![]() allies routinely invoke an Islamic threat and rally crowds with vows to build temples on the sites of medieval mosques. Although Ramdev prefers to speak of Indian solidarity, his B.J.P. 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. In a sense, Ramdev has changed Hinduism itself. Ramdev has led vastly popular campaigns against corruption, donning the mantle of swadeshi, or Indian economic nationalism, to cast foreign companies as neocolonial villains. ![]() 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. ![]() After Modi won, Ramdev claimed to have “prepared the ground for the big political changes that occurred.”īut Ramdev is far more than a useful holy man. 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. 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. 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. ![]() Ramdev has called Modi “a close friend,” and the prime minister publicly lauds Patanjali’s array of ayurvedic products - medicines, cosmetics and foodstuffs. He appeared alongside Modi on several occasions, singing the leader’s praises and urging Indians to turn out for him. 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. Ramdev has been compared to Billy Graham, the Southern Baptist firebrand who advised several American presidents and energized the Christian right. Swamiji has changed India, which was going toward the West - its dress and food and culture - and has changed its direction to yoga!” “Swamiji has changed the direction of the world, the thinking of the world,” one speaker shouted, referring to Ramdev with an affectionate honorific. 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. 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. Everyone repeat after me: “ Bharat mata ki jai!” he shouted. Ramdev took the microphone and introduced the phalanx of several hundred Hindu religious students, known as brahmacharis, sitting in neat rows on the field. This was Baba Ramdev, one of the most famous men in India. 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. 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. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |