Author: Abantika Ghosh
Publication: The Times of India
Date: June 6, 2011
Introduction: Blames Sonia, Says He'll Continue
Strike At Haridwar
Aware of how the midnight crackdown has catapulted
him to the status of a martyr from a controversial wannabe activist, Baba
Ramdev, addressing a press conference in Haridwar after he was hustled out
of Delhi, alleged that the Congress had plotted to get him killed in the police
encounter.
Later in the evening, after he was stopped
at Muzaffarnagar on his way to Noida, Ramdev decided to sit on hunger strike
at his ashram in Haridwar, Patanjali Yogpeeth. "I will talk to sister
Mayawati tomorrow and convince her about the peaceful nature of our agitation,"
he said. In the morning, Mayawati had been critical of the UPA's police crackdown.
With both the Left and the right criticizing
the government's "draconian" midnight swoop, comparing it with the
Emergency and the Jallianwala Bagh incident, the yoga guru asserted that the
satyagraha was not over and he would go all around the country to apprise
people of the government's repression. He claimed 5,000 of his followers including
women and children were missing. The sombre demeanour notwithstanding, the
canny yoga guru could not have been oblivious of the advantage that he has
been handed by the government. The crackdown on peaceful protestors that drew
criticism from almost the entire political spectrum and the Lokpal activists-whose
hackles he had raised by inviting Sangh Parivar leader Sadhvi Rithambara to
share the dais with him-had managed to obliterate all the misgivings Ramdev
had raised among civil society.
Dressed in white kurta and dupatta instead
of his customary saffron two piece, the Baba played the victim to the hilt,
breaking down several times during his statement. He blamed it on Sonia Gandhi
whose foreign origins he said made her ignorant about the plight of women
and children of the country of which she was a daughter-in-law. He said he
had been forced to wear women's clothes to save himself from the police.
