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There’s much I didn’t know about Ram Kisan Yadav. For starters, that this name eventually shed its skin and coalesced into something far more powerful – a name that everyone would come to remember. Or, that there is no record of his birth, at all. Or that he found himself in close proximity – through a curious trajectory of events – to a number of unsolved and rather murky cases. Or, that he went from simple yogi to business mogul in what seemed like no time at all.
Priyanka Pathak-Narain, at least, knows a little more than you and me – but she won’t take credit for knowing the man through and through. “It’s like witnessing a performance,” she tells me over the phone. “Over the years – and after having interviewed him several times – I still feel like I don’t know exactly what he’s thinking.”
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Be that as it may, the amount that she does know him – and lets spill – twists itself into a nice, tight biography called Godman to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev. I say ‘spill’, because in several places, the book reads like a fast-paced murder thriller, replete with stories of unsolved disappearances, unsolved deaths and unsolved murders. I tell Narain how it is precisely this that has made the book unputdownable for me – and I mean it.
The beginnings, for instance. Narain establishes that she has no idea when the self-styled godman was born – apparently all her questions to him on that score were met with aversion, with both Ramdev and his aide Balkrishna pointing her to a previous biography on him. Funnily, that biography too records the biographer’s exasperation with Baba Ramdev in trying to find out his date of birth:
Exasperating birth non-details notwithstanding, the story of Ramdev’s childhood is a fascinating one. Born in Said Alipur village of Mahendragarh district, Haryana, Ramdev (born Ram Kisan Yadav) grew up as a “sickly, accident-prone child” who was liberally doled out beatings by an irate father.
A childhood as bruising as the one documented could only lead one way: out. Ramdev runs away, discovers a couple of gurukuls, two friends in Balkrishna and Karamveer, and his own penchant for the yogic life. Over the next few chapters, we are told of his ascendancy with almost gushing pride.
However, if there’s one thing Narain does really well – whether intentionally or not – it is to unsettle a seemingly-shining moment with the promise of disharmony. Sample this, for instance: At the point when Ramdev accepts bhagwa (saffron) to signify his entry into sanyas, Karamveer is still clad in white robes (the garb of the brahmachari).
That ominous-sounding bell seems to ring off the rest of the narrative which follows a curve ball so steep, it is hard to catch your breath. There are detailed episodes of HOW Ramdev got to be Ramdev – the setting up of Divya Pharmacy (which, for the first time in the country, offered free consultations at a yoga clinic), the burgeoning number of yoga camps, the eagerness to be on television, the falling out with allies et al.
The first mystery in the book, self-explanatorily titled ‘Mystery 1: The Ally’s Murder’ is a sudden, rushed nosedive into the darker facets of the story. Swami Yogananada – the man whose licence had enabled Divya Pharmacy to function – was found murdered.
The pace only picks up at this point, as we rush through a kaleidoscope of images – the heady successes that Ramdev attains at Sanskar TV and then Aastha, and the quick harnessing of a new ally, Rajeev Dixit, head of a Gandhian organisation called ‘Azadi Bachao Andolan’.
Dixit’s death falls into one of the giant black holes that is an unsolved case in the book. Initially suspected to have died of a cardiac arrest, Ramdev seems to muddy the waters when he declares he had spoken to his mentor for an hour the night before he died, exhorting the latter to take care of his health. But…
When it is suddenly suspected by a bunch of Dixit’s close aides that there may have been foul play (his face “was unrecognisable... a strange purple and blue. His skin was peeling strangely. There was some black, blue blood around his nose”), Ramdev seems to react strangely. According to Dubey, Ramdev flatly refused the possibility of there having been any foul play:
Ultimately, in the midst of great confusion, a post-mortem isn’t conducted – and Narain records Dubey as saying:
Narain also faithfully traces the trajectory of Ramdev’s Patanjali Group of Institutions, recording its stupendous rise and how the now-tycoon found natural alternatives for Western products. She reminds at each level also, of the tremendous popularity that he enjoys – and for good reason:
She concludes her narrative with the all-encompassing question that, by this point, the reader too is itching to ask:
Is he?
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