It's difficult to believe that Baba Ramdev is a fool. Else he wouldn't have risen to his present position in society. By his own admission, he's worth about 1100 crores. A tidy sum that would have been interesting to most of us even if we knocked off two zeros and a one. Greedy and corrupt perhaps, but not a fool. Yet, he's sidelined himself with his antics in a salwar kameez in the presence of the Delhi Police. The incident was rather curious.
Anna Hazare conducted his first fast against corruption in early April this year, breaking it only when the govt panicked. The first few weeks after breaking of the fast were spent in a state of public euphoria at having humbled the public servants who'd become public masters. But gradually it began to dawn on everyone that the govt wasn't serious at all, and were trying to manoeuvre their way out, leaving no option unexplored.
One thing they seem to have done rather well is marginalise Ramdev. I think they got him in a sting operation. Here's why....
Ramdev had a 'secret' meeting with senior functionaries from the Congress Party, wherein there seemed to have been some give and take. Immediately thereafter, he had claimed treachery of some sort by the govt, which he was oddly unwilling to talk about. Shortly thereafter, we witnessed the infamous episode with the police at the venue of the fast, wherein the police came to evict him, and he attempted to escape in woman's attire. For someone with openly stated political ambition, he then submitted rather docilely to the will of the govt. What better way for someone to endear himself to the public than by going to jail for a public cause?
Ramdev is smart enough to see that. Yet he ran from the police, and submitted to being shunted out to his ashram at Haridwar, and has increasingly given the impression of a spent force thereafter. I'm willing to believe he was compromised in that meeting with the Congress functionaries, and did something for which he believed he could be jailed and would lose everything. Perhaps a sting operation of some kind? Hadn't the Congress (Manish Tewari specifically) publicly claimed that he was a fraud and could be purchased?
