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 Beatings and the Running Away
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:
I begged him to tell me his birthdate, nearly fell at his feet, but he only smiled at me and said, ‘I really was born only on April 9, 1995, the day my guru, Shankar Devji Maharaj, gave me sanyas deeksha [that is, the day Ramdev donned his saffron robes and renounced the world]. So it is better to keep that only as my birthdate.’Sandeep Dev, author of Swami Ramdev: Ek Yogi, Ek Yodhha
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.
There is a particularly shocking paragraph that details the incessant beating Ramdev was given for a purported theft which the young boy hadn’t even committed. It is noted, that even after Ramdev’s innocence is discovered, his father remains blissfully nonchalant.
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).
Professor Ishwar Bharadwaj, Karamveer’s teacher at university, remembers warning his student at that time, ‘You may be Ramdev’s mentor. But now you are wearing white clothes. He is wearing bhagwa [saffron]. People will touch his feet – not yours.’ Karamveer recollects scoffing at the cautionary words… But Ishwar Bharadwaj’s comment was prescient of things to come.
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.
Ramdev’s Popularity and Unsolved Deaths
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.
With Yogananda’s death, a key associate who had provided critical help to Ramdev in his early days was gone. The murder remains unsolved till date. Ten months later, on 25 October 2005, investigating officer BB Juyal filed his final report in the case – Case unsolved. Perpetrators unknown.
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…
Pradeep Dixit (Rajeev’s brother) cannot help but wonder now: how had his brother, who Ramdev’s men had told him was in no condition to speak on the phone, managed to have an hour-long telephonic conversation with Ramdev about the ideal line of treatment?
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:
‘No, no . . . I know it was a natural death.’ ‘How can you know? You were not there. You were only talking to them on the phone. How can you be sure there was no conspiracy?’ ‘But why will anyone conspire like that?’ ‘There can be many who might. You are well aware of it.’ Ramdev was growing angrier by the minute at what he must have seen as Dubey’s insolence.
Ultimately, in the midst of great confusion, a post-mortem isn’t conducted – and Narain records Dubey as saying:
I’ve felt absolutely sure that there was foul play in Rajeevbhai’s death… I saw the body… I will never stop saying it.
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:
Ramdev took yoga and Ayurveda out of the restrictive realm of religion and made it an accessible practice of preventive health care for millions of Indians. He reminded them that the pursuit of spirituality has little meaning if the body is unhealthy. Even today, despite the pressures of running a growing business, he continues to hold yoga camps in Haridwar.
She concludes her narrative with the all-encompassing question that, by this point, the reader too is itching to ask:
…Is he willing to play by the rules of the society he lives in and hold himself up to the laws that ordinary businessmen have to adhere to? Is he ready to stop using his saffron robes as a holy shield against public scrutiny?
Is he?
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