Baba Ramdev suggests yoga route to Congress for revival

Pradeep Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 16

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev today took potshots at Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi advising them to take the yoga route for the revival of the party saying that bad days awaited the party if the leadership continued to oppose yoga publicly.

Bad days would continue to stare at the Congress if its leaders continued to oppose yoga. Congress wale yog karenge to rajyog behtar hoga,” Baba Ramdev said here today.

He claimed that Congress’ opposition to yoga was taking it away from its support base even among moderate Hindus. While the Congress stalwarts, including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi practiced yoga, the yoga guru wondered why Sonia Gandhi was opposing the International Yoga Day celebrations on June 21. It is well known that she was supposed to have benefited from it during her recent illness, he added.

Asserting that ‘yoga promotion has no political agenda,’ he jokingly asked the Congress to organize a ‘parallel’ yoga day celebration on June 21 for which his Pitanjali Yogpeeth would provide volunteers and yoga instructors. Alternatively, its leadership should come forward to support the June 21 yoga day celebrations across the country which would be organized in nearly 177 countries due to the efforts of PM Narendra Modi, he added.

Baba Ramdev, who threw in his lot with Modi in the run-up to last year’s parliamentary elections, said the NDA government’s efforts in bringing back black money were ‘laudable’ yet ‘a lot needs to be done.’ Moreover, unlike the previous UPA, the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre and in Haryana was yet to see any major scam, he added.

He also came in support of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in the ‘Modigate’ asserting that the minister seemed to have helped former IPL chief Lalit Modi on ‘humanitarian grounds’.

Commenting on commercialization of yoga and his flourishing business of herbal and organic products, Baba Ramdev said all profit of his company and Patanjali Trust was diverted into charitable activities like education and healthcare for the downtrodden sections of society. In fact, he took out his footwear (kharaon) and showed his saffron robes to drive home the point he still ‘believed in simple living and high thinking.”