Ram Krishna Yadav, better known as Baba Ramdev, has formed unforgivable stereotypes about the characters of Dalit men and women
Mr Ram Krishna Yadav’s theory on Rahul Gandhi and his visit to Dalit hamlets is well laid — ‘Rahul goes to Dalit hamlets to sleep with Dalit women’. By implication, Yadav’s theory weaves a stereotype about Dalit women, that they are available to anyone wanting to have ‘fun’. Yadav’s statement also puts Dalit men in a particular situation that is de-humanising, that they won’t mind.
To me, it is still a mystery as to why the law hasn’t embraced Yadav and made him an immediate neighbour of Asaram Bapu, for instance. Mysterious further, why did he change his name many timesIJ
Despite poverty and hunger, Dalit women are not known for prostitution, and Dalit men, never associated with beggary. A kind of divine prohibition that Dalits cannot scale school walls and accumulate wealth, Dalits over centuries of denial and discrimination, developed some cultural capital that taught them to keep a distance from everything that was wrong.Coming to Yadav, What is Mr YadavIJ Is he a saint spreading spirituality or just living a saintly life that commoners would emulateIJ Is he a yoga guru making people health consciousIJ An entrepreneur making wealthIJ Or a politician as wellIJ
There is nothing wrong in being any of the above. But then saints are not known for making profits, so Yadav cannot be one. Since all services he delivers are paid for, he is no yoga guru making commoners health conscious either. With a turnover of over a thousand crore rupees, he is certainly an entrepreneur. Now, the world over, entrepreneurs are indeed admired. But, do they don dresses that are suggestive of religiositiesIJ
Yadav dons an apparel that puts him into the category of religious preachers. The colour bhagwa (saffron) relates to Hindu preachers. Hindu preachers /saints/ sadhus live on alms whereas Yadav owns companies, a news channel and charges money from the people he trains in yoga!
Hasn’t thus, he used religion to market his productsIJ Mr Yadav not only used religion to trap customers, but also camouflaged himself as a Hindu preacher. Isn’t it unethical and amounts to cheating!
look at the kind of person he is. During his protests at Delhi’s Ram leela ground, Delhi Police was asking him to surrender. Instead of following the law, he escaped camouflaged, this time as a woman. Are not even elected politicians arrested during protestsIJ Aren’t professors, doctors, students, entrepreneurs, even preachers, arrested and sent to prisonsIJ
Yadav’s career has been suspected since he got media attention. The big question that seeks answers — despite his doubtful enterprise, how does he manage to get millions of followersIJ To understand that, one needs to understand the psyche of a great number of Indians. Wear a bhagwa attire and step out of your house, and see the kind of instant attention you get. Thousands of godmen have come into being all over India. Fraudsters exploit this social psyche of Indians in drawing their attention. The question is, who are these followers who suspend their rational faculty and de-humanise themselves.
The citizens who surrender before these fraudsters who claim to be messengers of Gods or possess magical healing powers, are a typical class of Indians that has money but shortage of education and cultural capital. Because they are short of decent education and cultural capital, they can’t differentiate between a fraudster and a true preacher/healer.The Government too didn’t make any serious attempt to find out what Yadav is manufacturing and marketing in the name of medicine. Neither did the private agencies question the kind of yoga he is selling.
Whatever, Mr Yadav has committed a crime and ought to be arrested under SC/ST Act without any delay.
The views expressed in this article are entirely those of the writer. The newspaper does not subscribe to them