“Gott Strafe India” – Post Ramlila Debates – 2011.

The media themselves have not yet got around to enouncing Sonia and the company she keeps, but that will come soon, no doubt, since the Citizens are already bringing out billingsgate attack on Congress ,UPA and the Delhi Sarkar, in their emails, blogs, &  tweets, for truncating the Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev’s anti-corruption movement.

The precariously perched UPA, lead by a factious congress party, and the loathsome attack on Baba Ramdev was reminiscent of pre 1947 independence resistance against the imperial British.

Taking an inventory of sorts, where Baba went wrong is now unforgivable, as he escaped by a hair’s breadth. The largest democracy, had instantaneously become the largest dictator for nearly eight hours to begin with, with the omnipresent section 144, a draconian formulate, imposed arbitrarily by the British, before 1947, when ever their authority was questioned, was imposed on bonafide
citizens of free India.

Baba Ramdev, who commands respect from millions of his followers, that embrace several central and state ministers, who had become free of ailments, became a heathen-outcaste in his own land of Gods. His sanctum sanctorum was invaded. This is profanity. He plummeted from the ‘champion of a cause’, ‘a pragmatic messiah’ against the nemesis of sleaze, into a false god. He was sent to Gulag for some twelve hours. With him millions of his followers lost their dignity.

Though initially he gave the impression of being invincible in the assembly of thousands of supporters, who were paying adulations, all that was divested, when the doughty devotees were put under duress by 8000 well-armed burly  Delhi police force, that descended on the worshippers in the midnight. This could happen to any congregation of any denomination of any faith. This means violation of religious rights guaranteed by the constitution of India by the founding fathers of the nation.

The Baba himself had to out ploy the police force, anything could have happened to him that night. He had to maneuver away, to be later seen in Hardwar. We do not know what happened in-between. Instead of cajoling away the Sadhu who was weak and looking emaciated, they chose to send the paramilitary and the Rapid action force. After this, P.Chidambaram remained incommunicado for 72 hours, before emerging with his justification, on DD News only on 8th June.

The Baba himself has been in the eye of a cavernous twister, who was supposed to give the esoteric message of yoga, but descended to the layer of by being critical to corruption in the dull globe. His penultimate act was his fast unto to death, the call he gave from the pristine banks of Ganga in Hardwar and that he carried to the historic Ramlila maidan. How many times had he spoken against corruption in high places?

People say he has been a vocal champion for over five years. Unlike other corporate gurus he spoke in chaste vernacular Hindi, and not in Queen’s English (the lingua franca of the colonial times) hence he was a pleasure to people’s ears. His faux pas was his ambivalence with yoga and his penchant for a corruption free regime. It will be meaningless if value judgments are passed based on this. To be just can we reverse the mirror? Can politicians and cinema actors own/head Cricket teams?

The Indian politician and media mafia are having a propensity to pose such uncultured questions to their foes without compunction. In that night on June 4th, India descended from a democracy to a tyranny of shame. The literati turned into morons.

No matter how much the factious congress leadership will try to defend its position they have overreached and have to suffer for their pride. The police action and statements of the Congress party, ministers and officials no longer worry about they make on the world, and India as destination from yoga. This will adversely affect the spiritual tourism industry.

If Narayanamoorthy the mentor of the Infosys is known  the world over for IT sector, the Yoga Guru is equally famous globally. Yogaphiles, all over the world now view the attack by Indian government as anti-yoga and this will affect the ‘incredible image’ of India.

After the closing stages of the life Sri Satya Sai Baba witnessed in April last, who is held in towering esteem, the world over, in Venezuela, the Parliament passed a condolence message for the unique work he has done in bridging the people of the world. This resolution was sent to the President of India. In India the Government did not pass any resolution or announced State mourning.But it announced a State mourning for Mother Thersa’s demise.

If India is proud of its IT skills hardware and software, should it show less respect to its soft power, as evidenced in yoga and spiritual practices and spiritual heritage that is thousands of years older than software and IT?

The attack will be seen all over the world as bizarre, and if not a warning gesture, against yoga gurus and practioners, who are held in high reverence from board rooms to White house and Kremlin.

One cannot expect yoga gurus to be an expert in statecraft, State protocols, negotiations, and diploma-cracy and  Kapil Sibal and Dig Vijay Singh
and Manish Tiwari to teach yoga and breathing to White house,  10 Downing Street, the Diet, Hollywood stars, Wall Street brokers or Madison avenue advertisement Gurus . These Gurus know personally the many top names from Detroit to Silicon Valley, from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Damascus to, Tokyo to Melbourne .

It is absolute stupidity to call them saffron terror These yoga gurus have started from scratch with absolute no help from the Government, unlike many ministers who were born with million if not billion dollars in their
Swiss accounts.Kapil Sibal Questions Baba Ram Dev and issued a stern and menacing warning “that Baba Ram Dev should stick to Yoga only” Can he  extend the logic and make it applicable to some other category like film stars .

For example, film stars and script writers  have entered politics  in a big way made it to the top like, C.N.Annadurai,M.Karunanidhi ,MR.Radha, MGR,Jayalalitha, Rajkumar,Anaathnag, Hema Malini, Chiranjeevi,NT.Rama Rao, Shabana Azmi, Jaya Bacchan, Vijaykant,Sivaji Ganesan,Cho,Napolean,Jayapradha, Vadivelu and T.Rajender.Will Kapil Sibal extend his stern advise to them also?Many politicians have made politics into a dynastic business and naturally they would not like their turfs invaded.If Film stars can enter politics why not Yoga Gurus?

In India’s past history Varna was a fluid system that later became fossilised. Democracy, Politics and political systems are created by human beings.They cannot remain static.many politicians seen on TV have fossilised view of History of Democracy.

Democracy is not infallible,democracy has to be flexible,if it has be changing with the times. Most politicians spend their entire lives in politics There is no retirement for them.

Many in India are hoping for world power, with the characteristic intolerant behavior of congress party spoken with the corrugated brows of Kapil Sibal, bureaucratic voice of P.Chidambaram, and without any
shyness, the deluge of name calling from Dig Vijay Singh, made us into great incredible laughing stock, in the international arena, as politicians who insult our own icons!

The supererogatory behavior of the parliamentarians to uphold law, when they themselves are law breakers, falls flat, at its face value. A Home Minster, who was
elected by citizens, to protect, instead attacks them on midnight. How far can it get worse?

Indian yoga icon finds following in China, reported Mr.Ananth Krishnan, of The Hindu of June, 21,2011 and , quoted here verbatim ” B.K.S.Iyengar’s visit to China has underscored growing popularity of yoga here among young Chinese.

On Tuesday, B.K.S. Iyengar held a yoga demonstration in Beijing, attended by more than 700 people.

On his first visit to China, renowned yoga guru B.K.S. Iyengar discovers a passionate response in a country where he has more than 30,000 followers. China, he says, “could overtake India in yoga”.

When B.K.S. Iyengar arrived in China last week on his first visit here, he did not know what to expect.

He had vaguely heard of Chinese interest in yoga, and expected, at most, mild curiosity about his work when he reached the far-away southern industrial city of Guangzhou, where the 93-year-old yoga guru
was billed as the star attraction in China’s first ever “Yoga Summit”.

Mr. Iyengar, instead, arrived here to a passionate reception, and was left stunned by the wide interest in his teachings in a nation where he can now count more than 30,000 people as followers of his yoga philosophy.

“The response here,” Mr. Iyengar said, “has been unbelievable. I only came to realise after I came to China that even all my books have been translated and widely read.”

Yoga schools inspired by Mr. Iyengar’s famous writings on the discipline have sprouted up across 57 Chinese cities in 17 provinces, from Beijing and Shanghai to Harbin in the north and Chengdu in western Sichuan.

Last week, Mr. Iyengar lectured an audience of more than a thousand yoga practitioners in Guangzhou, where the Indian and Chinese governments organised the first-ever joint yoga summit.

“There were 1,300 students who listened with one ear,” Mr. Iyengar said. “It was a great success. They performed honestly, sincerely and with dedication.”

“I will not be surprised,” he added, “if China even overtakes India in yoga.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Iyengar’s students performed demonstrations of yoga asanas before a crowd of more than 700 in Beijing, while he engaged them in a two-hour interaction that covered philosophy and even the
mechanics of breathing.

Questions from the Chinese audience ranged from the technical — “Can yoga help fight against schizophrenia?” asked one doctor — to the practical — “Why do I get dizziness when I meditate?”

One yoga student complained: “I’ve been practising for seven years, but feel I can’t improve.” Mr. Iyengar had little comfort for her.

“I’ve been practising yoga for 76 years,” he said. “And I’m still learning.”

Among the crowd was Liu Yuan (22), a student who “got hooked” on yoga after coming across a Chinese translation of Mr. Iyengar’s widely-read book “Light on Yoga”.

The popularity of yoga in China, she said, was, in part, because it was “fashionable” among young Chinese. “But once I started learning seriously,” she said, “I began to enjoy it, and felt there were benefits both spiritually and physically.”

In Beijing, Mr. Iyengar found that a student of his had even set up a thriving yoga business. YogiYoga, a school founded by Manmohan Singh Bhandari, who had studied under one of Mr. Iyengar’s students in Rishikesh, teaches his yoga philosophy in 57 centres across China.

“There is tremendous following here for Guruji,” Mr. Bhandari said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Iyengar was presented with a commemorative stamp issued in his honour by the Beijing branch of China Post – an honour, he noted, that he hadn’t even been given back in India.

“What an honor for me that my country has not recognised me [in this way], but this country has. I express my gratitude of treating me as an icon of China, and I will cherish this throughout my life,” he told
his Beijing audience.

Yoga, he said, could bring the two countries together by creating a common bond and changing perceptions. “I have created friendship through yoga,” he said. “If you practise yoga, your way of thinking becomes different. If you stand on your feet, you see the world one way. But if you are standing on your head, and are topsy-turvy, the
world will look a whole lot different.”

Further events showed, that the congress defers from reforming itself,and launched a tirade against Baba Ramdev under the aegis of defending a bogey law and order situation, stands no scrutiny. Beating up f the
followers, uprooting the tents, setting fire, removing the tapes from CC TV, by bigots is malefic.

In the melee people lost their cell phones, watches, passports, Id cards, wallets, purses, handbags, keys, and jewels is like attack by Germans on England “Gott Straffe England” during the World War 2.

The prerogative now for the Congress lead Government is to
introspect and apologise to the nation without any vacillation and compensate for the losses. The vituperations that the nation witnessed shattered the confidence the people had on the democracy’s elected
representatives. “Gott strafe“ in German means “God punish”. Congress has punished India and the Indian people and the folowers of Baba Ram Dev.

The home leadership, feared anarchy, is reinforcing gyneocracy. Using surrogate reasoning has become superscription, and peripheral for real logic, rule of the law and constitution. The care free guru who was
giving joy to millions of people, solving their ailments should resume his normal activities, which the Government is unable to give so far, and the canards spread by his political and business enemies will prove to be unreal and temporary, as the nascent anti-corruption movement
will pick up.

Third generation politician, bellicose pundit, Ms. Jayanthi Natarajan defends her divine constitutional given rights to “pass laws” reminds us of attitude iced up in medieval times. She ought to study the democratic system that prevailed in Tamilnadu, 1000 years ago in Village republics and especially revealing are the “Uthiramerur Inscriptions”. She should not exacerbate the schism between the elected and the Citizen and she has to get over the ‘ivory tower mindset’ of ‘ruler and ruled’.

Let us focus on the big picture. By now what seemed impossible five years ago has been ignited. Already momentum is gaining and will not stop, and that someone like a yoga Guru Ramdev, and Team Anna, could have come to, treating the corrupt politicians of the entire
subcontinent like the Gadaranes swine of the Bible, is like a rare example of David who dares the Goliath, they will enter the hall of fame in the post independent India for their role and leadership. The literati in the Delhi establishment must understand the cliché “Vox populi, Vox
Dei” in Toto.

“The Bright morning Star days harbinger,now comes dancing from the east”

“Song on May Morning”

  — John Milton,

The author can be reached at the following email id [email protected]

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