With his Bogus Claims, Ramdev is Pushing Patanjali Products and BJP’s Anti-Science Agenda – By Prabir Purkayastha
All publicity is good publicity – so the old marketing slogan goes. Is that why Ramdev courts controversy by laughing at Covid-19 victims gasping for air on his Aastha channel? His attack on allopathic medicine as “stupid science” and false claims that “10,000 doctors have died” after two vaccine shots are recent examples….
For Ramdev and Patanjali, any controversy will only help business, even if the consequence of his barrages of disinformation is that people die. The government will, at most, give Ramdev a mild rap on the knuckles, as Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan did recently, but it has his back and supports his business empire.
Ramdev is not the first to build an empire out of babagiri. Many others have made religion a business, from Puttaparthi Saibaba to Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Compare Sri Sri’s Rs. 50 crore annual revenue from his business to Ramdev’s Rs. 25,000 crore turnover from Patanjali Ayurved, and we begin to see that the primary business of Ramdev is neither religion nor Yoga. It is leveraging his image as a “Yoga guru” to become India’s latest billionaire….
