By Jyoti Malhotra
Until Saturday night, when one of India's best-known yoga gurus escaped from a Delhi police crackdown in female clothing — setting off peals of laughter across the country — the ruling Congress-led government looked in danger of being caught in the catatonic thrall of saffron-clad godmen and women.
Instead, we can now credit Baba Ramdev with helping the Congress party rediscover its political spine. His use of unparliamentary language against senior party leaders; his welcoming to the stage of Sadhvi Ritambhara, a Hindu nun whose venomous tirades against Muslims climaxed during the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992; and his accusation of "treachery" against the government's interlocutors were more than the Congress party could bear, forcing it to reassert its authority, somewhat brutally, early Sunday morning.
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Still, Congress should be asking itself how it managed to get into this mess – spinning 180 degrees in a matter of days between welcoming the swami at New Delhi airport to tracking him down despite his feminine disguise (with bushy beard reportedly covered with cloth.) The answer is that they should have seen it coming, since the party has been willfully mixing religion with politics since even before Independence.
In the aftermath of l'affaire Ramdev, Congress leaders have been seeking to transfer responsibility for last week's wooing onto the government. Two senior party leaders who spoke on the condition of anonymity told me the Cabinet Committee for Political Affairs had [...]
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