Almost a decade ago, a ‘saffron draped sanyasi’, germinated from the land of Haryana brought about a wave of mammoth change in lives of the Indian citizens. Medium-built, spark of sun on face, cool seriousness of moon in eyes- ‘demanding a revolution’; and jet black hair, beard and moustaches adorned the structure of Ramkishan Yadav. After passing eighth standard, he joined yogic monastery (gurukul) in Khanpur village to learn Yog and Sanskrit. Eventually he sacrificed worldly life and took sanyas- adopting name of Swami Ramdev. He then went to Jind district and catered free Yog training to the villagers across Haryana. It’s also said that he travelled the Himalayas for several years, discovering medicinal plants for treating patients before settling in Haridwar. In 1995, to popularise ‘Yog’, he set the foundation of Divya Yog Mandir Trust with Acharya Karamveer. He has also founded the Patanjali Yogpeeth Trust which has built several institutions.
Ramdev Baba earned immense fame and frenzy by teaching ‘Yog’. Every morning on AASTHA Channel, he taught people an ancient form of mental, spiritual and physical exercise from their television sets, which cleanses the impurities of soul, mind and body. He put all his efforts to simplify the Yog Asanas for the common man. And eventually was being symbolised with Yog. He became a hot-shot figure in public with the speed of a fire in the forest. Baba commenced conducting Yog training camps all over the country for benefitting the people under the banner of ‘Bharat Swabhiman’. Taking a slight advantage of his proliferating popularity, Ramdev tossed the issue of corruption and back money in these camps along with teaching Yog. And Rajiv Dixit proved to be his greatest aide in this cause. He was such an affluent and proficient speaker with par excellence knowledge, that his speech on eradicating corruption, poverty and foul politics from India sugar-coated the soaring prominence of Baba Ramdev. People became ardent follower of Baba and started believing in him with complete conviction. They got a new leader who ensured them that; he will inject a change in the nerves of the degrading country’ system. And with this assurance, his stature reached its zenith.
Time elapsed, shifting his whole focus. His asanas remained the same, what changed was his inclination more and more towards politics. He set his foot on the battle grounds of politics, by launching his nationwide protest in June, 2011 in Ramlila Maidan, by a fast- onto- death fast. Baba’s follower flocked in for his open support. He put forth his demand for an independent CBI, a strong Lokpal bill and bringing back the stashed black money in Swiss Bank and punishment to the people involved. But, his demands were met the other way. At the end of the whole show he was just given a ‘promise’ that heed would be paid to his demands. So that he ends his fast-onto-death which was becoming an obstruction for UPA government. Ramdev’s all hard earned reputation maligned in public, with his one decision of running away clad in woman attire when police came to arrest him at mid night in Ramlila Maidan. The story was going well till the time he was teaching Yog and making the population healthy. With his growing steps towards entering into politics, his fan following dropped and especially after the ‘Salwar-Kameez’ episode. Politics is not everybody’s cup of tea. It requires a lot of strategy, plans and patience. Baba Ramdev every time maintains that he doesn’t have any political agenda and he just wants to make ‘India a great nation’. And he is not against any political party. But, many doubt his claims because his word doesn’t coincide well with his actions. Which eventually shows that he was been liked just as the Yog Guru, who build up a great yog empire of annual turnover of 1000 crores.
After a span of 14 months, Swami Ramdev made his presence felt by demonstrating again from 9th August, 2012 to make his unfulfilled demands meet by the ruling party. Besides this, it was also a fresh advent to build up the ruined image last year and gain confidence of the public once again. The first day of protest did not record much support. But, a fair amount of public supported him on the last day of the protest which lasted for 5 days, and was supposed to end within 3 days. The reason behind this extension was that his warning fell on the deaf ears of the UPA government. The government applied the formula of “ignorance is bliss” and on top of that didn’t even bother to retaliate. His labours went unseen and futile like the last year, even after the support and presence of BJP President Nitin Gadkari, who is with him in the battle of ‘bringing back the black money’ to India. What does his occurrence shows? BJP’s constant back up and involvement is indicating that the fight for the welfare of the country is been led in the other direction, which turns out to be against the ruling party of the country by using the tool ‘Ramdev’. And he knowingly or unknowingly is becoming BJP’s toy to get its vested interests met. Many feels he just wasted his time and others feel that he succeeded in at least bringing about the commotion in the country.
Ramdev came with an aim. But, after getting entangled into the cobwebs of dirty politics he was left astray from his actual aim. And now, even he would have been wondering that an initiative to cleanse the system with the help of Yog, and starting with cleansing an individual can leave your own brain all cleaned up with nothing remaining inside it………..
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