er issued a war­rant for Ramdev’s arrest, though the mat­ter appears to have been dropped. . . .”
  11. Sim­i­lar­i­ties between Ramdev and Trump: ” . . . . In his own way, Ramdev is India’s answer to Don­ald Trump, and there is much spec­u­la­tion that he may run for prime min­is­ter him­self. Like Trump, he heads a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar empire. And like Trump, he is a bom­bas­tic TV per­son­al­i­ty whose rela­tion­ship with truth is elas­tic; he can­not resist a brand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty — his name and face are every­where in India. . . .”
  12. Ramde­v’s manip­u­la­tion of the actu­al his­to­ry of Yoga to fit into his “Ancient Vedic” the­o­log­i­cal pol­i­tics: ” . . . . This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders. . . . The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. [The asso­ci­a­tion between Nazism and yoga will be high­light­ed lat­er on in the discussion–D.E.] . . .”
  13. A miss­ing and very pos­si­bly impor­tant chap­ter in Ramde­v’s per­son­al his­to­ry: miss­ing years in his young adult­hood, rais­ing the ques­tion of where he was and what was he doing? We won­der, in that same con­text, who put up the ven­ture cap­i­tal to launch Ramde­v’s yoga and ayurvedic prod­ucts busi­ness­es: ” . . . . He was born to a poor farm fam­i­ly in north-cen­tral India, prob­a­bly in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and giv­en the name Ram Kisan Yadav. . . .  As a teenag­er, he left home for a gurukul. The years that fol­lowed are curi­ous­ly blank; Ramdev has said very lit­tle about them, some­times claim­ing he doesn’t remem­ber. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his cur­rent name after a rev­e­la­tion . . . .”
  14. Ramdev has been accused of some dark acts, includ­ing foul play: ” . . . . One for­mer high-lev­el exec­u­tive at Patan­jali, who worked at the com­pa­ny for sev­er­al years, spoke to me on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, say­ing he feared retal­i­a­tion. When I asked him why he left, he said of Ramdev: ‘Because he’s a crook. Because he’s a hyp­ocrite.’ He rat­tled off a sheaf of shock­ing claims about fraud and employ­ee abuse. . . . . One sto­ry involved Ramdev’s broth­er, Ram Bharat, who was arrest­ed in 2013 and accused of kid­nap­ping and impris­on­ing a work­er sus­pect­ed of theft (the charges were lat­er dropped). Anoth­er for­mer Patan­jali exec­u­tive told me sim­i­lar sto­ries and added that he began receiv­ing threat­en­ing phone calls after he refused to facil­i­tate what he saw as kick­back schemes. He com­plained to Balkr­ish­na, he said, but the calls con­tin­ued and — feel­ing his life might be in dan­ger — he resigned. . . .”
  15. Ramde­v’s grav­i­tas has spawned fear in crit­ics: ” . . . . One Assamese uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, who asked not to be named because he feared for his safe­ty, told me that Ramdev had abet­ted the RSS’s efforts to ‘ques­tion all oth­er reli­gions here, any­thing non-Hin­du.’ He also said Patan­jali — embold­ened by its ties to the Modi gov­ern­ment — had run roughshod over laws reg­u­lat­ing the har­vest of med­i­c­i­nal plants. . . .”
  16. Ramdev has been sus­pect­ed of foul play: ” . . . . In 2007, Ramdev’s own guru, a man named Shankar Dev, dis­ap­peared with­out a trace after falling into pover­ty and ill­ness, and ques­tions were raised about Ramdev’s neglect of him. (Because Dev ini­ti­at­ed Ramdev into monk­hood, Ramdev would have been expect­ed to treat him like a par­ent.) In 2010, Rajeev Dix­it, one of Ramdev’s clos­est advis­ers, who taught him about swadeshi eco­nom­ics and helped make Patan­jali a nation­al brand, died sud­den­ly. Some of his friends believe that Ramdev resent­ed Dixit’s own ris­ing celebri­ty, and they pub­licly spec­u­lat­ed about foul play. . . .”
  17. Sim­i­lar­i­ties between the RSS/Ramdev polit­i­cal agen­da and ide­ol­o­gy and Hitler’s hail­ing of Nation­al Social­ism as cre­at­ing a “new man.” ” . . . . Patan­jali ran more than 380 work­shops for prospec­tive employ­ees, where it taught a ‘val­ue sys­tem.’ Assam’s peo­ple, he explained, had ‘bad habits,’ includ­ing eat­ing non­veg­e­tar­i­an food and a lack of prop­er respect for the nation. ‘They’ve been lis­ten­ing to cor­rupt pol­i­tics from cor­rupt peo­ple for too long,’ he said. ‘We take what our sages said thou­sands of years ago and put it to use. We didn’t invent it. We took what’s avail­able in our scrip­tures and put it in a mod­ern for­mat.’ In oth­er words, they incul­cate Hin­dut­va. . . .”
  18. Review of the links between the RSS and Euro­pean fas­cism: ” . . . . In an effort to over­come these inter­nal fis­sures, the ear­ly Hin­du nation­al­ists built a reg­i­ment­ed anti­colo­nial social move­ment in the 1920s, which lat­er formed links with Ital­ian and Ger­man fas­cism; the main branch was known as the RSS, from the Hin­du words for ‘nation­al orga­ni­za­tion of vol­un­teers.’ . . .”

1.   “Baba Ramdev’s Holy War” by Robert F. Worth; The New York Times Mag­a­zine; 7/29/2017.

On a hazy day in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, some of the most pow­er­ful men in India’s gov­ern­ment gath­ered at Chha­trasal Sta­di­um in New Del­hi, an are­na famous for its bois­ter­ous wrestling bouts. The men had come for a dif­fer­ent kind of spec­ta­cle — a bio­graph­i­cal film epic, whose ini­tial episodes (out of 57 total) would be shown for the first time that evening. At the cen­ter of a makeshift stage, sur­round­ed by smil­ing politi­cians and cab­i­net mem­bers, was the per­son whose life was being cel­e­brat­ed: a slen­der fig­ure in saf­fron robes with a long, dark beard, his chest-length hair tied in a bun. He need­ed no intro­duc­tion. This was Baba Ramdev, one of the most famous men in India.

Ramdev took the micro­phone and intro­duced the pha­lanx of sev­er­al hun­dred Hin­du reli­gious stu­dents, known as brah­macharis, sit­ting in neat rows on the field. Every­one repeat after me: “Bharat mata ki jai!” he shout­ed. The crowd raised their arms and pumped their fists as they chant­ed the words — “India my moth­er­land is great” — that have become a defin­ing slo­gan of the Hin­du nation­al­ist move­ment.

One by one, the dig­ni­taries rose to recount Ramdev’s extra­or­di­nary career: how he brought phys­i­cal fit­ness to the Indi­an mid­dle class with his mass yoga camps and tele­vi­sion empire; how he built his med­i­cine-and-con­sumer-goods com­pa­ny, Patan­jali Ayurved, into a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar colos­sus. “Swami­ji has changed the direc­tion of the world, the think­ing of the world,” one speak­er shout­ed, refer­ring to Ramdev with an affec­tion­ate hon­orif­ic. “That is how great he is. Swami­ji has changed India, which was going toward the West — its dress and food and cul­ture — and has changed its direc­tion to yoga!”

At last silence fell, and the 50-foot screen flick­ered to life. For the next hour, India’s polit­i­cal elite watched in hum­ble silence as Ramdev’s life unfold­ed, from his birth in a remote rur­al vil­lage to his ear­ly days as a lis­some yogi (the remain­ing episodes had been con­densed into trail­er form). As a film, it was a sham­bol­ic melo­dra­ma that seemed to treat Ramdev almost as a divine mes­sen­ger. But as an expres­sion of the Indi­an public’s feel­ings, it wasn’t far off the mark.

Ramdev has been com­pared to Bil­ly Gra­ham, the South­ern Bap­tist fire­brand who advised sev­er­al Amer­i­can pres­i­dents and ener­gized the Chris­t­ian right. The par­al­lel makes some sense: Ramdev has been a promi­nent voice on the Hin­du right, and his tac­it endorse­ment dur­ing the land­mark 2014 cam­paign helped bring Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi to pow­er. He appeared along­side Modi on sev­er­al occa­sions, singing the leader’s prais­es and urg­ing Indi­ans to turn out for him. Ramdev has called Modi “a close friend,” and the prime min­is­ter pub­licly lauds Patanjali’s array of ayurvedic prod­ucts — med­i­cines, cos­met­ics and food­stuffs. Although Modi cam­paigned heav­i­ly on promis­es to reform India’s econ­o­my and fight cor­rup­tion, there were fre­quent dog whis­tles to the Hin­du nation­al­ist base, some of them coor­di­nat­ed with Ramdev. A month before Modi’s land­slide vic­to­ry, a trust con­trolled by Ramdev released a video in which senior lead­ers of Modi’s par­ty, the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty (B.J.P.), includ­ing the cur­rent min­is­ters of for­eign affairs, inter­nal secu­ri­ty, finance and trans­porta­tion, appeared along­side him with a signed doc­u­ment set­ting out nine pledges. These includ­ed the pro­tec­tion of cows — ani­mals held sacred in Hin­duism — and a broad call for Hin­du nation­al­ist reforms of the gov­ern­ment, the courts, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions and edu­ca­tion. After Modi won, Ramdev claimed to have “pre­pared the ground for the big polit­i­cal changes that occurred.” [Mod­i’s finance min­is­ter is Jayant Sin­ha, the for­mer direc­tor of Omid­yar Net­work, Pierre Omid­yar’s “char­i­ta­ble” under­tak­ings in India–D.E.]

But Ramdev is far more than a use­ful holy man. Even beyond his polit­i­cal patrons, Ramdev is the per­fect mes­sen­ger for a ris­ing mid­dle class that is hun­gry for reli­gious asser­tion and fed up with the social­ist, ratio­nal­ist lega­cy of Jawa­har­lal Nehru, India’s first post-inde­pen­dence leader. Ramdev has led vast­ly pop­u­lar cam­paigns against cor­rup­tion, don­ning the man­tle of swadeshi, or Indi­an eco­nom­ic nation­al­ism, to cast for­eign com­pa­nies as neo­colo­nial vil­lains. In a sense, Ramdev has changed Hin­duism itself. His blend of patri­ot­ic fer­vor, health and reli­gious piety flows seam­less­ly into the hard­er ver­sions of Hin­du nation­al­ism, which are often open­ly hos­tile to India’s 172 mil­lion Mus­lims. Although Ramdev prefers to speak of Indi­an sol­i­dar­i­ty, his B.J.P. allies rou­tine­ly invoke an Islam­ic threat and ral­ly crowds with vows to build tem­ples on the sites of medieval mosques.

In his own way, Ramdev is India’s answer to Don­ald Trump, and there is much spec­u­la­tion that he may run for prime min­is­ter him­self. Like Trump, he heads a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar empire. And like Trump, he is a bom­bas­tic TV per­son­al­i­ty whose rela­tion­ship with truth is elas­tic; he can­not resist a brand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty — his name and face are every­where in India. In May, he announced plans to add swadeshi SIM cards to his ever-grow­ing list of prod­ucts: pack­aged noo­dles, herbal con­sti­pa­tion reme­dies, floor clean­er made with cow urine. He has a gift for W.W.E.-style pub­lic­i­ty stunts: Last year he “won” a tele­vised bout with an Olympic wrestler from Ukraine.

On the sur­face, Ramdev’s bliss­ful demeanor is worlds away from Trump’s growls and sneers. But his namastes pro­vide cov­er for a reac­tionary cam­paign to trans­form the coun­try. When chal­lenged on his eva­sions and slurs, Ramdev — like the White House’s cur­rent occu­pant — tends to respond by point­ing a fin­ger at “cor­rupt” fig­ures in the sec­u­lar elite. It seems to work. Last year an Indi­an judge banned a crit­i­cal biog­ra­phy of Ramdev before it was released and then put a gag order on its author, bar­ring her from even men­tion­ing the book on social media. In a sense, Ramdev is more pow­er­ful than any prime min­is­ter. He may be a whol­ly new breed: a pop­ulist tycoon, pro­tect­ed from crit­ics (and even, to some extent, from the law) by a vast fol­low­ing and a claim to holy pur­pose.

The cen­ter of Ramdev’s empire is in Harid­war, a small city on the Ganges near the foothills of the Himalayas, about a four-hour dri­ve north­east of Del­hi. It is a sacred place in Hin­du leg­end, and thou­sands of pil­grims gath­er there by the river­banks every day. Not far away is the town of Rishikesh, where the Bea­t­les famous­ly vis­it­ed Maha­rashi Mahesh Yogi in the late 1960s. But Ramdev’s oper­a­tion is a far cry from the ascetic ashrams of yes­ter­year. Patanjali’s main office com­plex looks like an air­port, with an odd, pago­da­like gate sep­a­rat­ing it from the rest of town. Inside, there are vast park­ing lots, a cav­ernous employ­ee cafe­te­ria, lawns and foun­tains. You might think you were in Sil­i­con Val­ley if not for the jer­seys read­ing “Dept. of Yoga Sci­ence” that the Uni­ver­si­ty of Patan­jali stu­dents wear. I found myself star­ing at a stat­ue of a bony, beard­ed sage seat­ed in the lotus posi­tion: It was Patan­jali, the company’s name­sake, who some two mil­len­ni­ums ago is said to have com­piled the vers­es that are the foun­da­tion of mod­ern yoga prac­tice. [The “ancient” ori­gins of Yoga will be sub­stan­tive­ly dis­put­ed lat­er in this article–D.E.]

Ramdev lives a few blocks away, behind anoth­er huge gate manned by armed guards. (After Modi’s elec­tion, his gov­ern­ment grant­ed Ramdev the sec­ond-high­est lev­el of state secu­ri­ty while with­draw­ing it from some lead­ers of the rival Con­gress par­ty.) The guards waved us through, and sud­den­ly I found myself in a qui­et enclave of lush gar­dens. The heat and dust of India seemed far away. We strolled along a brick path to a small bun­ga­low, and there was Ramdev, seat­ed on a beau­ti­ful­ly carved wood­en swing, laugh­ing and chat­ting with a guest. He rose and greet­ed me with a hug. I was struck by his slight stature; his bushy black beard, gray at the fringes, seemed more sub­stan­tial than his thin frame. He emanat­ed a loose-joint­ed warmth, like some­one who has just run a long dis­tance. Apart from his thin saf­fron robes — one wrapped around his chest and one at the waist — he wore only padukas, the tra­di­tion­al plat­form wood­en clogs with a met­al post for the toes to grip.

“This is my basic and ulti­mate mis­sion,” he said, speak­ing in strong­ly accent­ed Eng­lish. “I want a healthy, wealthy, pros­per­ous and peace­ful per­son, soci­ety, nation.” He looked into my eyes and touched my fore­arm as he spoke. The left side of his face was par­a­lyzed by a child­hood ill­ness, and the result­ing squint gives him a look of cock­eyed inten­si­ty. “Health and hap­pi­ness, with­out yoga you can­not achieve,” he went on. “Yoga is my basic work.” Ramdev prac­tices and teach­es yoga every day from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m., in a hangar­like audi­to­ri­um with hun­dreds of stu­dents and TV cam­eras rolling, and then again (when he can) in the after­noon and evening from 5 until 7:30. In between, he told me, he over­sees Patan­jali and its asso­ci­at­ed trusts and char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ties. He inter­spersed his earnest yoga talk with play­ful ban­ter, toss­ing his head back in gid­dy fits of gig­gling. When I asked him if I could fol­low him around for a day or two, he seemed delight­ed. “Of course! You can stay with me,” he said, ges­tur­ing at the house behind us, where he sleeps on a pal­let on the floor. “I’m not mar­ried. But don’t wor­ry, I’m not homo­sex­u­al!” He burst into rau­cous laugh­ter and added, “I’m against homo­sex­u­al­i­ty!” The laugh­ter got even loud­er, and he added under his breath, “Just kid­ding.”

I was baf­fled for a moment, and then found myself mar­veling at his leg­erde­main. As a Hin­du monk, Ramdev has repeat­ed­ly declared his dis­ap­proval of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, call­ing it “immoral and unnat­ur­al.” He says it can be cured by yoga. But he has the politician’s gift for charm­ing his audi­ence. In a sin­gle, East-meets-West moment, he had both deferred to tra­di­tion and hint­ed to me that he was a clos­et lib­er­al. (He was also kid­ding about the offer to sleep on his floor, as it turned out.)

Ramdev’s infor­mal­i­ty and prac­ti­cal bent set him apart from most oth­er gurus. Indi­an reli­gious celebri­ties are known pop­u­lar­ly as god­men, a word that sug­gests star­dom but also adds a hint of deri­sion. They are heirs to an ancient tra­di­tion of hum­ble, loin­cloth-clad wis­dom seek­ers, but  seems to come with the ter­ri­to­ry as well. Some god­men have become immense­ly rich and built cults of per­son­al­i­ty that stretched around the globe. They tend to sur­round them­selves with fawn­ing fol­low­ers, and many claim to per­form mir­a­cles, like Sathya Sai Baba, who became noto­ri­ous in the 1960s for con­jur­ing Omega watch­es out of thin air. Ramdev is not the first one to gain influ­ence in pol­i­tics; in the 1970s Indi­ra Gand­hi often sought advice from her own yoga teacher, who became known as the “Rasputin of Del­hi.” But Ramdev rarely clouds the air with talk about enlight­en­ment and reli­gion. “My yoga is very sim­ple,” he told me. “No crit­i­cal pos­tures. No phi­los­o­phy or ide­ol­o­gy. All yoga prac­tices are based on ben­e­fit. Instant ben­e­fit.”

Ramdev is also the first god­man to earn his mil­lions as a busi­ness­man instead of just siphon­ing dona­tions from wealthy fol­low­ers. Patan­jali has vault­ed in just over a decade from a tiny oper­a­tion into an eco­nom­ic pow­er­house, with $1.6 bil­lion in sales in the cur­rent fis­cal year. Turn on a TV or glance at a bill­board almost any­where in India, and you are like­ly to see Ramdev adver­tis­ing one of its prod­ucts. Dur­ing our talk, Ramdev boast­ed of Patanjali’s suc­cess, detail­ing his plans for expan­sion and say­ing he aimed to reach about $15 bil­lion in annu­al sales by 2025, a fig­ure that would make Patan­jali one of India’s biggest com­pa­nies. But he also insist­ed that Patan­jali is not a busi­ness at all; it is “a ser­vice for human­i­ty, for the nation.” He main­tains that nei­ther he nor the company’s C.E.O., Acharya Balkr­ish­na, takes a salary. Ramdev says he doesn’t even have a bank account (he abides by the monk’s vow of aus­ter­i­ty and chasti­ty, though the com­pa­ny seems to more than take care of his needs). All prof­its, he said, are plowed back into research and char­i­ty, and the company’s low costs allow it to under­sell com­peti­tors. Most of Patanjali’s employ­ees are paid much less than they would receive else­where; ask­ing for a raise is taboo. (A com­pa­ny spokesman denies this.) They are for­bid­den to drink alco­hol or eat non­veg­e­tar­i­an food. “Penance in indi­vid­ual life, pros­per­i­ty for oth­ers,” Ramdev told me with a smile. This blend of fierce cap­i­tal­ism and monk­ish renun­ci­a­tion is aimed at mak­ing India a “world eco­nom­ic pow­er and world spir­i­tu­al pow­er by 2050.”

Ramdev told me his nation­al­ist vision embraces all reli­gions and castes, but he added a reveal­ing caveat. “Coun­try first,” he said. “This is a must. Not, ‘I’m great, my caste is great,’ but my coun­try is great. Unlike Mus­lim lead­ers — they say Islam is great. I say, No: The nation is great, the cit­i­zen is great.”And the nation, in Ramdev’s telling, is sub­tly twinned with a his­to­ry and cul­ture that is dis­tinct­ly Hin­du: yoga, ayurvedic med­i­cine and the ancient Vedic scrip­tures from which they are said to have emerged. Some­times the hints are not so sub­tle. Two years ago, when a Mus­lim politi­cian refused to chant a nation­al­ist slo­gan, Ramdev laid into him at a right-wing ral­ly, say­ing that were it not for his respect for the law, “we would behead hun­dreds of thou­sands” of such peo­ple. A court lat­er issued a war­rant for Ramdev’s arrest, though the mat­ter appears to have been dropped.

Hin­du nation­al­ism rarely made head­lines in the West until the 1990s, when images of com­mu­nal riots and chant­i­ng B.J.P. sup­port­ers intro­duced many Amer­i­cans to the idea that there was anoth­er, dif­fer­ent kind of fun­da­men­tal­ism to wor­ry about in South Asia. But as a polit­i­cal force, Hin­du nation­al­ism pre­dates India’s inde­pen­dence in 1947 and reflects cen­turies of resent­ment among the subcontinent’s Hin­du major­i­ty. Hin­dus sub­mit­ted reluc­tant­ly to waves of Mus­lim con­quest from the north start­ing almost a thou­sand years ago, and then to almost 300 years of British dom­i­na­tion. After World War I, when the British Empire start­ed to crack, some Hin­du ide­o­logues saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to regain the upper hand. They began call­ing for an explic­it­ly Hin­du state and soci­ety, in which Mus­lims (and oth­er minori­ties) would be tol­er­at­ed only if they respect­ed the major­i­ty cul­ture. In one respect, it was an effort to counter polit­i­cal Islam, which was already gain­ing adher­ents in India and else­where in the ear­ly 1920s. But build­ing a cohe­sive move­ment was not easy. Clas­si­cal Hin­duism is more a con­glom­er­a­tion of sects than a sin­gle reli­gion; it has many ancient scrip­tures but no sin­gle, foun­da­tion­al text, like the Bible or the Quran. Its ancient caste hier­ar­chy per­pet­u­at­ed divi­sions and did not trans­late eas­i­ly into the uni­fy­ing slo­gans of mod­ern mass pol­i­tics.

In an effort to over­come these inter­nal fis­sures, the ear­ly Hin­du nation­al­ists built a reg­i­ment­ed anti­colo­nial social move­ment in the 1920s, which lat­er formed links with Ital­ian and Ger­man fas­cism; the main branch was known as the RSS, from the Hin­du words for “nation­al orga­ni­za­tion of vol­un­teers.” In place of black shirts and arm­bands, they wore kha­ki shorts and car­ried bam­boo sticks. This asso­ci­a­tion taint­ed them in the decades that fol­lowed, espe­cial­ly after so many British and Indi­an sol­diers died fight­ing the Axis pow­ers in World War II. Anoth­er seri­ous blow came in 1948, when a Hin­du nation­al­ist zealot assas­si­nat­ed Mohan­das Gand­hi, mod­ern India’s saint­ly father fig­ure. After­ward, Nehru, Gandhi’s polit­i­cal heir, sup­pressed Hin­du nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tions and fos­tered his own coun­ter­vail­ing con­cep­tion of India as a plu­ral­ist, sec­u­lar state. Although he was a Brah­min, Nehru was a pas­sion­ate cos­mopoli­tan who saw Hin­du iden­ti­ty as nar­row and trib­al. He want­ed India to be defined by its diver­si­ty, not by any one faith. It was an idea shaped in part by his British edu­ca­tion at Har­row, Cam­bridge and the Inns of Court in Lon­don, and one shared by many of his peers. For decades after inde­pen­dence, India’s rul­ing class was most­ly a “thin lay­er of brown Eng­lish­men,” in the phrase of an Indi­an friend of mine who heard it from his grand­fa­ther, a friend of Nehru’s. They were patri­cian fig­ures who rebelled suc­cess­ful­ly against the British but absorbed many of their ideas about how the coun­try should be gov­erned.

By the 1990s, Nehru’s Con­gress par­ty had become almost syn­ony­mous with the Indi­an state, but his tol­er­ant, world­ly vision was start­ing to fray. The Hin­du nation­al­ist move­ment anoint­ed the B.J.P. as its polit­i­cal vehi­cle, and the par­ty slow­ly gained strength, fueled by per­cep­tions of cor­rup­tion and enti­tle­ment in the sec­u­lar polit­i­cal elite. In 1998, the B.J.P. was able to sus­tain a major­i­ty coali­tion in India’s Par­lia­ment for the first time. But in ear­ly 2002, bloody com­mu­nal riots broke out in the west­ern state of Gujarat, reviv­ing the party’s old demons. It start­ed when a train car­ry­ing some Hin­du pil­grims caught fire. Revenge mobs quick­ly formed. In the ensu­ing vio­lence, more than a thou­sand peo­ple were killed, most of them Mus­lims, and there was wide­spread loot­ing. Ramdev’s future friend Naren­dra Modi was Gujarat’s chief min­is­ter at the time, and evi­dence soon emerged sug­gest­ing that he and oth­er top B.J.P. offi­cials had stoked the vio­lence, or at least giv­en a green light. (A court-appoint­ed inves­ti­ga­tion cleared Modi of wrong­do­ing in 2012, but many schol­ars and ana­lysts who have exam­ined the evi­dence dis­agree.) Many Indi­an Mus­lims still con­sid­er the riots a state-sanc­tioned pogrom, and see Modi — who has nev­er apol­o­gized for his role — as a crim­i­nal. But even among Hin­dus, the B.J.P. suf­fered from its rep­u­ta­tion as a par­ty led by Brah­mins and oth­er upper-caste Hin­dus. It had trou­ble win­ning votes from Dal­its (untouch­ables) and oth­ers at the low­er end of India’s caste hier­ar­chy.

Ramdev was just the kind of uni­fy­ing fig­ure the B.J.P. need­ed. [This is sim­i­lar, in cer­tain respects, to Hitler, who was cast as an “every­man” who rep­re­sent­ed the “aver­age German”–D.E.] At the time of the Gujarat riots, he was emerg­ing as a celebri­ty, criss­cross­ing India to pre­side over mass yoga camps and pitch his home reme­dies. He tapped into a hunger for spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and health among India’s grow­ing mid­dle class and quick­ly became a sym­bol of Hin­duism at its most benign, a ready-made pack­age of rit­u­als and foods that were fun, afford­able and good for you. As his fame spread, a stream of politi­cians and celebri­ties made their way to Harid­war, eager to donate to his cause and seek his endorse­ment; he was becom­ing what Indi­ans call a “vote bank.” In 2011, he embraced the nation­wide anti-cor­rup­tion move­ment, led by the inde­pen­dent social activist Anna Haz­are, which swept India that year. In June, he start­ed a hunger strike against cor­rup­tion, and 40,000 of his fol­low­ers ral­lied in his sup­port in Del­hi. The police showed up with tear gas, and in the ensu­ing melee, Ramdev shed his saf­fron robes under a stage and tried to escape dis­guised as an injured woman, only to be detained and exposed on video, bushy beard and all. The Indi­an press mocked him for days.

But noth­ing seems to taint Ramdev for long. Three years lat­er, his rep­u­ta­tion as a cru­sad­er against cor­rup­tion — a fre­quent B.J.P. talk­ing point — made him even more valu­able in the elec­tions that swept the Hin­du nation­al­ists to pow­er. He turned his yoga-camp meet­ings, which often had tens of thou­sands of peo­ple in atten­dance, into unof­fi­cial ral­lies. Two weeks before the elec­tions start­ed, he wel­comed Modi onstage at a huge out­door gath­er­ing in New Del­hi. “You’ll make oth­er peo­ple under­stand, won’t you?” Ramdev said to the micro­phone, as Modi sat next to him, grin­ning. “You won’t sit at home, will you?” The audi­ence roared back: “No!”

Ramdev found­ed a short-lived polit­i­cal par­ty in 2010, and has since been rumored to be weigh­ing a polit­i­cal career him­self. When I brought up the ques­tion, he smil­ing­ly bat­ted it away, say­ing that he’d become a “non­po­lit­i­cal per­son” and that the tri­umph of the B.J.P. had obvi­at­ed any need for him to run for office. “Modi is an hon­est prime min­is­ter,” he told me. “He is a vision­ary and a mis­sion­ary. He will win the next term (in the 2019 elec­tions). He will build a strong foun­da­tion for India.”

But the B.J.P.’s ambi­tions go well beyond 2019. Unlike the Con­gress par­ty, the B.J.P. doesn’t just want to gov­ern; it wants to trans­form the coun­try, polit­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly. The Indi­an state and its busi­ness allies have become increas­ing­ly enmeshed in Hin­du reli­gious edu­ca­tion and pro­mo­tion, fund­ing ashrams, gurukuls (where stu­dents appren­tice them­selves to a guru and study San­skrit) and priest edu­ca­tion. Modi’s gov­ern­ment has also helped empow­er fig­ures like Yogi Adityanath, a right-wing Hin­du fire­brand who has said he wants to install stat­ues of Hin­du gods in every mosque, and who last year became chief min­is­ter of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most pop­u­lous state.

Many Indi­an Mus­lims say they have begun to feel like strangers in their own land. The B.J.P. has pro­posed a num­ber of laws with a trou­bling­ly sec­tar­i­an cast. One of them would allow immi­grants from near­by coun­tries who are Hin­du, Bud­dhist, Sikh or Chris­t­ian to apply for cit­i­zen­ship but would explic­it­ly exclude Mus­lims.Even worse, some Mus­lims say, is the government’s wink­ing atti­tude toward com­mu­nal vio­lence. In 2015, a Hin­du mob in a vil­lage near Del­hi beat a Mus­lim to death on sus­pi­cion of hav­ing eat­en beef. When one of the accused killers lat­er died of an unre­lat­ed ill­ness, a B.J.P. politi­cian attend­ed his funer­al; the cof­fin was draped in the Indi­an flag. Episodes like this have mul­ti­plied since Modi’s vic­to­ry in 2014.

Ramdev’s suc­cess at rebrand­ing yoga — and pop­u­lar Hin­duism — may owe some­thing to the inspi­ra­tional pow­er of his oft-told life sto­ry. He was born to a poor farm fam­i­ly in north-cen­tral India, prob­a­bly in 1965 (he has always been vague about his age) and giv­en the name Ram Kisan Yadav. As a child, he worked in the fields and suf­fered a series of ill­ness­es and acci­dents. When I met him in Harid­war, he showed me a hor­i­zon­tal scar on his fore­head, the lega­cy of a fall when he was 3 or 4. Lat­er he fell into the vil­lage pond and near­ly drowned. After the ill­ness that par­a­lyzed the left side of his face, oth­er chil­dren mocked him for his squint. He read about yoga in a book, he told me, and began prac­tic­ing it in order to for­ti­fy his weak body. As a teenag­er, he left home for a gurukul. The years that fol­lowed are curi­ous­ly blank; Ramdev has said very lit­tle about them, some­times claim­ing he doesn’t remem­ber. What is clear is that in 1995 he became a monk and assumed his cur­rent name after a rev­e­la­tion he described to me like this: “No per­son­al choice, no per­son­al desires, no wealth, no respect or dis­re­spect. My whole skill, whole exis­tence, this whole exis­tence for all.”

Ramdev start­ed teach­ing yoga soon after­ward. He also teamed up with Balkr­ish­na, whom he met at a gurukul, and the two men began ped­dling their home­made herbal pills and unguents from a mod­est clin­ic that would even­tu­al­ly grow into Patan­jali. An ear­ly break­through came in 2002, when a reli­gious TV chan­nel called Aastha offered to broad­cast Ramdev’s yoga class­es. He quick­ly became a star, charm­ing audi­ences with his mobile eye­brows, his gig­gles, his trade­mark undu­lat­ing stom­ach-mus­cle rou­tine (a tra­di­tion­al asana adapt­ed for TV audi­ences). At the time, rel­a­tive­ly few Indi­ans prac­ticed yoga, even as mil­lions of Amer­i­cans were doing sun salu­ta­tions and inton­ing their namastes. It was con­sid­ered an aus­tere dis­ci­pline linked to ancient texts, too com­plex and rig­or­ous for ordi­nary peo­ple. Ramdev changed that. He is a low­er-caste Hin­du who speaks in a play­ful, down-to-earth lan­guage. He sim­pli­fied the breath­ing exer­cis­es and pos­tures, mak­ing them acces­si­ble to any­one. Yet he also urged his lis­ten­ers to be proud of yoga, call­ing it a quin­tes­sen­tial expres­sion of the wis­dom con­tained in the sacred Hin­du texts.

This nar­ra­tive about yoga’s ancient roots has become a sacra­ment for Hin­du nation­al­ists, and it is echoed in the West. But it is most­ly myth, an ide­al­ized ori­gin sto­ry of the kind so many would-be nation-builders, from ancient Rome to the Zion­ists, have fos­tered about them­selves. The old­est Hin­du scrip­tures con­tain almost no men­tion of phys­i­cal pos­tures. Even the Yoga Sutras, the so-called bible of yoga, include only a few short vers­es sug­gest­ing com­fort­able pos­tures for sit­ting. Many of the pos­tures prac­ticed in yoga today appear to have emerged in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies. Dozens of mod­ern ash­tan­ga yoga pos­tures are sim­i­lar or iden­ti­cal to those found in a gym­nas­tic rou­tine intro­duced to India by the British in the first decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry and orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped by a Dan­ish fit­ness instruc­tor named Niels Bukh, who lat­er became noto­ri­ous for his pro-Nazi sym­pa­thies. Bukh, need­less to say, has been con­ve­nient­ly for­got­ten by both Indi­ans and the yoga-lov­ing celebri­ties of Hol­ly­wood.

Yoga is only half of Ramdev’s work. He and Balkr­ish­na also use their tele­vi­sion empire to tout the heal­ing virtues of Patanjali’s ayurvedic med­i­cines and health foods, root­ed in the sup­pos­ed­ly cura­tive pow­ers of herbal and min­er­al com­pounds. West­ern sci­en­tists view ayurve­da (the “sci­ence of life”) with skep­ti­cism, and stud­ies have found that some ayurvedic prod­ucts con­tain tox­ic lev­els of heavy met­als, usu­al­ly from soil or ash, in the mix. But in India they have become a boom­ing busi­ness, thanks in part to Ramde­v’s mar­ket­ing efforts. Balkr­ish­na gave me a tour of Patanjali’s med­ical research insti­tute, in a gleam­ing new build­ing that was inau­gu­rat­ed last year by Modi him­self (“Swa­mi Ramdev’s herbs help you over­come all prob­lems,” the prime min­is­ter told the crowds gath­ered for the event).

If Ramdev is Patanjali’s flam­boy­ant mas­cot, Balkr­ish­na is his foil, a num­ber-crunch­ing intro­vert with buck­teeth and a high, soft voice. He led me upstairs to a lab­o­ra­to­ry where white-coat­ed tech­ni­cians were dry­ing mass­es of swampy green spir­uli­na, a form of algae, to be packed into pills. “It is high in pro­tein and vit­a­mins,” one of the men told me. In his spare time, Balkr­ish­na said, he wan­ders the forests of the Himalayas look­ing for med­i­c­i­nal herbs. Some can be found grow­ing in a gar­den behind the research cen­ter, adjoin­ing a Dis­ney-style reli­gious theme park, with life-size sculpt­ed fig­ures enact­ing scenes from the Vedas inside man-made caves.

It looked like Hin­du kitsch to me. But for Ramdev and Balkr­ish­na, all this herbal wis­dom is seri­ous busi­ness. When it comes to mar­ket­ing against for­eign com­peti­tors, they wield their holi­ness like a club. One Patan­jali ad runs: “As East India Com­pa­ny plun­dered our coun­try for 200 years like­wise these multi­na­tion­als are exploit­ing our coun­try by sell­ing their harm­ful and dan­ger­ous chem­i­cal prod­ucts. Beware!” Ramdev’s com­peti­tors have sued Patan­jali repeat­ed­ly, but the slurs per­sist.

The swadeshi cam­paign has served Ramdev very well. Eco­nom­ic nation­al­ism is not just an effec­tive sales pitch; it has also allowed Ramdev to neat­ly side­step attacks on his own busi­ness prac­tices. Those attacks began as ear­ly as 2005, when a quar­ter of Patanjali’s work­ers went on strike, claim­ing they’d been under­paid. Ramdev and Balkr­ish­na prompt­ly fired them, but some of the work­ers kept sam­ples of the firm’s med­i­cines and said they con­tained unlist­ed ingre­di­ents includ­ing crushed human skulls (pre­sum­ably residue from soil or ash). A gov­ern­ment lab test found human and ani­mal DNA. In response, Ramdev accused “pow­er­ful inter­ests” of tam­per­ing with the sam­ples. (A lat­er test of new sam­ples found noth­ing amiss.) His fans came to his defense, as did politi­cians in the B.J.P.

Over the years, this way of fend­ing off crit­i­cism has become a pat­tern; nonethe­less, Patan­jali has faced at least half a dozen legal actions over its prod­ucts. In Octo­ber 2016, the food and drug admin­is­tra­tion of Haryana State found Patanjali’s cow ghee (clar­i­fied but­ter) to be “sub­stan­dard and unsafe.” Last April, the Indi­an mil­i­tary stopped sell­ing a pop­u­lar Patan­jali juice to sol­diers after a gov­ern­ment agency test­ed sam­ples and found them “unfit for con­sump­tion.” (Patan­jali coun­tered that the juice was med­i­cine and thus the wrong test had been per­formed.) In the banned biog­ra­phy of Ramdev pub­lished last year, the jour­nal­ist Priyan­ka Pathak-Narain wrote that Patanjali’s cow ghee — adver­tised as the purest on the mar­ket — was made from white but­ter sourced from hun­dreds of thou­sands of small pro­duc­ers, blend­ing cow, buf­fa­lo and goat milk. In India, where pure ghee is required for reli­gious pur­pos­es, such things mat­ter.

Some for­mer employ­ees say Ramdev is guilty of more than safe­ty vio­la­tions. One for­mer high-lev­el exec­u­tive at Patan­jali, who worked at the com­pa­ny for sev­er­al years, spoke to me on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, say­ing he feared retal­i­a­tion. When I asked him why he left, he said of Ramdev: “Because he’s a crook. Because he’s a hyp­ocrite.” He rat­tled off a sheaf of shock­ing claims about fraud and employ­ee abuse. (These have been writ­ten about in the Indi­an press, but none appear to have been sub­stan­ti­at­ed in court.) One sto­ry involved Ramdev’s broth­er, Ram Bharat, who was arrest­ed in 2013 and accused of kid­nap­ping and impris­on­ing a work­er sus­pect­ed of theft (the charges were lat­er dropped). Anoth­er for­mer Patan­jali exec­u­tive told me sim­i­lar sto­ries and added that he began receiv­ing threat­en­ing phone calls after he refused to facil­i­tate what he saw as kick­back schemes. He com­plained to Balkr­ish­na, he said, but the calls con­tin­ued and — feel­ing his life might be in dan­ger — he resigned. A Patan­jali spokesman cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly denied that any of these events took place.

Despite his pop­u­lar­i­ty, Ramdev has long been trailed by even dark­er spec­u­la­tions, cen­tered on the deaths of two close asso­ciates. In 2007, Ramdev’s own guru, a man named Shankar Dev, dis­ap­peared with­out a trace after falling into pover­ty and ill­ness, and ques­tions were raised about Ramdev’s neglect of him. (Because Dev ini­ti­at­ed Ramdev into monk­hood, Ramdev would have been expect­ed to treat him like a par­ent.) In 2010, Rajeev Dix­it, one of Ramdev’s clos­est advis­ers, who taught him about swadeshi eco­nom­ics and helped make Patan­jali a nation­al brand, died sud­den­ly. Some of his friends believe that Ramdev resent­ed Dixit’s own ris­ing celebri­ty, and they pub­licly spec­u­lat­ed about foul play. But car­diac arrest was cit­ed as the cause of death, and Ramdev has dis­missed efforts to impli­cate him as a con­spir­a­cy by his polit­i­cal ene­mies. When I asked him about this and oth­er insin­u­a­tions, he cast them all aside with a smile and a wave of his hand. “It’s not true,” he told me. “I am a very sim­ple and hum­ble and com­pas­sion­ate per­son.”

For Ramdev’s crit­ics, the skele­tons in his clos­et are tied to a broad­er con­cern that his polit­i­cal val­ue to the B.J.P. may have placed him above the law. I heard wealthy busi­ness­peo­ple in Del­hi speak of him with audi­ble fear in their voic­es, as if he could dam­age them at will. One thing is cer­tain: Ramdev has received extra­or­di­nary favors from the Indi­an gov­ern­ment since Modi was elect­ed. Soon after the 2014 elec­tion, B.J.P.-led state gov­ern­ments across India began facil­i­tat­ing steep dis­counts on land pur­chas­es for Patan­jali. There is some prece­dent for non­prof­its or reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions to receive such favors, but the deals Patan­jali got were very unusu­al. In the largest of these deals, Patan­jali was giv­en a 1,200-acre par­cel of land in the east­ern state of Assam at no cost. Accord­ing to state leg­is­la­ture doc­u­ments I was shown by a local aca­d­e­m­ic, the deal was made by an agency con­trolled by the Bodoland People’s Front, a par­ty aligned with the B.J.P. Last year a Reuters inves­ti­ga­tion doc­u­ment­ed sev­er­al dis­count­ed land sales and leas­es in three oth­er Indi­an states that saved the com­pa­ny a total of $46 mil­lion. Crit­ics say these deals were part­ly pay­back for the boost Ramdev pro­vid­ed to the B.J.P. in the elec­tions. But by spread­ing Patanjali’s pres­ence into out­ly­ing areas where it need­ed sup­port, the par­ty was also sow­ing the seeds of future elec­toral vic­to­ries.

The state of Assam is about two and a half hours east of Del­hi by plane, a sprawl­ing strip of lush jun­gle and flood­plain squeezed between the moun­tain king­dom of Bhutan to the north and watery Bangladesh to the south. Urbane Indi­ans speak of Assam as a fron­tier zone, known for its wild rhi­nos and tigers, its indige­nous “trib­al” pop­u­la­tions and its his­to­ry of insur­gen­cies. Dis­trust of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment runs deep, thanks to a long his­to­ry of neglect and exploita­tion of Assam’s rich nat­ur­al resources — rub­ber, silk, tim­ber, tea and crude oil. There is also wide­spread resent­ment of the Bangladeshi refugees, many of them Mus­lim, who have fled across the bor­der in recent decades. For the B.J.P. and its allies, Assam seemed fer­tile ground for Hin­dut­va, or Hin­du ide­ol­o­gy.

Not long after the party’s 2014 vic­to­ry, Patan­jali secured two large tracts in Assam and began work on a vast pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty. I reached the plant after a bumpy eight-hour jour­ney through end­less tea plan­ta­tions and was greet­ed by the site man­ag­er, an ebul­lient man with bushy eye­brows named S.B. Singh. His new­ly built office was emp­ty apart from a large pic­ture of Ramdev on the wall. Through the win­dows we could see earth-mov­ing machines and con­struc­tion crews and big piles of mud­dy, ocher-hued soil.

“There was jun­gle where we’re sit­ting,” Singh told me. “Ele­phants.” Patan­jali got the fac­to­ry up and run­ning in only 132 days, he told me, raz­ing the jun­gle and clear­ing out a total of 88 ele­phants before build­ing a com­plex of ware­hous­es on the 155-acre site. (The ele­phants were guid­ed gen­tly to a patch of for­est near­by, Singh told me.) He unleashed a bliz­zard of sta­tis­tics — 4,000 work­ers, 1.2 mil­lion bags of cement, a 20-per­son man­age­ment team — his eyes sparkling with pride at the achieve­ment. The plant remained unfin­ished and was still run­ning at par­tial capac­i­ty. But already hun­dreds of work­ers were busy mak­ing cook­ies and cos­met­ics. Thou­sands more were being trained, and not just in job skills.

“We are men­tal­ly con­di­tion­ing them,” Singh said. Patan­jali ran more than 380 work­shops for prospec­tive employ­ees, where it taught a “val­ue sys­tem.” Assam’s peo­ple, he explained, had “bad habits,” includ­ing eat­ing non­veg­e­tar­i­an food and a lack of prop­er respect for the nation. “They’ve been lis­ten­ing to cor­rupt pol­i­tics from cor­rupt peo­ple for too long,” he said. “We take what our sages said thou­sands of years ago and put it to use. We didn’t invent it. We took what’s avail­able in our scrip­tures and put it in a mod­ern for­mat.” In oth­er words, they incul­cate Hin­dut­va. [Again, atavism–a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with, and desire to return to, the past. This is char­ac­ter­is­tic of fas­cism in many of its iterations–D.E.]

Singh took me on a tour of the pro­duc­tion com­plex in an elec­tric golf cart. After admir­ing the cook­ie plant and its 300-foot oven, we drove across a deli­cious­ly smooth, medi­an-free stretch of pave­ment that resem­bled a run­way. In fact, it is a run­way, built in con­sul­ta­tion with the Indi­an Air Force so that jet fight­ers can take off and land on it, Singh told me. “We will ded­i­cate this to the nation in case there is need for an extra airstrip,” he said, and then added with a know­ing look, “We are near Chi­na.” Patan­jali seems almost to view itself as an exten­sion of the state — or rather, an illus­tra­tion of what has become a “state-tem­ple-cor­po­rate com­plex,” in the apt phrase of the Indi­an author Meera Nan­da.

Patanjali’s work in Assam has ben­e­fit­ed from longer-term efforts by the RSS. Found­ed in 1925, the group was briefly banned sev­er­al times in the wake of com­mu­nal riots, most recent­ly in 1992. It peri­od­i­cal­ly went under­ground, doing grass-roots orga­niz­ing and form­ing dozens of affil­i­ate orga­ni­za­tions that often hide their links with the RSS. Most of the B.J.P.’s top lead­ers, includ­ing Modi, emerged from the RSS and pro­fess loy­al­ty to it. Yet for all its vast influ­ence, there is some­thing curi­ous­ly slip­pery about the RSS. Its ide­o­logues insist that it is larg­er than Hin­duism or any sin­gle reli­gion, and they speak of a mys­ti­cal con­nec­tion with the Indi­an sub­con­ti­nent and the saf­fron flag, the group’s sym­bol. They aspire to change India at both the col­lec­tive and the indi­vid­ual lev­el. “It is a man-mak­ing mis­sion,” I was told by Shiv Shak­ti Bak­shi, an RSS vet­er­an who now runs the B.J.P.’s Eng­lish-lan­guage pub­li­ca­tions. “To make a man who can work for the soci­ety, a self­less work­er for the soci­ety.” This focus on per­son­al change mesh­es per­fect­ly with Ramdev’s pro­mo­tion of phys­i­cal fit­ness and health, and Bak­shi spoke about the guru in glow­ing terms. “His mes­sages are tak­en seri­ous­ly by peo­ple,” he said. “In elec­tions, opin­ion build­ing is impor­tant.”

The RSS has become more vis­i­ble since Modi’s 2014 vic­to­ry. The group and its affil­i­ates have built hun­dreds of schools and job-train­ing cen­ters in Assam and oth­er north­east­ern states in recent years. I vis­it­ed sev­er­al and saw unmis­tak­able signs of the RSS ide­o­log­i­cal pro­gram. At one school, young chil­dren — some of whom had been raised Chris­t­ian — recit­ed Hin­du prayers and sang songs to Lord Ram before start­ing their lessons, which include San­skrit instruc­tion.

All this hard indoc­tri­na­tion work has paid off. In 2016, the B.J.P. won con­trol of Assam’s state gov­ern­ment in leg­isla­tive elec­tions. And in March of this year, the par­ty won stun­ning elec­toral upsets in two adja­cent north­east­ern states, where left­ist par­ties had dom­i­nat­ed for decades. There was talk of a “saf­fron wave” that might spread to the south Indi­an regions, includ­ing Com­mu­nist-dom­i­nat­ed Ker­ala, that have long resist­ed the advance of Hin­du nation­al­ism. Many Indi­an polit­i­cal ana­lysts said the RSS’s grass-roots work was essen­tial to the recent elec­toral vic­to­ries. But one RSS vol­un­teer in Assam, a con­struc­tion con­trac­tor, told me Ramdev’s pres­ence and his yoga pro­mo­tion had been very influ­en­tial, too. The con­trac­tor said he’d helped to arrange the pur­chase of cement and oth­er sup­plies for the new Assam fac­to­ry site I toured. But even­tu­al­ly he soured on Patan­jali, which he saw as too focused on the bot­tom line. “Even we are not hap­py with the way the gov­ern­ment helps Ramdev so much,” the con­trac­tor told me.

The lat­est wave of B.J.P. vic­to­ries has been attend­ed by angry crit­i­cism of the way the par­ty feeds com­mu­nal resent­ments, and Ramdev has not been spared. Assam’s B.J.P.-led state gov­ern­ment is com­pil­ing a cit­i­zen­ship reg­istry that could cause mil­lions of res­i­dents, most­ly Mus­lims, to be declared state­less and expelled, in an eerie echo of the dis­fran­chise­ment that pre­ced­ed the mass mur­der of Rohingya peo­ple in near­by Myan­mar. One Assamese uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, who asked not to be named because he feared for his safe­ty, told me that Ramdev had abet­ted the RSS’s efforts to “ques­tion all oth­er reli­gions here, any­thing non-Hin­du.” He also said Patan­jali — embold­ened by its ties to the Modi gov­ern­ment — had run roughshod over laws reg­u­lat­ing the har­vest of med­i­c­i­nal plants.

The same qual­i­ties that have fueled Patanjali’s mete­oric rise — its evan­ge­lis­tic fer­vor, its depen­dence on Ramdev’s pop­u­lar­i­ty and polit­i­cal con­nec­tions — have also made it vul­ner­a­ble. A sur­pris­ing num­ber of employ­ees told me they saw the com­pa­ny as a high-wire act that might not last. “Con­cep­tu­al­ly, it’s still not an orga­ni­za­tion,” Singh, the man­ag­er of the new plant in Assam, told me. “It’s an ashram, on a large scale. And what hap­pens on an ashram? What the guru says, you do.” Patanjali’s sales have grown with extra­or­di­nary speed, and Singh told me it wor­ried him. “When you stretch some­thing, a vac­u­um opens up in the mid­dle,” he said, pulling his hands apart as if tear­ing a lump of piz­za dough. In Harid­war, one young employ­ee named Prashad told me he’d been so inspired by Ramdev that he left his cor­po­rate job and took a huge pay cut to join Patan­jali. But now he wor­ried about the company’s future. “I don’t see it — how they’d con­tin­ue pay­ing low salaries and main­tain qual­i­ty,” he said. He added that he would leave the com­pa­ny when he mar­ried and need­ed more income.

Reten­tion has been a per­sis­tent prob­lem for Ramdev. Appli­cants flock to the com­pa­ny, despite the fact that Patan­jali report­ed­ly pays 25 to 50 per­cent less than its com­peti­tors. Many leave after a year or less, I was told by exec­u­tives at Patan­jali and oth­er com­pa­nies. “Auton­o­my is very low,” said one exec­u­tive at a com­pet­ing com­pa­ny who asked not to be named, say­ing (like many oth­er peo­ple I spoke to) that he feared retal­i­a­tion. “Ramdev is very hands-on. There’s no doubt who’s in charge. He’s a micro­man­ag­er.” Behind his laugh­ing pub­lic per­sona, Ramdev is said by some to be an auto­crat­ic boss, capa­ble of lash­ing out furi­ous­ly when he’s thwart­ed.

I got a glimpse of Ramdev’s ashram-style man­age­ment at Harid­war, where he allowed me to observe him one after­noon. On the sec­ond floor of the company’s main cor­po­rate office, the hall­way was clogged with fol­low­ers who had come for a glimpse of the guru. One group told me they had come all the way from Tamil Nadu, in the far south. Even­tu­al­ly one of Ramdev’s han­dlers escort­ed me past the guards and into a wood-pan­eled office, and there was Ramdev, a splash of saf­fron col­or among but­ton-down oxford shirts and gray flan­nel pants. He was sit­ting lan­guid­ly on a couch, a wood­en san­dal dan­gling from his toe, inter­view­ing can­di­dates for jobs in sales and mar­ket­ing. The appli­cants seemed as much in awe of Ramdev as the fol­low­ers out­side: as they entered, each of them touched Ramdev’s feet rev­er­ent­ly, then sat down. He asked them to say what they could con­tribute to Patan­jali. A senior exec­u­tive sat near­by tak­ing notes, but Ramdev presided over the inter­view like a king on a throne. He is involved in even the small­est details: deci­sions about hir­ing, ads and prod­uct devel­op­ment. If any­thing were to punc­ture his aura — some scan­dal worse than those he has weath­ered in the past — it’s hard to imag­ine that Patan­jali would last a day.

Ramdev would not be the first god­man to crash and burn. At least a half-dozen oth­er pow­er­ful gurus have been arrest­ed and charged with seri­ous crimes in the past 20 years. The most recent and per­haps the most flam­boy­ant was Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, a pot­bel­lied and chub­by-cheeked fig­ure who cast him­self as a super­hero in sev­er­al bizarre self-made action movies with titles like “MSG: Mes­sen­ger of God.” Singh, who claimed 60 mil­lion fol­low­ers around the world, was con­vict­ed of rape last August and sen­tenced to 20 years in prison. (He has also been for­mal­ly accused of cas­trat­ing about 400 of his dis­ci­ples, a charge he denies.) After the ver­dict was issued, his fol­low­ers riot­ed, smash­ing cars, set­ting fire to build­ings and attack­ing police offi­cers; at least 38 peo­ple were killed and more than 250 injured.

But Ramdev is big­ger and bet­ter pro­tect­ed than his pre­de­ces­sors. Patan­jali has vast­ly expand­ed the mar­ket for ayurvedic prod­ucts, and in late 2014 Modi cre­at­ed an entire new gov­ern­ment min­istry to pro­mote yoga and ayurve­da, ele­vat­ing what had been an obscure gov­ern­ment office. Ramdev has made him­self a sym­bol of Indi­an eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence, and no one wants to ques­tion that, not even his ene­mies. One Indi­an C.E.O. who has accused Patan­jali of false adver­tis­ing told me he was grate­ful to Ramdev — despite his many sins — for attract­ing a new cus­tomer base in ways that ben­e­fit­ed every­one. “The worst thing for us would be if he implodes — with god­men you nev­er know,” he said. “That would impact the whole ayurvedic mar­ket.”

Ramdev appears to have a sec­ond lay­er of insur­ance: The clouds that hang over him also hang over his polit­i­cal patrons. Modi is regard­ed by much of the sec­u­lar elite as a crim­i­nal because of his sup­posed role in the 2002 Gujarat riots. His close ally Amit Shah, the leader of the B.J.P. and by most accounts the sec­ond-most-pow­er­ful man in India, was arrest­ed in 2010 and charged with arrang­ing the mur­der of an under­world cou­ple in police cus­tody and mak­ing it look as if they were killed dur­ing a shootout. The case was ulti­mate­ly dropped, but sus­pi­cions about Shah’s role linger, fueled by a recent series of inves­tiga­tive sto­ries in the Indi­an press. Modi and Shah respond to their accusers in exact­ly the same way Ramdev does, by lam­bast­ing the sec­u­lar elite. Their shared feel­ings of unjust per­se­cu­tion appear to thick­en their bond with Ramdev. And they see no need to change their stance; by all avail­able mea­sures, the Indi­an pub­lic is as sup­port­ive of Ramdev as ever. In ear­ly May, a wide­ly watched busi­ness sur­vey report­ed that Patan­jali was the most trust­ed brand in the coun­try, beat­ing about 1,000 oth­er com­pa­nies in its sec­tor, includ­ing multi­na­tion­als.

If the Modi gov­ern­ment gets its way, Ramdev’s star will rise even high­er. At the Chha­trasal sta­di­um event in Feb­ru­ary, Amit Shah told the crowd that the B.J.P. want­ed Ramdev to join them in reform­ing the Indi­an edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem. One of the party’s new pri­or­i­ties is an ambi­tious effort to rewrite Indi­an school text­books to assert Hin­du pri­ma­cy. Mahesh Shar­ma, India’s cul­ture min­is­ter and an avowed fol­low­er of the RSS, has said he hopes to rewrite the con­ven­tion­al nar­ra­tive about India as a mul­ti­cul­tur­al tapes­try, and to incul­cate the belief that the ancient Hin­du scrip­tures are his­tor­i­cal facts, not leg­ends.

“There is a lot of work to be done in edu­ca­tion,” Shah said on the sta­di­um floor, just after the pre­miere of Ramdev’s biopic. “Because of our saints and our heroes — all this needs to be brought into our edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem.”

When his turn came to speak, Ramdev walked to the lectern, smil­ing gra­cious­ly at the gag­gle of B.J.P. lumi­nar­ies onstage. He pledged his sup­port to Modi and Shah, and their efforts to trans­form India. “If the first 50 years of my life were a strug­gle,” he said, “my next 50 years I ded­i­cate my time and ener­gy to the cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al edu­ca­tion of the coun­try, to bring our coun­try the great knowl­edge of the Vedas.” He went on: “We will see an Indi­an edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy in this coun­try instead of the edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy giv­en us by Lord Macaulay.” Before step­ping down, he pumped his fist once again in a chant of “India my moth­er­land is great.” The crowd roared.

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #‘s 1018, 1019 Baba Ramdev and Hindutva Fascism, Parts 1 and 2”

  1. Armed groups of RSS thugs are tak­ing over tem­ples across South­ern India and turn­ing them into de fact pri­vate RSS club­hous­es where armed train­ing and drunk­en ‘mock fights’ are held. The Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board (TDB), an autonomous body that man­ages around 1,200 tem­ples in the region, has peti­tioned the RSS to halt the behav­ior. That’s the news we were get­ting out of the Indi­an state of Ker­ala last month. But as we’re going to see, it’s bare­ly news at this point. Because the RSS has been doing this since 2016, over the TDB’s protests the entire time.

    As we’re also going to see, this isn’t just an issue between the TDB and the RSS. Back in 2018 it spilled over into the polit­i­cal realm when the Ker­ala Chief Min­is­ter threat­ened to pass a law ban­ning such prac­tices. Such a law was nev­er passed, but the fact that fig­ures like Baba Ramdev felt the need to weigh in and defend the RSS — declar­ing that the RSS are not ter­ror­ists for stag­ing armed train­ing at the tem­ples but just nation­al­ists — under­scores how this kind of tem­ple-bul­ly­ing behav­ior is fun­da­men­tal­ly an exer­cise in a kind of Hin­du nation­al­ist pow­er pro­jec­tion. Which is exact­ly why we should­n’t expect it to end now, sev­en years into this Hin­du nation­al­ist pow­er-pro­jec­tion exer­cise:

    The Print

    Why devo­tees want ‘RSS men’ to leave this Ker­ala tem­ple alone — ‘caus­ing agony, fight­ing with sticks’

    Writ peti­tion in HC alleges men claim­ing to be RSS mem­bers have been ille­gal­ly encroach­ing premis­es of Sarkara Devi tem­ple in Ker­ala’s Chi­rayin­keezhu, lead­ing to ‘loss of calm atmos­phere’.

    Van­dana Menon
    25 June, 2023 10:34 am IST

    Thiru­vanan­tha­pu­ram: Devo­tees of Kerala’s Sarkara Devi tem­ple have gone to the Ker­ala High Court with a sim­ple demand — evict the Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh (RSS) from the temple’s premis­es.

    A writ peti­tion filed in the high court alleges that some men who claim to be mem­bers of the RSS have been ille­gal­ly encroach­ing on tem­ple premis­es, con­duct­ing mass drills and train­ing mem­bers on how to fight with weapons on tem­ple grounds every evening between 5 pm and 12 am.

    The peti­tion goes on to say that their activ­i­ties dis­turb the peace of the tem­ple and scare off devo­tees and vis­i­tors. It also said that the “unpleas­ant smell” and repeat­ed use of “tobac­co prod­ucts like ‘Hans’ and ‘pan masala’ with­in the tem­ple premis­es” affects the “clean­li­ness, puri­ty, and divin­i­ty” of the place of wor­ship.

    Accord­ing to the peti­tion, the men — who claim to be RSS mem­bers — have been caus­ing “men­tal stress, agony and loss of calm atmos­phere required to be main­tained dur­ing med­i­ta­tion and offer­ing prayers” at the tem­ple.

    “We haven’t received any offi­cial notice on this, and so we haven’t filed an affi­davit either,” said RSS state sec­re­tary P.N. Easwar. Adding, “We’ve looked into the mat­ter, but can’t com­ment fur­ther at this stage.”

    “We have no prob­lem with them using the tem­ple grounds,” said 68-year-old G. Vyasan, one of the two peti­tion­ers, refer­ring to the alleged RSS mem­bers.

    “But the way they use it is dis­re­spect­ful.”

    Vyasan vis­its the tem­ple every day and said he used to see the drills dai­ly. Those con­duct­ing the mass drills use sticks and have, what he describes as, ‘mock fights’ on some days. But large­ly, he said, they loi­ter on the tem­ple premis­es and gen­er­al­ly cause a dis­tur­bance after drink­ing alco­hol and con­sum­ing tobac­co.

    The drills, con­duct­ed on land right behind the tem­ple, which has been cor­doned off with chains and a makeshift bar­ri­er of rocks, have stopped since the writ peti­tion was filed on 20 June.

    A for­mer sec­re­tary of the tem­ple, Ajay Kumar, told TheP­rint that the men con­duct­ing the drills had built the bar­ri­er them­selves. They wouldn’t allow any oth­er devo­tees or vis­i­tors to use the space and would gath­er around 5 pm and spend the rest of the evening there, drink­ing into the night, he alleged.

    TheP­rint saw emp­ty bot­tles of liquor, torn pack­ets of tobac­co, and what looked like fire­crack­er shells on the tem­ple premis­es.

    “Those men come and shout ‘Jai Shri Ram’ all the time. I don’t under­stand why, this is a Devi tem­ple!” said one devo­tee, under­lin­ing that the Sarkara Devi temple’s deity is Bhadrakali.

    ‘Saw them fight­ing, con­duct­ing drills’

    The Sarkara Devi Tem­ple is one of the main attrac­tions of the town of Chi­rayin­keezhu, locat­ed about an hour from Thiru­vanan­tha­pu­ram.

    Tech­ni­cal­ly, the tem­ple land belongs to the Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board (TDB), an autonomous body that man­ages around 1,200 tem­ples, includ­ing the famous Sabari­mala tem­ple. The TDB had pre­vi­ous­ly issued a cir­cu­lar in March this year to all tem­ples they over­see, instruct­ing them not to allow mass drills and oth­er such activ­i­ties organ­ised by the RSS on tem­ple grounds.

    The lat­est cir­cu­lar, issued on 18 May 2023, said that strict action would be tak­en against those Devas­wom offi­cers who don’t fol­low it.

    But in Chi­rayin­keezhu, RSS func­tionar­ies ignored the cir­cu­lar and con­tin­ued using tem­ple premis­es — which is why locals have now turned to the courts.

    RSS mem­bers named in the peti­tion have alleged­ly been strong-arm­ing their way into the tem­ple and bul­ly­ing author­i­ties with their hench­men. The tem­ple grounds have become the local hang­out spot for RSS mem­bers from across the Thiru­vanan­tha­pu­ram dis­trict, accord­ing to Kumar.

    “It’s hard to iden­ti­fy every sin­gle mem­ber, but there are usu­al­ly at least 20 peo­ple who come and loi­ter here,” said Kumar. “They’ve even cor­doned off part of the grounds and say no one can use it but them­selves. I have seen them fight­ing each oth­er with sticks, and con­duct­ing their drills with slo­ga­neer­ing.”

    One devo­tee said he has seen these men using sick­les and oth­er such “weapon­ry”, and said that women and chil­dren have com­plained about the fear of being attacked in the evenings.

    “The RSS wants to keep the tem­ple under their con­trol, but they have no legal grounds to do so,” said advo­cate Rajen­dran, a local of Chi­rayin­keezhu. A long­stand­ing mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty, Rajen­dran filed the writ peti­tion after sev­er­al peo­ple appealed to him for help. He is co-coun­sel for the case along with advo­cate Nikhil Sankar, a Kochi-based lawyer.

    The RSS have been using the tem­ple premis­es for years, and have ignored sev­er­al entreaties to stop, accord­ing to Rajen­dran. “It’s because they haven’t stopped that the com­mu­ni­ty has decid­ed to take this step,” he said.

    This is an issue across Thiru­vanan­tha­pu­ram, Alap­puzha, and Pathanamthit­ta, accord­ing to Rajen­dran. In Chi­rayin­keezhu, both tem­ple author­i­ties and local police have report­ed­ly warned the men to stop such activ­i­ties at the Sarkara Devi tem­ple.

    On Wednes­day, the stand­ing coun­sel for the TDB told the high court that they pro­pose to install a gate on tem­ple premis­es to ward off such activ­i­ties.

    Sarkara Devi temple’s sig­nif­i­cance

    The famous Sarkara Devi tem­ple is a pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion for devo­tees in south­ern India. The large grounds there are home to two ele­phants and sev­er­al stray dogs, and locals often use the premis­es as a com­mu­ni­ty space.

    Even on a sleepy week­day after­noon, boys were play­ing crick­et in one part of the grounds, while oth­ers chat­ted beneath the temple’s large trees.

    The deci­sion to cor­don off the space at the back of the tem­ple is what has ran­kled most com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers.

    The tem­ple became promi­nent in 1748 when the King of Tra­van­core, Anizham Thirunal Marthan­da Var­ma, began to con­duct the Kaliy­oot fes­ti­val at the tem­ple. Leg­end has it that the Tra­van­core ruler stopped to rest at the spot while on his way to annex the king­dom of Kayamku­lam — an exer­cise in futil­i­ty, as he had failed to con­quer the king­dom on sev­er­al pre­vi­ous expe­di­tions.

    But this time, he prayed to the Chi­rayin­keezhu deity to help him win the war and promised to offer the year’s har­vest to her if tri­umphant. He won, and thus began the Kaliy­oot fes­ti­val.

    ...

    “Every­one vis­its this tem­ple — not just Hin­dus, but Mus­lims and Chris­tians, too,” said Kumar. “This tem­ple is open to all, and should remain so. The RSS has no right to declare the space as theirs.”

    ———–

    “Why devo­tees want ‘RSS men’ to leave this Ker­ala tem­ple alone — ‘caus­ing agony, fight­ing with sticks’” by Van­dana Menon; The Print; 06/25/2023

    “RSS mem­bers named in the peti­tion have alleged­ly been strong-arm­ing their way into the tem­ple and bul­ly­ing author­i­ties with their hench­men. The tem­ple grounds have become the local hang­out spot for RSS mem­bers from across the Thiru­vanan­tha­pu­ram dis­trict, accord­ing to Kumar.”

    Strong-arm­ing their way into tem­ples and bul­ly­ing author­i­ties with their hench­men. Those are the accu­sa­tions against the RSS by the Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board (TDB) autonomous body that man­ages around 1,200 tem­ples in south­ern India. But they aren’t just bul­ly­ing the tem­ple author­i­ties. They appear to be tak­ing over tem­ples from 5PM to mid­night and using them as both a loi­ter­ing hang­out spot and also train­ing grounds for drunk­en ‘mock fights’. It’s as if the pub­lic aggres­sion is the point:

    ...
    Vyasan vis­its the tem­ple every day and said he used to see the drills dai­ly. Those con­duct­ing the mass drills use sticks and have, what he describes as, ‘mock fights’ on some days. But large­ly, he said, they loi­ter on the tem­ple premis­es and gen­er­al­ly cause a dis­tur­bance after drink­ing alco­hol and con­sum­ing tobac­co.

    ...

    A for­mer sec­re­tary of the tem­ple, Ajay Kumar, told TheP­rint that the men con­duct­ing the drills had built the bar­ri­er them­selves. They wouldn’t allow any oth­er devo­tees or vis­i­tors to use the space and would gath­er around 5 pm and spend the rest of the evening there, drink­ing into the night, he alleged.

    TheP­rint saw emp­ty bot­tles of liquor, torn pack­ets of tobac­co, and what looked like fire­crack­er shells on the tem­ple premis­es.

    “Those men come and shout ‘Jai Shri Ram’ all the time. I don’t under­stand why, this is a Devi tem­ple!” said one devo­tee, under­lin­ing that the Sarkara Devi temple’s deity is Bhadrakali.

    ...

    “It’s hard to iden­ti­fy every sin­gle mem­ber, but there are usu­al­ly at least 20 peo­ple who come and loi­ter here,” said Kumar. “They’ve even cor­doned off part of the grounds and say no one can use it but them­selves. I have seen them fight­ing each oth­er with sticks, and con­duct­ing their drills with slo­ga­neer­ing.”

    One devo­tee said he has seen these men using sick­les and oth­er such “weapon­ry”, and said that women and chil­dren have com­plained about the fear of being attacked in the evenings.
    ...

    And note how this isn’t a sin­gle tem­ple or a sin­gle inci­dent. This aggres­sive bul­ly­ing by RSS gangs has been going on for years now in tem­ples across the region:

    ...
    The Sarkara Devi Tem­ple is one of the main attrac­tions of the town of Chi­rayin­keezhu, locat­ed about an hour from Thiru­vanan­tha­pu­ram.

    Tech­ni­cal­ly, the tem­ple land belongs to the Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board (TDB), an autonomous body that man­ages around 1,200 tem­ples, includ­ing the famous Sabari­mala tem­ple. The TDB had pre­vi­ous­ly issued a cir­cu­lar in March this year to all tem­ples they over­see, instruct­ing them not to allow mass drills and oth­er such activ­i­ties organ­ised by the RSS on tem­ple grounds.

    The lat­est cir­cu­lar, issued on 18 May 2023, said that strict action would be tak­en against those Devas­wom offi­cers who don’t fol­low it.

    But in Chi­rayin­keezhu, RSS func­tionar­ies ignored the cir­cu­lar and con­tin­ued using tem­ple premis­es — which is why locals have now turned to the courts.

    ...

    The RSS have been using the tem­ple premis­es for years, and have ignored sev­er­al entreaties to stop, accord­ing to Rajen­dran. “It’s because they haven’t stopped that the com­mu­ni­ty has decid­ed to take this step,” he said.

    This is an issue across Thiru­vanan­tha­pu­ram, Alap­puzha, and Pathanamthit­ta, accord­ing to Rajen­dran. In Chi­rayin­keezhu, both tem­ple author­i­ties and local police have report­ed­ly warned the men to stop such activ­i­ties at the Sarkara Devi tem­ple.
    ...

    So can we expect the RSS to heed this pub­lic out­cry and end the use of tem­ple grounds for drunk­en armed com­bat train­ing ses­sions this time? Of course not. Or at least not unless the Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board has some sort of way to enforce its demands, because the TBD has been demand­ing the RSS halt this activ­i­ty since 2016, and it just keeps hap­pen­ing:

    India Today

    Dis­play­ing polit­i­cal lead­ers’ pho­tos destroys tem­ples’ puri­ty: Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board on ‘no RSS drills’ cir­cu­lar

    The Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board has banned mass drills and oth­er activ­i­ties organ­ised by the RSS on tem­ple premis­es. The board said tem­ples were for the believ­ers and there should not be any incon­ve­nience to devo­tees.

    Shibi­mol KG
    Thiruvananthapuram,UPDATED: May 23, 2023 17:57 IST

    By Shibi­mol KG: The Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board (TDB) issued a cir­cu­lar restrict­ing mass drills and oth­er activ­i­ties organ­ised by the RSS on tem­ple premis­es. The TDB, which man­ages around 1,200 tem­ples in south­ern India, said pho­tos of polit­i­cal lead­ers were being dis­played in some tem­ples and such actions “destroyed the puri­ty of tem­ples”.

    Talk­ing about the cir­cu­lar, TDB pres­i­dent Anan­thagopan said, “RSS shakhas were func­tion­ing in many tem­ples, they were per­form­ing drills and such activ­i­ties were tak­ing place. That’s the rea­son why such a cir­cu­lar was issued. Tem­ples are for the believ­ers, there should not be any incon­ve­nience for the devo­tees to wor­ship. That’s the stand of Dewas­wom board. To bring to the notice of offi­cials, the cir­cu­lar has been reis­sued.”

    “In tem­ples, cer­tain pho­tos of polit­i­cal lead­ers were dis­played. Such actions will destroy the puri­ty of tem­ples. Offi­cials will peace­ful­ly organ­ise meet­ings with con­cerned peo­ple and such sit­u­a­tions will be avoid­ed. We haven’t yet tak­en a call on action,” the TDB pres­i­dent said.

    Anan­thagopan, how­ev­er, clar­i­fied that there was no polit­i­cal pres­sure behind the issuance of the cir­cu­lar.

    “Since Jan­u­ary, dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son, cer­tain issues were report­ed relat­ed to this. At least in some places, there have been instances where these organ­i­sa­tions have inter­fered in tem­ple activ­i­ties,” Anan­thagopan said.

    ABOUT THE TDB CIRCULAR

    In 2016, the Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board issued a cir­cu­lar ban­ning all forms of arms train­ing by the RSS inside tem­ple premis­es. The board reis­sued an order on March 30, 2021 stat­ing the tem­ple premis­es should not be used for any oth­er pur­pose oth­er than for tem­ple rit­u­als and fes­ti­vals.

    ...

    Con­gress leader VD Satheesan said he was in sup­port of the cir­cu­lar issued by the TDB.

    “I am sup­port­ing this cir­cu­lar. The RSS is a Sangh Pari­var orga­ni­za­tion. They are spread­ing hate. They are divid­ing peo­ple. (Tem­ple) premis­es can’t be used for divi­sive pur­pos­es. Tem­ples are sacred places. All sorts of drills should be pro­hib­it­ed inside tem­ple premis­es. The RSS can’t use these prop­er­ties for divi­sive pur­pos­es. 90 per cent of the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty in Ker­ala is against the RSS. They don’t have any right to do these drills there,” VD Satheesan was quot­ed as say­ing by news agency ANI.

    ————

    “Dis­play­ing polit­i­cal lead­ers’ pho­tos destroys tem­ples’ puri­ty: Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board on ‘no RSS drills’ cir­cu­lar” by Shibi­mol KG; India Today; 05/23/2023

    “In 2016, the Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board issued a cir­cu­lar ban­ning all forms of arms train­ing by the RSS inside tem­ple premis­es. The board reis­sued an order on March 30, 2021 stat­ing the tem­ple premis­es should not be used for any oth­er pur­pose oth­er than for tem­ple rit­u­als and fes­ti­vals.”

    Yes, it was 2016 when the Tra­van­core Devas­wom Board issued its first cir­cu­lar ban­ning the RSS’s use of tem­ple grounds for their armed train­ing. Sev­en years, and many cir­cu­lars lat­er, and noth­ing has changed. The RSS is still bul­ly tem­ple author­i­ties and still occu­py­ing tem­ple grounds for sev­en hours a day as their pri­vate club­house.

    Of course, the TBD does­n’t have the pow­er of the gov­ern­ment behind it. So can we expect the gov­ern­ment to inter­vene? Well, maybe. Such threats were issued by the Ker­ala Chief Min­is­ter back in 2018. Threats that nev­er came to fruition. But as we can see in the fol­low­ing report, it was a big enough issue at the time to illic­it the inter­ven­tion of anoth­er force in India: Baba Ramdev, who felt the need to come out and defend the RSS tem­ple train­ing ses­sions:

    DNA India

    RSS not a ter­ror­ist or nax­al organ­i­sa­tion, they are nation­al­ist: Baba Ramdev

    Amid ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy over Ker­ala Chief Min­is­ter Pinarayi Vijayan’s state­ment, Yoga guru Baba Ramdev on Thurs­day said that the RSS is not a ter­ror­ist or a Nax­al organ­i­sa­tion.

    Report­ed By:DNA Web Team| Edit­ed By: DNA Web Team |Source: DNA web­desk |Updat­ed: Mar 22, 2018, 03:35 PM IST

    Amid ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy over Ker­ala Chief Min­is­ter Pinarayi Vijayan’s state­ment, Yoga guru Baba Ramdev on Thurs­day said that the RSS is not a ter­ror­ist or a Nax­al organ­i­sa­tion.

    “I have seen the lead­ers of RSS close­ly. RSS isn’t a ter­ror­ist or a Nax­al orga­ni­za­tion, they are a nation­al­ist organ­i­sa­tion,” Ramdev told ANI.

    The Yoga guru also said that they (RSS) would nev­er do any­thing against the coun­try.

    On Wednes­day, Vijayan said out­fits like RSS and Pop­u­lar Front of India were car­ry­ing out ille­gal drills and arms train­ing and gov­ern­ment would take stern action against them.

    The gov­ern­ment, if need­ed, would bring in a law to ban drills and arms train­ing being con­duct­ed in pub­lic and in places of wor­ship, Vijayan said dur­ing the ques­tion hour in the state assem­bly.

    ...

    He said: “PFI & RSS are con­duct­ing arms train­ing, such drills are against the laws of the land. We have infor­ma­tion that some organ­i­sa­tions are car­ry­ing out train­ing with sticks even in Devas­wom tem­ples. If need­ed will bring law to ban it.”

    ———–

    “RSS not a ter­ror­ist or nax­al organ­i­sa­tion, they are nation­al­ist: Baba Ramdev” By:DNA Web Team; DNA India; 03/22/2018

    ““I have seen the lead­ers of RSS close­ly. RSS isn’t a ter­ror­ist or a Nax­al orga­ni­za­tion, they are a nation­al­ist organ­i­sa­tion,” Ramdev told ANI.”

    They’re just a harm­less nation­al­ist organ­i­sa­tion that pos­es no threat to any­one. That was how Baba Ramdev defend­ed the RSS back in 2018 after the gov­ern­ment of Ker­ala threat­ened to pass a law ban­ning this kind of behav­ior:

    ...
    Amid ongo­ing con­tro­ver­sy over Ker­ala Chief Min­is­ter Pinarayi Vijayan’s state­ment, Yoga guru Baba Ramdev on Thurs­day said that the RSS is not a ter­ror­ist or a Nax­al organ­i­sa­tion.

    ...

    On Wednes­day, Vijayan said out­fits like RSS and Pop­u­lar Front of India were car­ry­ing out ille­gal drills and arms train­ing and gov­ern­ment would take stern action against them.

    The gov­ern­ment, if need­ed, would bring in a law to ban drills and arms train­ing being con­duct­ed in pub­lic and in places of wor­ship, Vijayan said dur­ing the ques­tion hour in the state assem­bly.
    ...

    That was five years ago when these threats of a new law were issued. And it’s appar­ent­ly been five more years of unchecked bul­ly­ing and drunk­en mock fight­ing. Noth­ing has change. Well, not noth­ing. A law­suit against the RSS is actu­al­ly work­ing its way through the courts at the moment so some sort of for­mal gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion is pos­si­ble. With more gov­ern­ment capit­u­la­tion also obvi­ous­ly very pos­si­ble.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 27, 2023, 1:50 pm

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