Ramdev: Ba! Ba!! Blacksheep!!!

Ba! Ba!! Black Sheep!!!

Prof Dr P Chandra Sekharan

Thanks to the Leela of a man called Ramdev in the capital’s Ram Leela grounds, the word ‘Satyagraha’ has suddenly has acquired the exact opposite of its apposite.

The father of our nation – the Mahatma – had created a system of protest – the peaceful political resistance accentuated by truthful insistence [that is exactly what Satyagraha means] etching its effect further by abstaining from food ingestion to tell our colonial rulers with telling effect as to where they got off.

Any street-smart shamus after a mere glance at Ramdev will say tongue in cheek thus: – “Why is the world shaming the respectful term ‘Swami’ by appending it to this ‘Aasaami’? The scar-face looks like a cross between a scary layabout and a shady lay arranger orbiting the vicinity of a cheap fleabag rendezvous!”

In Bangalore and Chennai – two cities I inhabit –people who can contort their bodies under public gaze along kerbs to get gullible geeks to part with money are a gross per dime.

Yeah, this guy does the same from a television studio set or is it his ashram?

Let me give this devil its due.

Ramdev has managed to convince a huge number of people to tune into his yoga demos with the background music of some tunelessly muttered mumbo-jumbo before a television camera into parting with a lot of cash/cheques/demand drafts/bank transfers... whatever... and that has enabled him to possess personal wealth beyond Rs.10 billion plus an island around the Hebrides to boot and the odd private jet ride.

If a washed up actor – whose movies can never escape their imprisoning cans to be panned by critics, to be rejected by audiences, asked to scram by exhibitors can fool the public and become a thingy in politics, so can Ramdev.

P.T. Barnum – that successful dealer in pure humbugs once famously said of suckers – ‘There is one born every minute.’

Welcome to the nation with a huge problem of population explosion, that delivers 3 nincompoops every second!

In my opinion, Ramdev perhaps has managed to fool many into believing that he managed to escape from the dais claiming to have worn a woman’s clothes from the Rs.18 crore air-cooled pandal when the cops set upon him through his ranting and raving in that Timbuktu called Haridwar.

The lady’s dress, indeed can camouflage a man. Yes.

Will anyone tell me how Ramdev managed to hide that huge shaggy beard with the entire Delhi police looking for him?

Should someone not seriously look at the possibility as to whether it was a completely inside job – with Ramdev having paid some of the bad eggs in the Delhi police to do this, allow him to escape and then blame the government completely?

That said, I knew the ‘fast unto death’ of this joker wouldn’t have lasted more than 36 hours.

If he had been forced to stay put in Ramleela grounds his Leela would have ended unceremoniously for it was nothing more than politically farcical fast one being billed as a holy man’s protesting ‘fast unto death” against corruption.

As a forensic expert I happen to know that a lot of preparation goes in before one begins an indefinite fast.

A serious reduction regimen of food intake, the clearance of one’s bowels and several other exercises are a must before the start an open-ended hunger-strike.

Those with any doubts kindly consult Anna Hazare.

Watching television, I knew this hunger-striker is a cruel joke on all our sensibilities.

Ramdev seemingly never had prepared for the fast as stated supra.

Whether this yogi is a swindler as the Congress General Secretary Diggy Raja would have us believe is for the courts to decide.

Left to myself, I would ask the powers that be to cut their losses till the public forgets this idiocy.

In all likelihood, the arrival of the next disastrous scandal is just around the corner.

Senior Supreme Court lawyer and Union Minister Kapil Sibal and two other of his colleagues flanked by a top bureaucrat made asses of themselves negotiating with a big time crook under public scrutiny in an airport one day.

Someone else in the United Progressive Alliance blotted their copybook either by ordering the fracas in the pandal or played cat’s paw to Ramdev belabouring thousands of his devotees with canes and teargas.

Deservedly, all concerned got yolk on their faces.

Undeservedly, Ramdev is pontificating about propriety and probity in public life.

A 3-year-old will know that an entire central government coupled with the entire police force in the National Capital Region would not collectively commit combined hara-kiri of their careers by beating up a multitude of sleeping masses in a massive air-cooled tent to be canned and telecast in idiot boxes nationwide.

However, if the whole thing was a drama dreamt up by some clever mandarin in the offices of the Prime Minister’s Secretariat [RAW if you please] and enacted to divert public attention from the slew of scams occupying media space and public memory – it has been executed to perfection.

If it was not, we are ruled by a set of inanely incompetent numbskulls.

Such creatures have no business to be found within a 20 km radius of any seat of power – including a public lavatory.

I equally abhor corrupt public loo attendants!