The Life and Times of Baba Ramdev

The continuing saga of a contemporary mass leader who sought out a vision and a method to amalgamate yoga and health care into the mainstream consciousness Baba Ramdev’s emergence as the new ideologue of a national and global spiritual resurgence is considered by many as a curious phenomenon. This work is a study on the making of the Ramdev spectacle with all its inescapable assertiveness, mass enthusiasm and, of course, controversies. It seeks to locate his philosophy in today’s socio-cultural milieu, while tracing its origins in Indian spiritual history, and the past landmark reformist movements that have been initiated in the country by earlier path-breakers including Sri Aurobindo, Swami Dayananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, Bhagwan Nityananda, J. N. Krishnamurty and Sri Ramana Rishi. Indeed, Ramdev represents a renewed continuity to the great revival of the ancient Indian spiritual traditions and yoga that took place in the twentieth century and received recognition worldwide. With his own version of holistic yoga as a ploy for instituting the universal right to health, Baba Ramdev has proposed two distinct ideological alternatives to the current established order of the world – pranayama and the yogic way of life as the key to health restoration and well-being; and manifestation of an enabling spiritual environment for personal and social transformation. Ramdev’s arrival once again underlines the continuing significance of Oriental spiritualism the world over as it offers perhaps the most promising insights for the creation of a ‘new spiritually-awakened man’ – a man at ease with himself and with the world around him.