Baba Ramdev is a well known Yoga guru in India and abroad. Millions of Indians and global citizens have greatly benefited from his yoga and pranayama teachings including me. Yoga is a 5000 years old science founded by many sages and most prominent of which is Patanjali. It was there in texts but no one really tried to oversimplify it and spread it the way Ramdev did. He is a savvy businessman also; who created a proliferring business empire worth 20 K crore without any seed money! His own Patanjali yoga pitha along with the medicine factory in incredible and has been serving people who have lost all hope s from modern medicine. I decided to write on this topic after hearing 2 of my very close friends criticizing Ramdev. While, I did not agree with them, I did not get into an argument either for fear of turning the situation into a hostile one.
My friends retorted Ramdev is a fraud very adamantly. Then I gently asked why so? Then comes the reply, he killed many people with his medicines. I said how do you know? They said he killed one of his close friend’s son with his medicine. Then I asked, when the ruling party is so much against him, why can’t they prove anything against him? Then they said Vrinda Karat proved something against him and he sucked into congress and got away and now he is turning against them(read congress). Now the next question I should have asked is why the ruling party is not using that event against him, but I kept quiet because I knew they were so convinced that Ramdev is a fraud, no matter how much ever I say in support of him, will not actually change anything.
Now, I have several follow up questions:
Which medicine does not kill people? Do people go against all of them saying the doctors are fraud or the pharmaceuticals are fraud? According to me, chemotherapy and surgeries alone have killed many more people than any other drug. It has never been the case, where people turn to Ayurveda as first line of treatment. They go to traditional therapies and when everything fails, then they reluctantly turn towards alternatives. In many case, it would have been already terminal or the patient is already damaged beyond repair. Then why blame Ayurveda.
The second thing is why Vrinda Karat could not prove her allegations that Ramdev uses human skulls? Many others also say he uses heavy metals for treatment. While I am not aware of this particular allegation, I know in Ayurveda, people do use lot of “Bhasma” and they could be of gold, silver or any other origin. My understanding tells that we still need trace amounts of heavy metals in our body. Not all heavy metals are toxic to our body. So, why hue and cry against Ramdev? I think there is a particular section of the society very scared about Ramdev’s popularity and simplicity. They think, he may gain momentum and people will start getting better and they may lose business. I wish those people should focus their campaign against coke, junk food instead; it will bring about some good to the society…
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