Monday, June 06, 2011

Not In The Defence of Baba Ramdev

Baba Ramdev has been the object of ridicule, and has been blasted by both by politicians, and some sections of the society. I will not write this in post in his defence - while I do not subscribe to the allegations made by the congress, I myself do not agree with many of the thing the Baba says, or does - like dressing up as a woman to escape the cops - Mahatma Gandhi was never scared of the policemen when he started a civil disobedience movement. However, many of the allegations against Baba Ramdev don't apply to him alone, but various other authorities as well, but the only one targeted by everyone is the ridiculous baba.

The baba is a school dropout. Mr. Digvijay Singh and Mr. Kapil Sibal have been keen to point this out. Many journalists have also highlighted this issue; a report in one of the national dailies expressed the view that decisions like the Lokpal are best left to constitutional experts rather than uneducated babas who believe that allopathy can be rendered useless by yoga. But then aren't most of our elected MLAs and MPs - the so called guardians of our constitution - illeterate? Mr. Digvijay Singh himself is not highly educated, and while Mr. Kapil Sibal is educated enough, he behaves like a complete idiot.

The Baba's views on homosexuality has been the target of many write-ups, and while I don't subscribe to the Baba's views on homosexuality, I'd like to point out that the successive governments have done nothing to abolish to the sodomy law - and while the Delhi high court has decreed that the law is unconstitutional, it is still to be erased from paper.

Mr. Digvijay Singh has alleged that the Baba himself is corrupt and a fraud, and has a lot of black money and should be investigated - but this is a red herring - and is ridiculous as it comes from Mr. Digvijay Singh against whom there are many allegations of corruptions. In fact, the congress government has no moral authority to issue such a statement.

On the issue of black money, it is ironical that the congress government has shown little interest in pursuing the matter in-spite of repeated reprimands by the Supreme Court of India. In fact, the Swiss government is itself quite perplexed as to why it has not yet been approached by the Indian government to sign a DTAA, which is the first step in the direction of getting the money back to India.

All that the congress government has done by first sending a group of ministers to talk to the Baba to conduct under the table deals, and when they failed, to use force against the baba is to dig its own grave. They have not only trivialized the issue of such national importance but also given the right-wing saffronists an upper hand.

It will be interesting days ahead.