Showing posts with label Baba Ramdev. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baba Ramdev. Show all posts

Monday, March 19, 2018

Baba Ramdev, the face of yoga, ayurvedic products and patriotic nationalism in India, is poor in name only

From the story here:

It might seem like an impossible arrangement—observing an oath of poverty while also being one of India’s top entrepreneurs. ...

Ramdev’s home is on the outskirts of the city—in a walled garden he shares with bees, butterflies, and armed security guards. I entered the estate through two huge gates with golden lion-head door knockers, and drove down a brick path toward a complex of tidy white buildings. Ramdev received me in a comfortable parlor, with an ample porch and several couches and armchairs. “Nowhere in our religious books and scriptures is it written that a sanyasi should be a mendicant,” he said, referring to the kind of beggars I’d seen along the Ganges. ...

Stuart Ray Sarbacker, a professor of comparative religion at Oregon State University who’s studied Ramdev’s career, calls him “the most prominent face of yoga in the entire nation.”