New Delhi, March 25: It may be still at a nascent stage but Swami Ramdev’s move to float a political outfit seems to have left the BJP concerned, with party president Nitin Gadkari making an appeal to the yoga guru to go slow on any political project.
Ramdev’s core political agenda of “nationalism”, “probity in public life”; “yoga for a healthy country” and a “pro-active approach to bring illegal money stashed away in banks abroad” reflect many core concerns of the BJP and RSS.While the BJP president made his apprehensions known while talking to a regional news channel on Tuesday, party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar elaborated on the theme when asked about it.
“You are doing valuable work in your chosen sphere. We too belong to the same school of thought,” Javadekar quoted Gadkari as saying, in form of an appeal to Ramdev.
The appeal implied that after the launch of Ramdev’s political outfit, there could well be two principal claimants (Ramdev and the BJP) to a common political, social and cultural constituency. Ramdev has said that his party would contest the 2014 Lok Sabha election.
Having acquired a phenomenal following across the country, Ramdev is considered close to the RSS leadership.
The Sangh has refused to say anything on Ramdev’s political plans so far. Asked if Ramdev was close to the RSS, its spokesperson Manmohan Vaidya told The Indian Express: “On some issues, we can be together, and on some other issues there can be difference of opinion too.” Ramdev was recently seen at the RSS’s gau gram yatra.
While Ramdev himself was not willing to comment, some of his aides, speaking off the record, said that a majority of the calls received by them after the announcement of their political project had been supportive, but “a few have sounded a caveat”.
Asked specifically if leaders from the BJP had contacted them or sent feelers to go slow on their political plans, an aide to Ramdev said that representatives of “various parties” had contacted them. “Their limited point was that why should we get involved in something that is considered dirty and where there’s a thin line dividing the fair and the foul,” said an aide of Ramdev.
—-Agencies