FROM THE TELEGRAPH OF 12 JANUARY 2006.
The Yogi and the Commie Star
Brinda Karat is
suing a Trivandrum publisher who published a photo of hers together with a
quotation from an interview of hers to the effect that yoga was the secret
behind health and beauty – although he published an apology the next day. I
would stressfully clarify that nothing in this column purports to be a comment
either on Brinda’s appearance or views on yoga. The word “Star” is strenuously
dissociated from the sense in which it is applied to film stars; it only refers
to a rising member of the CPM leadership with bright prospects. Nor is there
any intention, notwithstanding anything said below, to compare the subject to a
shooting star.
In a column I
wrote last January, I tackled Calcutta’s problem– that all too often, trade
unionists disrupt traffic at its centre with demonstrations. My solution was
that the West Bengal government should move to a hill station, and locate itself
on top of a steep hill, so that left-wing processionists would arrive breathless
and exhausted. Little did I realize that I was giving ideas to the agitators.
For hill stations have a paucity of roads; some of them are just settlements
along a single road. So it is much easier for trade unionists to disrupt
day-to-day life in a hill station than in a big city. They do not even have to
march; all they have to do is to sit down in the main square, and all traffic
will come to a halt.
To test this
theory, CPM held a conference on 15 and 16 January last year in Rishikesh, the
point of entry to a string of holy towns, and the home of Indian Drugs and
Pharmaceuticals, which a militant trade union had helped along into bankruptcy.
CPM bussed in “students” from ten districts. Slowly, they crawled along Hardwar
Road and Lakshman Jhula Road, shouting death to sundry oppressors. Then 108
delegates – 45 from the middle class, 38 from the peasantry, 12 from the
working class, and five agricultural labourers – gathered together. Amongst those
who spoke, Brinda Karat attacked the BJP for having passed the UP
Reorganization Bill in 2000, which created Uttarakhand but discriminated
against it, and the Congress for not having implemented the common minimum
programme despite having been in power at the centre for eight months. The
“ruling class party” – read the Congress – was no different from the BJP. The solution?
The people of Uttarakhand must vote CPM next time. Meanwhile, whenever the
situation demanded, the CPM would support people’s struggles. It would become
the champion of the regional aspirations of the working class and socially
oppressed people. The local branch was set targets to raise membership to 15000
workers, 15000 women, 30000 farm workers, 10000 students and 15000 other youth.
Then all was
quiet till the end of winter. On 18 April, CPM held its 18th
Congress in Delhi; there the strategy to be followed in Uttaranchal was honed.
On 5 May, workers in the Ayurvedic pharmacy of the Divya Yog Mandir Trust in
Hardwar, refused to take their salaries. Instead, they started shouting. On a
cue, local CPM agitators came and joined them. Since they were not prepared to
work, the workers’ employment was terminated. Others took their place; but no
one has come forward yet to champion their cause.
The dismissed
workers said the pharmacy used powdered human skulls and animal organs.
Promptly Brinda Karat called for a high-level probe – and also that the
pharmacy should be brought under the Factories Act, so that it could not
dismiss workers. In June, she went to Hardwar and shouted slogans outside the
Ashram with her cohorts for a day. Acharya Balkrishan, who runs the pharmacy,
invited her to go and visit it, but that did not suit her purpose.
Over the next
three months, CPM activists went around eight districts and plotted the next
move. On 19 September, Brinda Karat arrived in Kathgodam, and proceeded up the
hills. In Haldwani and Gair Sen she gave press conferences, in which she said
the hill people had been discriminated against in every way. In Rudrapur, Almora,
Gopeshwar and Rudraprayag she marched about with protestors shouting slogans.
She took delegations with long lists of complaints to the district magistrates
of Almora and Chamola. In Dehra Dun and Hardwar, she repeated noisy
obstructions.
Then on 29
September, the party struck all over Uttarakhand; suddenly, CPM brought the
state to a halt by occupying highways and road junctions in Pauri, Hardwar,
Rishikesh, Lansdowne, Kotdwara, Shaktinagar, Rudrapur, Sitaganj, Haldwani,
Bageshwar and Almora. That was a busy day, a successful day, an inspiring day
for party leaders; they were ecstatic that they had disrupted the lives of so
many.
Although Brinda
Karat went repeatedly to Uttaranchal and raised mayhem, hardly anyone outside
the state noticed. I certainly did not know about it. Then at the end of December
she repeated the charges against the Divya Yog Mandir pharmacy – that it used
powdered human skulls and animal bones; this time she added animal fat too.
Then I got
interested. I am not keen on yoga or sadhus; nor am I an early riser. So I had
missed Swami Ram Dev, whose empire the pharmacy belongs to. Then I read the
little piece by Paul Zakaria in the year-end issue of Tehelka, that sprightly secular magazine, saying how Ram Dev broke
down Zakaria’s allergy to Hindi nationalism and improved his health, and I took
notice.
This man wears a
mini-dhoti, and instead of a shirt, drapes himself in a kind of scarf. What
struck me was his face. He has long hair, and a flowing, lopsided black beard. His
left eye is a bit unruly. Altogether, he is quite unlike a dour sadhu. He is
lively and human. He speaks simple, unfussy Hindi, unlike the pidgin Sanskrit
the Hindutwits speak.
Before the TV
camera he does some dozen yogic asanas from time to time. They are not
elaborate exercises; most of them are movements of the arms, the torso or the
stomach. They do not interrupt his flow at all; he talks all the time. His is
do-it-yourself, anytime-anywhere yoga; watching him, one can build the basic
movements into one’s daily life. Many people say so he has made them better,
and seeing the crowds he draws, many people believe he does. So therefore do I.
Some of what he
says is nonsense. He calls colas toilet water; he tells people to give up fast
food. He goes on against multinationals. But he also talks a lot of common
sense. If I were capable of being a devotee and a practitioner, I would find
him quite a paragon.
So my conclusion
is that Brinda Karat is a pracharak, bent on spreading trouble and unrest
across India at the CPM’s behest. Ram Dev, on the other hand, is leading people
by example, and leaving them happier and healthier. She is bent on making his
life difficult; he has asked her repeatedly to verify the truth herself, which
she has steadfastly refrained from doing. Between the two I would rather watch
and listen to Ram Dev and his asanas than Brinda and her speeches. If that
makes me a male chauvinist, so be it.
