How Baba Ramdev is grooming his army of sanyasis

It was Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayanand Saraswati, who removed distinctions between men and women, between Brahmins and Dalits and Banias and Adivasis when it came to spreading Vedic education in Sanskrit and the "sanyas parampara". But his movement, which was perhaps the most reformist in Hinduism, didn’t last long due to various factors.

It is this movement that an ever-audacious Baba Ramdev is trying to revive and the first signs of this was on March 25 at Har ki Pauri on the banks of river Ganga in Haridwar when he initiated 91 men and women acharyas into a life of celibacy.

A large number of saints from across India gathered to witness the diksha ceremony and bless the new sanyasis and sanyasins. Fifty-one male acharyas and 41 female acharyas aged between 25 and 40 and belonging to all castes, including tribals and Dalits, took a vow to remain celibate and work for the spiritual uplift of society in order to make India a Vishwaguru (spiritual world leader) by 2050.

This was the first-ever Sanyas Diksha that Ramdev was giving in his 23-year career as a diksha-initiated sanyasi. It was on the same day in 1995 that he himself had embraced monkhood at the age of 29. He had been a celibate acharya till then.

In Indian spiritual tradition, an acharya can become a sanyasi only after he gets diksha from a guru. But what was significant about the occasion was that one of these 91 will inherit the legacy of the Patanjali empire from Ramdev and his associate Balkrishna in keeping with their declaration last year that their successor at Patanjali would be a sanyasi, and not a sansari (married man).

The turnover of the Patanjali Group is around Rs 10,000 crore at the moment, but reportedly Ramdev has plans to take it to Rs 1 lakh crore in the coming years. He is now 52 and looks set to lead the empire for another two decades. This is long enough to choose and train a successor from these new sanyasis.

Ramdev’s basic philosophy

Ramev’s basic philosophy is revival of the society through character and nation-building on the basis of ancient Indian philosophy. He takes inspiration from multiple spiritual icons, mostly from Dayanand Saraswati, and like him, believes that a true sanyasi shouldn’t work for just self-realisation, but work amongst the people to bring fundamental changes in their lives for the better.

Many feel that his foray into production and manufacturing has distracted him from yoga which is not correct. Bharat Swabhiman, his main trust committed to revival of the society on the basis of ancient Indian philosophy, is spread across all the 600 districts of India and about two lakh villages. It directly organises one lakh yoga classes every day through the Patanjali Yog Samiti.

Jaideep Arya, Ramdev’s confidant who oversees work at Bharat Swabhiman, which has 10 lakh volunteers, says: "To strengthen our work and make it more scientific we have now trained 600 yoga pracharaks who will be paid an honorarium and will undertake the task of overseeing yoga work in the districts."

Apart from Yoga and ayurveda, Swadeshi has been the third important part of Ramdev’s philosophy, which is again a page taken out of Dayanand Saraswati’s principles. His idea of Swadeshi is that India should borrow from the West only those things which it can’t produce or manufacture to ensure that the profits are not taken away by the MNCs out of India. When he began his life story as a yoga preacher in early 1990s he stressed equally on yoga, ayurveda and swadeshi, which was part of his philosophy from day one.

But in 2007, when a group of his followers asked him to himself find a solution to his questions about Swadeshi by setting an example instead if just preaching, he embarked upon the idea of launching Patanjali foods.

When the response to his initial foray into production of food and consumer items was good he continued to add to the list. Today, he is into manufacturing of diverse food and consumer items and giving sleepless nights to many MNC CEOs.

A big question in people’s minds is how does he balance the life of a sanyasi with that of a "business baba". Ramdev says there is no clash on this in his mind as he is performing the  "business bit as part of his national duty in keeping with his principles of Swadeshi which is natural for a true Sanyasi with a public role". Plus, he continues to hold yoga shivirs (camps) across India with the same degree of commitment and success as before.

Interestingly, Ramdev doesn’t have a bank account. His business empire is technically owned by his colleague Balkrishna. His abode near Haridwar where he stays is spread over a big area laid out with gardens, but truly simple from inside. Even today Ramdev sleeps on a thin mattress on the floor like a sanyasi and gets up at 4pm in the morning to start his daily chores. Even the two huge Patanjali townships near Haridwar are well-equipped, but simple on the whole.

His future plans

Many of the 91 new sanyasis will help Ramdev and Balkrishna in their huge project of ayurveda and yoga research besides research into cow products. For example, Patanjali has succeeded in an experiment aimed at making cow protection sustainable by making a ecofriendly product called "Gonile", which is a disinfectant and a replacement for phenyl made from cow urine.

Still others from among these sanyasis will be trained in doing research on diverse Patajanli food products to improve the quality of these products while some will be trained in the management of the giant empire, which has emerged as the biggest economic force on world economic stage in recent years and has caught many MNCs off-guard. Still others will join Bharat Swabhiman.

Some will also be employed as teachers in Ramdev’s Sanskrit pathshala in the Patanjali campus at Haridwar. There are other options like looking after the Patanjali home for the aged. But there will be many who will now embark upon their own plans like running a Sanskrit pathshala or a cow-sustaining activity.

Says Acharya Balkrishna: “They will be new-age swamis into productive activity. They won’t go into a cave and disappear from the world.”

Balkrishna himself has made the most significant contribution to ayurveda by compiling the world’s biggest encyclopaedia of medicinal plants and launching into many other areas of ayurveda research.

What Ramdev has done is very interesting. He has ignored one of the main teachings of Dayanand Saraswati against idol worship, but has accepted most of his others which is based on teachings of Ved and Vedanta to not just Brahmins, but all castes, including the Dalits and tribals.

The only other spiritual movement which has done this is the Bharat Sevashram Sangh (BSS) of the great Bengali saint Swami Pranavanandaji, who founded the movement in the second decade of the last century.

The BSS too took spiritual inspiration and its nation-building model from Arya Samaj, but ignored its belief of shunning idol worship.

Also read: The truth I learnt about Ramdev and Patanjali