The Hindu June 6, 2011
Creating Baba Ramdev
by Smita Gupta
New Delhi: It was not that long back that Baba Ramdev, a Yadav from
Haryana, was just a superior yoga instructor with a mass following, a
people's Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, whose clientele was at the upper end of the
social spectrum.
Today, Baba Ramdev heads a yoga and health empire, worth hundreds of
crores, with even an island off the coast of Scotland, gifted to him by
grateful devotees, to run a yoga ashram and a spa. He swishes around in
chartered private planes - and, significantly, has a team of advisers with
impressive credentials.
First, there is Acharya Balakrishna, who is credited with marketing his
yogic skills and creating an empire - government sources allege that the
Acharya is the proud possessor of three passports. Then there is the Lok
Ayukta of Punjab and Haryana, Justice Pritam Pal, who has shared the stage
with him and who, along with journalist Devinder Sharma - an anti-GM
proponent of organic agriculture -- were with him, when he met the four
Cabinet Ministers at the airport earlier this week.
Then there is former Intelligence Bureau chief Ajit Doval and veteran
journalist Ved Prakash Vaidik, who has close connections with the RSS
family. Then there is S Gurumurthy, a chartered accountant by training and
RSS person by ideology, who was once a close aide of the newspaper
magnate, the late Ramnath Goenka. And the "remote control" is with
K.Govindacharya, who in the late 1980s and early 1990s was a key BJP
functionary and senior ideologue of the party, and played a critical
behind the scenes role in the formation of the V.P. Singh government in
1989. Of late, he has been in close touch with his old mentor, L.K.
Advani, and it is Mr. Govindacharya's Bharat Swabhiman Trust along with
the RSS that has played a major role in mobilising people for his camp.
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