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COVER STORY
Baba Ramdev: The Karma Yogi
A portrait of the ascetic as a cultural revolutionary in the marketplace. PR Ramesh
gets up close with Baba Ramdev, the guru of good health

PR Ramesh | 29 Sep, 2016

ONE LOOK AT THE MAN and you realise how yogic exoticism merges seamlessly with raw
ordinariness: a wiry frame in saffron, a beard blowing in the wind from the Ganga,
and his hair tied in a loose bun. This is India’s most kinetic yogi, known for yoga
as much as his subversion of the marketplace. An ascetic who has spawned a pan-
Indian cultural revolution. The bestselling brand of the spiritual super bazaar.
The sanyasi who celebrates both soul and sinews. His journey from the anonymity of
the Indian countryside to national mindspace is an epic of homespun ingenuity.
Still, Baba Ramdev guffaws at his own cult.

When I meet him in his second-floor office of the sprawling Patanjali Food Park in
Haridwar on a Saturday mid-morning, he betrays no sign of a man whose day begins at
3.30 am with a cup of gooseberry juice.

His stamina seems extraordinary. Originally from Alipur village of Haryana’s

Mahendragarh district, he had dropped out of school after Class VIII. Fifty years
old now, Baba is unofficially credited with the demystification and democratisation
of yoga in India.

In the arena of political discourse, his breakthrough moment came in June 2011,
when he held a mass agitation against black money at Delhi’s Ramlila grounds. A
jittery Congress-led Government had deputed five senior ministers, led by Pranab
Mukherjee, to receive him at the capital’s airport when he arrived for it. But he
was implacable. As his crowd of listeners swelled, the Government in panic decided
to crack down on the protest, citing a flimsy reason: that his presence near a
minority-dominated area could cause communal tension. In a ham-handed operation at
midnight, the crowd was subjected to a lathi charge. Baba fled the dais disguised
in a borrowed salwar kurta, but was apprehended at the grounds’ exit gate and kept
in custody overnight. The next morning, he was forcibly put on a BSF flight to
Dehradun, the airport closest to his Patanjali headquarters in Haridwar. Despite
popular anger against the Manmohan Singh Government over corruption charges
levelled against it, Delhi’s elite ridiculed the Baba. Three years later, with the
Congress routed at the polls, he would have the last laugh over the episode.

The Baba has stood the status quo on its head in almost every field he has got
into. How huge is he? Remember the idea of ‘yogic levitation’ that went viral—even
in the West—in the mid-70s, making Maharishi Mahesh Yogi a cult brand and his
Transcendental Meditation (TM) a trademark? That’s pulp history in the annals of
yoga practice now.

Baba rejects attempts to portray him as a man of the material world. “Politicians
created the myth that sanyasis (ascetics) should not perform any task other than
perform pujas (prayers). Organise satsangs (group ‘truth seeking’ sessions) and not
go beyond that,” he says, “What? A sanyasi is a man with boundless knowledge and
vision. According to me, if he does not use it for public good, he will end up as a
selfish being.”

Just this morning, he led a yoga camp on the premises of Patanjali Yogapeeth, his
vast ashram on the outskirts of Haridwar, the site of his business enterprise as
well. Patanjali Ayurved Ltd (PAL), which sells almost a billion dollars’ worth of
consumer products every year, looks every bit the corporate setup that it is. The
office we’re in, at the Food Park at the other end of town, is plush. And like any
corporate honcho, he holds meetings with executives, product innovators and tax
experts. For all the implied renunciation of his saffron robes, it’s clear that he
is the driving force of the business, though his partner and PAL co-founder Acharya
Balkrishna is the chief of operations.

Neither of them, Baba later tells us, takes a single rupee out of PAL’s earnings.
“Every paisa goes to charities. We have plans to start a world-class education
institution and build a state-of- the-art stadium to train the country’s
sportspersons.”

Slipping into the driver’s seat of his Scorpio, he drives me around the Kankhal
area by the banks of the Ganga, where he spent his initial years in Haridwar after
he moved here in 1993. He sees no contradiction in a twin life of spirituality and
business. “Where is it written that a sanyasi should not do any work? Does any text
teach us that we should be devoid of compassion or knowledge?” he asks. “God has
given me some skills. I use it and what you see around is a manifestation of that.”
Baba sees it as a duty of the spiritually accomplished to engage society in every
way. “Sanyasis used to lead and guide the political system in this country,” he
says, “They used to lead the health and education system. It was they who conceived
taxation in this country.”

He is determined to upend the conventional wisdom on what ascetics should do or not

do. “Because of yoga, I have attained fame. I will use my abilities to propagate
it. I cannot be expected to suppress my passion for yoga.”

By early 2016, Baba Ramdev had pitch-forked himself into the realm of the
unassailable. In terms of fame, he had achieved a feat of levitation few sanyasis
or gurus have ever been able to claim. His cult has become a phenomenon. From
svelte, young women in Kharagpur and Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, to paunchy blue
collar middle-agers in Ratlam and plump diabetic housewives in Karimnagar, from
septuagenarians in Karnal to upwardly mobile wannabes in Mumbai, the appeal of
Baba’s yoga lessons, thanks partly to Aastha TV broadcasts, now span the length and
breadth of the country. He charges a fee for morning classes held on his ashram,
but at specified centres countrywide, his instructors supervise free practice
sessions for anyone who sign ups.

Yoga, for centuries an exclusivist practice of copybook physical and mental

exercises and holistic health, has almost been redefined by him. His school of yoga
has cast aside Brahminical rigidities and opened itself up to all. In technique, it
has expanded far beyond the traditional to embrace freestyle exercise, seated dance
movements, singing, laugh jogging, leap frogging and community meditation, all of
it aimed at our collective mind-body- spirit health. This is profoundly
unconventional, to say the least. “I want to create passion and glamour around
yoga. A paagalpan, junoon (madness) around yoga and karma yoga,” Baba says.

Harking back to his Ramlila protest when he became the butt of leftist ridicule, he
says, “I want to teach a lesson they’ll remember to those who run down sanyasis.
Mein unko sabak sikhaana chaahta hoon. It is time that this section of people
stopped lampooning ascetics and disrespecting them.”

Baba has also had to face opposition from status quoists clad in saffron. With his
iconoclastic ways, he upset their preconceived ideas of yoga, and worse, in their
view, he laid no claim to being a savant of the Upanishads and Vedas. He described
himself simply as a practitioner of yoga. This turned out to be his trump card. He
focused on efficacy and it helped him refashion, even contort, the established
definitions and perceptions of the ancient practice.

Where is it written that a sanyasi should not do any work? God has given me some
skills. I use it and what you see around is a manifestation of that. Sanyasis used
to guide the political system in this country

He wears the scars of many battles—of class and caste, apart from commercial,
social and cultural—with the pride of a victor. “In my youth,” he says, “I faced
discrimination of the worst kind on account of my background. My parents were poor
and uneducated. But my life changed when I joined the gurukul. It was run by the
Arya Samaj. There, everyone was treated as equal. There was no discrimination. I
did not know the caste or family background of my peers.”

Born to a Yadav family, he sought spiritual solace in the holy river town of
Haridwar 24 years ago. That phase he remembers clearly. To his shock, he found his
caste label chase him here too—he could sense fellow ascetics despise him for it.
“The caste system was not endorsed by the Vedas,” he says, at the wheel, “According
to the Vedas, people are not born to any caste. It is our karma that makes us part
of a caste grouping. Over centuries, many distortions have crept in. Shudra was not
to be an untouchable. He was tasked with bringing suchita (cleanliness) in society
and that was seen as a service.” For a meaningful assault on the caste system as it
prevails now, he believes, all caste-based processes, such as the anointment of a
Shankaracharya, need to be transformed radically. “Who said that Shankaracharyas
should only be Brahmins? Anyone who has the knowledge to interpret the Upanishads
and has a profound influence on the growth of Hindu philosophy should be eligible
to lead the maths (Hindu places of learning).”

THAT’S A STATEMENT that could provoke a controversy, but Baba doesn’t flinch. “I
believe changes in society can only happen swiftly if our own religious
institutions lead the change.”

Caste discrimination isn’t the only prejudice he faced. People, he says, tend to
force fit and trap others in an image they form on the basis of their background,
and this shackles their natural talents. “Looking down upon others and humiliating
people cannot go uncontested. Our religious philosophy encourages questioning. But
this should not degenerate into humiliation of others. If you are not of the same
social standing, they mock you with, ‘What can this man from a village do?’ ‘What
can this son of a poor farmer do?’ ‘His parents are illiterate’. They try to put
you down before you can get started, by suggesting that a particular person is not
from a decent background. A person should be considered civil or uncivil based on
his conduct, not his social and economic status.”

His followers dismiss claims that Baba’s success and the exponential growth of his
business of late have been the result of the Government’s favour. “Ramdev is so big
that he doesn’t need politics, but politicians would give their right arm to have
him endorse their parties,” says a marketing analyst in Delhi.

Consultants had told us that we should have brand ambassadors for each product. I
refused. Actors endorse products, but a real-life Baba has entered this field for
the first time… Today, all those who know Ramdev know Patanjali

After his black money protest of 2011, Baba appears to have hedged his policy on
being detached from politics. “A sanyasi is one who has attained detachment from
worldliness enough to realise that he is complete by himself. But is that enough?
He is only half a sanyasi if he is happy with that and does not use that
realisation to further the well being of others. He would be selfish, self-centred
and self-obsessed if he does not use his wisdom to do things for the larger public
good. An able person should devote his time to the welfare of others,” he says.

That sounds suspiciously like a one-size-fits-all argument. But the marketing

analyst says that with a pitch-perfect brand, an extraordinary symbiosis of the
spiritual and the commercial, shaping a worldview that includes political
perspectives—even if indirectly—would be part of the overall project.

So did Baba have a strategy to use yoga to catapult his brand to a billion-dollar
business? “We never really started out with an elaborate plan for Patanjali Ayurved
Ltd,” he says, “We never dreamed of creating a giant brand. Or of turnovers or
sectors that we have to work in. So there was no elaborate plan.”

In 1993, when he first started teaching yoga on the banks of the Ganga at Haridwar,
he had only two students: Yogesh Gupta and VK Bansal. Patanjali Yogapeeth took
about a decade to attract a mass following. The growth of PAL, in contrast, was
explosive.

Today, the Patanjali brand sells virtually everything one would need from the
cradle to the pyre, be it soap, toothpaste, face cream and other cosmetics, or
edible oil, hing, salt, unpolished dal, quality rice, honey, biscuits, noodles and
atta. Its ghee, of cow’s milk, the mainstay of traditional Indian cuisine and
confectionery, is especially successful, claimed as it is to be 100 per cent pure
and ultra healthful.

The company employs over 100,000 workers, directly and indirectly, in operations
that range from sourcing and manufacturing to sales and distribution. “I see this
going up to five lakh people in the next five years,” says Baba.

Patanjali’s market strategy is pegged, he contends, on a bond of trust between him

and those who buy the products. For him, they are not ‘customers’, they are “our
family”, and the quality he guarantees is on this basis, that they are his own kin.
“They trust me with their spiritual health needs,” he says, “Now, they trust me to
enrich their holistic health needs.”

His fans, of course, have been a captive market. But millions more have started
buying the products, with the brand’s retail reach extending from urban and semi-
urban regions to rural areas, appealing to a fast-expanding base of consumers who
aspire for things that have been out of their reach all this while. Patanjali’s
offerings are priced low, often a third of an MNC brand with the same promise of
benefits, and the business has made use of insights that range from their spiritual
to consumerist aspirations. After the sachet shampoo revolution of the 90s, this
has been the next big effort to place packaged products within common access.

Even Colgate, a household name in dental care, has had to yield significant market
share to Patanjali’s Dant Kanti, which is very popular in rural and small-town
markets, far more than Dabur Red had once managed. Colgate, for decades the market
leader, has almost been pushed off shop shelves in these parts. This is one success
that does Baba especially proud. “I believe that MNCs are looting this country,” he
says, “They have made our economy a prisoner of their interests and held thousands
in their thrall. This is not good for my nation.”

IN KEEPING WITH his mission to oust MNCs from India, he has turned his ‘Be Indian,
buy Indian’ call into an outright market campaign, complete with a strategy, goals
and a media plan. “We work differently. In corporate setups, they do brainstorming
on foreign shores, in Thailand and Singapore. Babaji ka brainstorming jhopdi mein
hoti hai (happens in a hut). Things that you will hear about other CEOs—someone has
set a record by buying an expensive house on Amrita Shergil Marg or Malabar Hills,
for example—you will never hear of Patanjali. Other CEOs have homes in Australia
and South Africa. We have adopted a 100-per cent desi model, both in our worldview
and commercial practices.”

Balkrishna, recently listed by Forbes magazine as one of India’s richest

individuals, is always in Indian attire, dhoti and half-sleeves kurta, as a mark of
that approach. “Someone asked him whether he would hold a celebratory party. He
retorted, ‘Party nahin hoga, hum phateechar hain. Dhotiwale hain (no, I wear rags,
common clothes).” Couched in there was a dig at cultural codes and symbols of the
West that India Inc flaunts. “For us, wealth is for service,” says Baba, “This is
our philosophy. Confucius, whom Communists often quote, said that when wealth is
centralised, people are dispersed, and when wealth is distributed, the people are
brought together. And bringing the people of this country together is our core
concern.” Baba also cites the example of Chanakya from ancient days: “Acharya
Chanakya used to run an empire, but he lived in a jhopdi. I don’t hanker after
running an empire Unlike MNCs, prosperity for the maximum number is my central
motto, not profit maximisation. They have few principles in achieving their goal.
We are people with a definite ideology and values.” This is a sustainable desi
model of commercial and social enterprise, he believes, and expects PAL to overtake
Unilever in size and product range. This will be done, he says, without wasteful
expenditure on advertising. “I don’t believe in hiring outsiders to promote our
products which we sell based solely on trust in our quality and integrity. I don’t
believe in hiring big ad agencies. Nor do we have a fancy marketing team. We have
zero budget for marketing. We have a sales team and a supply chain. What will
marketing people do? They indulge in hyperbole. We don’t need them.”

IT ISN’T JUST MNCs like Nestle and Unilever that have been injured by competition
from Patanjali products. Monopolistic homegrown herbal companies like Dabur and
Baidyanath, too, have been shaken. One ad campaign made clever use of the rivals’
charge that many Patanjali products were neither fully ‘herbal’ nor ‘pure’ and that
its food products lacked FSSAI certification. Advertising audiences were to hear
the phrase ‘emotional blackmail’ again, as used in PAL’s countercharge. Baba led
the defence himself, slamming rivals for trying to smear his products.

MNCs are looting this country. They have made our economy a prisoner of their
interests and held thousands in their thrall. This is not good for my nation. We
have adopted a 100-per cent desi model in our worldview and commercial practices
The power of desi genius, market analysts say, remains on Patanjali’s side. As a
strategy, it worked at different levels for the brand. On the first, the very
endorsement of India’s most popular cult figure in the mind-body-spirit wellness
sector has helped sell a vast range of ayurvedic formulations. On the second, it
capitalises on the resurgent sentiment in favour of all things desi, and take pride
in Indian tradition. On the third level, it busts the myth fostered in subtle ways
by MNCs that Indian traditions were not in consonance with progressive thinking and
healthy living.

The celebration of things Indian— a process triggered off by success in the IT

sector, the ebbing of Western affluence in recent times and its associated veneer
of power—is a work in progress, if Baba’s worldview is to be believed. It gathered
momentum in the last five or six years and found a reflection in the emergence of
Narendra Modi to power. This self confidence has eroded the fixation with the
Occidental, under which all things related to Indian culture and spirituality were
dismissed as regressive. Over this period, there has emerged a widespread new
appreciation of things desi, such as khadi, domestic cuisine and folk art.
Patanjali’s sales pitch plugged right into this newfound worship of the desi,
touching an emotional nerve of nationalism cutting across wide swathes of the
country.

In business, Baba believes it is important to be self-reliant. After the brand’s

sudden success, scores of professional advisors from big cities have descended on
Haridwar, but he prefers to hold his own. “Consulting agencies cannot do much to
conceive or establish a business. Ninety per cent of the idea should be yours. It
can only be refined with outside help.” Patanjali’s success, he adds, was mainly
due to key advice not taken from consultants. “It has a lot to do with my decision
to ignore three pieces of advice from them. They had told us that we should have
brand ambassadors for each product. I refused. Actors and actresses endorse
products, but a real-life Baba has entered this field for the first time. We have
gone against the internationally accepted practice. I took the risk, and it
worked.” He was sure of his bond of trust with people. “Then they told me,‘You are
a big name, but no one knows Patanjali.’ So they told me to delink myself from the
project, arguing that its failure can affect my image. But I ignored that advice.
This was last October, when we started production in a big way. It’s been less than
a year. Had you heard of Patanjali a year ago? I told them flatly that I would lead
the campaign and ensure its success. Today, all those who know Ramdev know
Patanjali.” Again, he is having the last laugh. “Many ad gurus predicted our
failure. But such predictions from dream merchants are themselves illusory.”

It was after Emergency of the mid-1970s that the Socialist leader George Fernandes
went after MNCs, directing his attack mainly at Coca-Cola, the American soft drink
that sold a lifestyle with every glug. In 1977, with the Janata regime in power,
the company was forced out of the Indian market. But Fernandes failed to provide an
alternative business model. Double Seven, a brand backed by him—launched by then
Prime Minister Morarji Desai—was supposed to fill the vacuum, but it proved no
match for the ‘real thing’.

The opposition to MNCs was stronger in those days. It was a time when university
campuses from Delhi to Kerala were valorising Chilean leader Salvador Allende and
erupting in anti-MNC slogans. Such a groundswell of sentiment should have helped
Double Seven succeed. But it lacked the fizz, so to speak. Later, Ramesh Chauhan’s
Thums Up did establish itself as India’s top cola, but was just another cola and
didn’t make an overt swadeshi pitch, focusing instead on youthful verve and fun.

Three reasons can be ascribed to the failure of the anti-MNC struggle of the late
70s. One, Fernandes and Modern Foods failed to address the consumer’s need for
world-class products. Two, the desi challenge to Western cultural domination was
not as robust as it is today. And three, the flaws of the Nehruvian economic model
had not yet been fully exposed.

Market analysts argue that ideological fervour alone is not enough to sustain local
brands and business models. They require either unique products or those that meet
needs in differentiated ways. One major reason that Patanjali is better placed to
make a go of a swadeshi pitch against MNCs is that it offers functional benefits
packed with an emotional appeal. ‘It works’ or ‘Good stuff at a good price’ is more
likely to be heard of a Patanjali product than ‘We are opposed to MNCs and their
cultural messages’.

Colgate ka gate bandh hone waala hai aur Unilever ka liver baithne waala hai
(Colgate is about see its gate close, and Unilever, its liver collapse). God is my
script writer

Either way, Baba is determined to double the turnover of PAL this year from about
Rs 5,000 crore in the last fiscal year. If it happens, it would be a jump in retail
sales unseen in Indian market history, but market watchers are not treating his
target as bluster. The company plans to expand aggressively into the dairy segment.
The size of India’s dairy market is Rs 4 lakh crore, and if Patanjali gains even 1
per cent of this, it would add Rs 4,000 crore to its topline.

The beauty of the brand, he says, is that it was multi-dimensional from the start.
Colgate, in contrast, is associated only with dental hygiene, and Unilever can
hardly sell ghee with conviction. “Colgate ka gate bandh hone waala hai aur
Unilever ka liver baithne waala hai (Colgate is about see its gate close, and
Unilever, its liver collapse). God is my script writer,” he chortles.

IS BABA THE Modi of spiritual India? A new kind of Indian authenticism in the
spiritual as well as market space? While it is Baba who has made the homegrown
popular and respectable once again in the commercial arena, Modi is seen as
signifying a broader resurgence of Indianness. In politics, although the rise of
Lalu Yadav was once seen as a power assertion of the subaltern, he failed to break
the barriers of kitsch that Modi was able to on his way to becoming the prime mover
of Indian politics.

Just as Modi grew to political prominence and power from the state level, so did
Baba’s business draw upon an intuitive understanding of people on the periphery.
‘Bhuke bhajan yoga nahin Gopala,’ a saying which Baba cites often, is indigenous
wisdom for spirituality being empty on an empty stomach.

It is to his credit that the subversive sanyasi from Mahendragarh has fashioned
himself not as a spiritual guru like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi before him, but has cast
himself in a class apart as a practitioner and teacher of yoga, a wellness guide
who has little interest in interpreting the scriptures for his followers. His
mantra is simple, straightforward and sharp. It is not metaphysical, but physical:
maintain good health, make money and become a productive citizen. It is such
postures of pragmatism that make Baba Ramdev the 21st century guru of holistic
health.

Baba RamdevFoodsHaridwarhealthmarketingPatanjali Ayurved

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PR Ramesh
PR Ramesh is Managing Editor of Open

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