Author: Apurv Pandit
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 12, 2006
Back from the yoga camp in Nashik, controversial
yoga evangelist Swami Ramdev on Wednesday took the battle to the enemy camp.
He singled out CPI(M) leader Brinda Karat for a vicious attack. The swami
accused Brinda Karat of planting party workers disguised as labourers to engineer
labour unrest in his Hardwar-based ayurveda pharmacy under a 'long term conspiracy'.
"Two of those men, Dara and Deepu are
already in jail. Another man mischievously tried to sell crab and tortoise
parts as my medicines in Hardwar but was taken on by the locals," he
told Mumbai reporters in a Press conference after the storm over alleged animal
and human body parts in his medicines erupted on January 2.
"West Bengal Transport Minister Subhash
Charkraborty and several other CPI(M) leaders have supported me in public
over the issue. Some Communist leaders even called on me in Nashik and asked
me to shift the focus of my target from the party to the individual as more
than 50 pc of the party sympathised with me," he claimed.
"I cure people's heads with medicines
but don't use their heads to make my medicines," he declared, repeating
his earlier stand that Ms Karat and Co were acting at the behest of multinational
companies who felt threatened by his brand of yoga and ayurveda therapies."My
next big campaign is to bring down the sales of multinational company products
in India completely and propound the use of Swadeshi products, he said, while
claiming that over 25 crore people after being influenced by his yoga lessons
on cable television had stopped having colas and junk food.
"Harmful cold drinks and fast food sales
have gone down by 60 to 70 pc since the past two years. This has caused huge
losses to multinational companies so they are trying to get back at me,"
he said.
Taking another dig at the Central Government
for allocating 97 pc of health budget only on allopathic cures, the swami
informed that his Patanjali Yogpeeth Trust had sent proposals to the Central
Government seeking funds for research in ayurvedic treatment.
"Yoga is a holistic treatment as opposed
to allopathy which only provides temporary cure. Ayurveda and yoga has lagged
behind over time because its practitioners failed to apply the methods of
modern medical science to help its progress," he commented.
He asserted that his 7-day yoga camps in various
cities had resulted in several people losing between 2 to 20 kgs of weight
besides getting cured of blood pressure, ailments of the kidney, heart and
liver, asthma, diabetes and cancer.
Asked about the effect of his treatment procedures
on AIDS, he said, "I would rather this chapter is not touched at this
point of time."
