Yoga Guru to Swadeshi Warrior: The True Story of Baba Ramdev

Chapter 1

O

ne can notice a prominent scar on Swami Ramdev’s forehead. This injury was not an ordinary one but it was so grave that the world could’ve lost his prodigious talent in his childhood itself.

Ramkishan’s mother, Gulab Devi says, Ramkishan was only six years old. He was playing on the terrace with his sister. While playing, his leg slipped and he fell on his head in the courtyard of the house. He was rushed to the closest hospital where the doctor said that he had lost a lot of blood and little more delay would’ve caused the child to either go into coma or could have even lost his life. We thought we lost him but he was safe and sound by God’s grace.

Yogi Ramdev(Photo Credit : Bharat Swambhiman)

Today’s Swami Ramdev was his parents’ beloved Ramkishan in his childhood. He learnt to fight and defeat death right after his birth. It had not been very long since his birth that infant Ramkishan’s face was struck by a paralytic attack. It was indeed a destructive attack but destiny did not approve of it. Destiny had rather sent him in this world to be the epicenter of a yoga revolution in form of Swami Ramdev and that’s why, infant Ramkishan survived that paralytic attack but it was so consequential that a slight effect of it can still be seen on Swami Ramdev’s face.

Death continued to play hide and seek with little Ramkishan. He was only seven or eight years old when he and death stood face to face once again. His mother Gulab Devi tells, Ramkishan had gone to the pond with his friends. Suddenly he went into the deep waters and got drowned. His friends started shouting for help. On hearing their voices, one of the village men jumped into the water and saved him. He was not conscious as a lot of water had rushed into his stomach. God blessed my son once again and he regained consciousness. After this, we were so scared to lose him that even few moments of his absence would make us restless.

According to mother Gulab Devi, Having faced death twice till the age of eight years, Ramkishan stayed aloof and mostly distracted. There were portraits of freedom fighters like Chandra Shekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Ram Prasad Bismil etc. in our house. Ramkishan stared at them for hours and he would not say anything even if we asked him something. One fine day, he said, Mother, I will also be a revolutionist like them when I grow up. I smiled and said, Yes son, you will also bring a revolution… Little did I know that he will ultimately prove my words right. Pictures of patriots and mother’s light words ignited such a determination in the eight-years-old Ramkishan that he grew up to be a major name in the world of changing systems.

Swami Ramdev was born in a small village called Said Alipur in the Mahendraghar district of Haryana. According to the Indian ascetic convention, a hermit is believed to be born in another life after renouncing the world, thereby ending the relevance of the previous life. Swami Ramdev has erased his birth date from his life. He does not discuss his factual birthday ever, nor is it celebrated in the institution. Moreover, his parents also don’t remember his birth date. Even on asking again and again, Swami Ramdev only smiles and says that he was born only after he accepted asceticism, hence it would be appropriate to say that his birth date is 9 April 1995, the day when his guru, Acharya Shankardev ordained asceticism to him. Though the web world presents a date as Swami Ramdev’s birthday, it is not credible at all. Swami Ramdev says, How can we trust the world of internet? Any date has been put up as my birthday, but if the truth be told, I have totally scraped it out of my life, hence the discussion over that date holds no ground.

Baba Ramdev was born in the Yadav clan of Yogeshwar Shrikrishna and his childhood name was Ramkishan. Ramkishan’s mother’s name is Shreemati Gulab Devi and his father’s name is Shree Ramniwas Yadav. Ramniwas and Gulab Devi had three sons and one daughter and Ramkishan was their second child. All the siblings grew in an ambiance of love and affection and shared a caring and warm relationship.

Ramkishan’s father, Ramniwas was an ordinary farmer. Ramkishan’s mother, Gulab Devi was a very religious woman. She never tried to rationalise anything related to God and religion and accepted everything as God’s will. She had an unshakable faith in God. While Ramkishan was in his mother’s womb, she always felt that this child was different. She felt divinity in her womb but she couldn’t understand this due to her nescience. After Ramkishan’s metamorphosis into Swami Ramdev, she told him that she always felt he was special, even when he was in her womb. 18 years after Ramkishan left the house, his mother told him that she always knew that this child will not only cure her sufferings but will free the world from the chains of ailments. She developed such a belief because of the feeling of blessedness that her unborn baby gave her. Ramkishan’s mother was healthy and happy. Her face glowed, and she felt peaceful and calm while he was in her womb. Usually would-be mothers face a lot of problems during their pregnancy but for all the nine months when Ramkishan was in his mother’s womb, she was ecstatic and in the pink of her health. When Ramkishan reached his cradle after his birth, he was quiet, and it seemed as if that infant had streams of calmness flowing within him. Neither would he cry when hungry nor would he get excited to be in someone’s lap like other children would. Seeing this, as a mother, Gulab Devi would become speculative, she would hold him close and pamper him but he would look at her like a devotee, without a blink and he would affectionately touch her face with his tiny fingers.

His mother Gulab Devi says, When Ramkishan grew up, he was not at all like other children of his age. Unlike others, he would stay alone and silent. There was slight stubbornness in him, he would do what he wanted to do and no one could convince him to do otherwise. And no one ever understood what made him say that he wanted to be a hermit when he grows up. We never took this seriously, but we hardly knew that something that was merely a joke for us, will ultimately be the lifestyle of his choice.

Ramkishan was very content as a child; he was never dissatisfied with anything in his life. His mother says, I can’t recall if Ramkishan ever had a materialistic demand. He never got tempted to anything else but his only willfulness was towards becoming a hermit.

Gulab Devi tries to recall and tells us, Ramkishan was probably in the 6th standard when he was strongly drawn towards ascetics. Agreeing with this, Swami Ramdev says, I was attracted towards renunciation in the 6th standard; there were waves of determination to embrace this life, and I realised that I had to leave my house and go as I started to believe that I was not meant for the family life. I knew my purpose was different.

Ramkishan’s father Ramniwas Yadav says, Ramkishan has always been a stubborn child. He always remained true to his words and unmoved from his decision, so when he proclaimed that he wanted to be a hermit in his life, we knew it was very hard to convince him to do anything otherwise, yet we held ourselves together and made continuous efforts to change his mind. We even tried to get him married once he was young, but Ramkishan did not stay at home after that.

Narrating an incident, Ramniwas Yadav says, Ramkishan’s stubbornness was displayed when in his early childhood he came to me while I was smoking hookah in the living room with other elders of the village. We smoked hookah everyday but that day Ramkishan came to me and said—I don’t like your habit of smoking hookah at all. And if you do not give this up, then I will not eat a morsel from today—And he actually stopped eating at all, so ultimately I had to give up smoking forever.

People, not only from India but from across the world can understand how that small child’s motive was not to get fancy clothes or beautiful toys, but to free the nation from the slow poison of tobacco and related ailments. Today, when that child Ramkishan has transformed into Baba Ramdev, he is fighting against corruption, black money, and strives for honour of the indigenous. He has also taken strides in yog-ayurveda and has done major work for the growth of vedic education and the awakening of the humanity in humans.

That time, young Ramkishan’s refractory forced his father to give up his bad habit of smoking hookah and today after independence, Swami Ramdev fights corruption, communalism, mal-administration, interference of foreign powers in Indian governance, appeasement and caste based politics, and has ignited fire of change and betterment in every citizen of this country. If something looks supreme in the process of becoming Ramdev from Ramkishan, then it is only patriotism and love for the country; be it the beginning in the form of anti-drug and anti-alcohol movements or the zenith of it in the form of ‘liberation from congress’ movement.

Ramkishan got involved in practices related to animal husbandry and agriculture since he was very young. After returning from school, he used to help his father in tasks related to agriculture and animal husbandry. It was little Ramkishan’s duty to fill the cow dung in a small basket, carry it and dump the cow dung in the place where it was collected. His body was fragile then, hence, the weight of the basket caused depressions in the crown area of his head. Swami Ramdev couldn’t help laughing when he said, The saga that began by carrying basket full of cow dung on my head did not end even in the Gurukul. Because of that my cranium developed deep depressions. But eventually, with the constant practice of yoga and specifically the sheershasan or the headstand pose, that depression magically flattened and my cranium was normal again. This is one of those million experiences that tell us that yoga changes not only the soul but also the body.

Ramkishan was fond of listening to stories of great men who served the nation. He used to sit beside his mother whenever she made chapattis, and while he ignited fire in the hearth, he insisted his mother to narrate stories of valour and patriotism. Stories of great men like Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, Swami Vivekanand and Dayanand Saraswati filled little Ramkishan with joy and enthusiasm. He always told his mother, Mother, if I would have been born in this country before independence, I would have happily sacrificed my life for this nation. His mother was his inspiration. It was because of her that he learnt the lesson of patriotism at an early age. The pathway might have been a little blur but Ramkishan began to understand what he wanted out of his life.

Swami Ramdev’s father, Ramniwas tells, "The anger and disgust that we can see in him for corruption, injustice, black money and violence is not new, rather he was sensitive and active towards these issues since his childhood. I remember, my neighbour, who was a farmer had committed suicide because he could not pay his debts. That time Ramkishan was very young, but he was so shaken by this incident that neither could he sleep nor did he eat at all that day. He did not have his breakfast even the next day and asked his teachers at school that why the government didn’t help that farmer. The teacher told him that the biggest curse of this nation was corruption. The money that was supposed to reach the poor through schemes and plans, is rather consumed by the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who are the middlemen between the government and the poor. This infuriated young Ramkishan so much that he vowed to end corruption from the country. We thought that it was merely a momentous anger but seeing him fight today against corruption, I realise that he cradled his anger and it has become his weapon