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meetdheeraj · 4 years ago

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Rajeev Dixit, from whom Ramdev borrowed his swadeshi rhetoric and narrative - Ramdev has openly accepted this - was born in UP. He was pursuing BTech from Allahabad when the Bhopal Gas Tragedy occurred. He began thinking and asking questions about what had brought Union Carbide to India in the first place and about the economic compulsions that forced Indians to allow multinationals to set up their plants in the country. These questions led him to Dharampal, a Gandhian thinker, who shaped his economic worldview.

Seven years later, in January 1992, Dixit founded the Azadi Bachao Andolan. The Khadi clad Dixit took to touring the country, giving thousands of lectures and speeches in elegant Hindi. Over the next several years he stitched together and refined his argument against multinational companies and claimed that liberalization and globalization were the modern faces of colonialism. His organization recorded his speeches, and sold cassettes and later CDs of them wherever they could.

With 10 crore supporters and a presence in 1500 tehsils across the country, the Azadi Bachao Andolan became an object of envy for anyone looking to build an army of followers.

Ramdev certainly looked at him as a valuable ally.

Sometime in February 2004, according to K N Govindacharya, then a RSS ideologue, 'I ran into Ramdev somewhere in Bhopal and he told me he was looking for Rajeev Dixit. So I made a call.' Shortly after that, Ramdev met Dixit in Nasik. Ramdev agreed to sell Dixit's CDs at his Yoga camps for a commission.

That was difficult year for Dixit. In 2004, around the time of the wedding of Dixit's younger brother Pradeep, a sensational allegation rocked the andolan. "Suddenly, his brother Pradeep constructed a house for thirty-forty lakh, a lot of money at that time. Everyone believed Rajeev Dixit took money belonging to the trust and gave it to his brother."

There was big backlash.. Rajeev began to get isolated within his own Organization.

It was under these circumstances that Ramdev met a vulnerable Dixit, and a bond developed between the yoga teacher and the battle-weary swadeshi campaigner and deepened over the next three years. By 2007 Dixit would become Ramdev's mentor and a trusted aide guiding his political ambitions.

Remember Karamveer - who helped Ramdev acquire an ashram and taught him how to teach Yoga - he did not like Ramdev moving away from idealism. Ramdev had brought his family to ashram, trust money was being transferred to individuals, Ramdev bought a bike and house for his younger brother using funds from trust, he also bought a house for his sister and her husband. Ramdev had also started to charge his yoga classes. Closer to the stage and ticket costs increased manifold. All this hugely bothered Karamveer who thought sadhu's life was to give, not take. He believed that there should have been no place for moneymaking and self-interest in Ramdev's life.

He argued with Ramdev on these grounds. But Ramdev did not change. His old mentor had nothing to offer him anymore. His usability was dwindling and besides, new mentor, Rajeev Dixit was helping Ramdev sculpt his politics and economic worldview.

Karamveer left on 25 March 2005.

Between this, Balakrishna was appointed managing director of Patanjali Ayurveda, this had intensified the rivalry between him and Ramdev's brother Ram Bharat. These two rivals would unite against a third ascendant force: Rajeev Dixit. Dixit, national secretary of Bharat Swabhiman Andolan was the man who was always standing beside Ramdev now. Ramdev hoped to eventually convert this trust into full-fledged political party. With Ramdev's ballooning political ambitions, Rajeev Dixit's importance also grew. He was now the key man, at the heart of all the action - adviser to and architect of Ramdev's socio-political messaging.

Balkrishna and Ram Bharat looked on resentfully as Rajeev Dixit, a suave outsider, far better educated and articulate than either of them, usurped their positions as advisers and became Ramdev's trusted political mentor.

At the same time, Dixit's popularity was such that it was beginning to steal the limelight away from Ramdev himself. Yashdev Shastri, Ramdev's brother-in-law, was also jealous of Dixit, and had allegedly warned Ramdev not to give Dixit too much airtime: 'Or people will forget you and start following him.'

About a year after founding the Bharat Swabhiman Trust, in March 2010, Ramdev kept his word and launched a political party. Under Dixit's guidance, the party made fighting corruption and black money the centrepiece of their message. When Ramdev unveiled his Bharat Swabhiman Party in New Delhi, he declared, 'I will field candidates from all the 543 constituencies of India and then there will be revolution.'

In a bid to increase membership, Ramdev and Dixit planned yatra across India.

But Dixit was not unaware that his presence in Haridwar and closeness to Ramdev was causing unpleasantness. Madan Dubey, a long time associate of Rajeev Dixit who continues to propound the views of the Azadi Bachao Andolan, says, "He must have been troubled... Because that July [2010] when I asked him.. If I should also sign up to become member of Bharat Swabhiman Andolan, he told me to wait. He told me he was not sure... And that made me think there was something going on."

On 30 November 2010, two months after Ramdev and Rajeev Dixit began their nationwide Bharat Swabhiman yatra to drum up support for their party, Dixit was dead. He died on his forty-third birthday.

After massive cardiac arrest, Dixit collapsed in an Arya Samaj guest house in the remote town of Bemetara in Chhattisgarh where he was delivering a lecture. Although he was rushed to a nearby hospital, he did not last through the night. According to Ramdev, Dixit refused to have the medicines prescribed to him by the local doctor.

Pradeep Dixit, Rajeev's brother was not let to talk to him - 'I could not speak to him because they said he was not in a condition to talk.. By the time I reached him early the following morning, my brother was dead.'

But in a televised address on Aastha channel, Ramdev claimed to have spoken to him for an whole hour. "Maine karib ek ghante tak unko samjhata raha, ek ghante tak! Bhai Rajeev, ab shareer mein dikkat aa rahi hai to.. Unko shayad yeh genetic bimari thi... BP ki, sugar ki, heart ki... Teeno." (I kept trying to explain to him for an hour, a whole hour! Brother Rajeev, there is a problem in your body.. He probably had a genetic condition of blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease.. All three)

Pradeep Dixit cannot help but wonder now: How had his brother, who Ramdev's men had told him was in no condition to speak on the phone, managed to have an hour-long telephonic conversation with Ramdev about the ideal line of treatment? He also asserts that his brother suffered from no ailments and had never taken medicines for diabetes, blood pressure or a heart problem.

After Dixit died, a seemingly grief-stricken Ramdev had spoken to the family over the phone and requested them to allow him to arrange for the last rites on the banks of the Ganga in order to honour him. The stunned family went along with Ramdev's plans. So instead of taking body back to Wardha where it would otherwise have been flown to, it was transported to Haridwar on a chartered plane.

By next morning, hundreds of Swadeshi activists from around the country were making their way to Haridwar to pay their respects to their leader. One of them was Madan Dubey. It was 18 hours since death when Dubey arrived. Dixit's body lay in the Great Hall of Patanjali Yogpeeth 2 - an enormous space designed to allow thousands of people to do Yoga together.

In the hall, mourners sat on mattresses and stood around in groups. Dixit's body lay on a block of ice, draped in white and orange. But something was unsettling the onlookers: Dixit's face 'was unrecognizable... A strange purple and blue. His skin was peeling strangely. There was some black, blue blood around his nose,' Dubey remembers.

Dubey finally said out loud what many were whispering: 'There has been foul play... I want to know if anyone else feels that a postmortem should be conducted.'

He asked those who raised their hands to sign a petition addressed to Ramdev, demanding a postmortem before the cremation. By nightfall, there were fifty signatures on it.

At six next morning, a group of nice men walked through grey winter mist to take the petition to Ramdev, only to be stopped by the guard who refused to let them enter the two-storey building complex where Ramdev used to live at that time. Dubey told the guard, 'All right then, please go and tell Babaji that if he does not meet us, Dixit's dead body will not be allowed to be cremated.'

Finally, Ramdev relented to a meeting at 7:30 a.m., and called in Dubey and his associates but 'only after taking away our cellphones, to make sure nothing was recorded,' Dubey recalls, a fear that even Kirit Mehta referred to during his fateful encounter with Ramdev.

War of words began. Ramdev insisted there was no need for postmortem - 'What is need for it? This is natural death... I spoke to the doctors myself. I have reports from the doctors that he had a heart attack and all that.'

Remember Ramdev was not present where Dixit died. He only talked to him in phone. Dubey pointed this to Ramdev. He asked, how can he be sure there was no conspiracy?

Ramdev was growing angrier by the minute. He tried to rule out postmortem saying it was against 'Hindu dharma'. But Dubey dismissed this objection saying, 'He [Rajeev Dixit] had no dharma. His dharma was the service of this country. He never called himself a man of any religion. So don't worry about Hindu dharma and get the postmortem done...'

This went on and got uglier. Finally, Ramdev suggested that they all go to the hall where Dixit's body lay, and ask the people there, and the Dixit family, for their opinion. This sounded like a reasonable thing to do. But while Ramdev sat in his car with his people and sped off, Dubey and the others in his party followed in foot to the hall that was a twenty-minute walk away.

Cremation was originally scheduled for 11am. But angry Ramdev stormed into hall and commanded body be carried for cremation right away. It was still only nine. Ambulance with body set off before Dubey and company could reach and stop it.

"After the cremation, when Rajeevbhai's laptop and his two phones were returned to his family, they discovered that all three devices were completely wiped clean. All data on all three devices had been erased. I saw Rajeevji's room in Haridwar in a ransacked condition, things and documents missing from his room after his death... I've felt absolutely sure that there was foul play in Rajeevbhai's death... I know it. I saw the body. I will never stop saying it,' Dubey asserts.

- From Godman to Tycoon by Priyanka Pathak-Narain

#Baba Ramdev #Ramdev #Balkrishna #Patanjali #Ayurveda #Medicines #FMCG #Murders #Rajeev Dixit #India #Politics #Business

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