Baba Ramdev-Vrinda Karat Row

What does it take to malign and defame a personality of international acclaim? Just a few irresponsible words before the camera, and the media does the rest - spreading the canard. No, I am not siding with Baba Ramdev‘in fact, I haven’t met him even once, for that matter. All that I am concerned with is: how to make this unruly lot of politicians behave responsibly. Just as every newspaper or TV channel wants to corner the largest chunk of audience by throwing up scoops, these “political professionals” are also always out to hog the limelight and make the maximum political, if not material, gains - by hook or by crook.

Baba Ramdev’s Ayurvedic medicines contain human skull powder and parts of animals’ testicles‘and you had been consuming them all! The very thought is repugnant enough to send you on a vomiting spree. But who will check the veracity of the news? The Union Health Ministry, which could establish only a prima facie case after a six-month-long investigation? If such is the sluggish pace of work, it shouldn’t take less than a decade to make a foolproof case, good enough to book the culprit and pull curtains on the phenomenon called Baba Ramdev.

But what if after passage of a reasonably long period of time, Brinda Karat - the CPI(M) member of Rajya Sabha, who has levelled the charges - is told by the investigating officials that her allegations don’t hold much water? Will she ever be able to undo the damages already done to Baba Ramdev during the period, and will she be able get him back his lost glory? No, never.

The next question is, by doing all this, whose cause she is trying to champion, the vegetarian-patients? If it’s merely a matter of fighting for the “well-being” of the veggies, Madam Karat needs to be handed over the list of allopathic medicines prepared from fish oil, animal fat, and skin powder of snakes, lizards and other reptiles, apart from the drugs containing socially acceptable non-vegetarian eatables. Plus, hasn’t she ever heard about those vegetarians, who have to gulp down eggs and bugs to fight off diseases?

An impartially unbiased glance to the controversy suggests that it’s a case of safeguarding the interests of medical practitioners and the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing allopathic medicines, who perceive Baba and his likes as a potential threat to their trade. During the recent past, easy-to-get, easy-to-produce and easy-to-practise remedies of Baba Ramdev have worked wonders. Naturally therefore, he is a household name today and the number of follower is ever on the swell.

It’s no secret that his popularity has been a cause of concern for the pharmaceutical MNCs. Although Baba has already named Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited as the force guiding the CPI(M) leader, we will not go the Brinda Karat way; we’ll prefer to wait for the truth to surface instead of passing on some half-baked piece of information to the masses.

Also See: DNA India :: The Statesman :: New India Press