Baba Ramdev’s diatribe against Allopathy driven by business interests; simple retraction not enough

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev, who called Allopathy a “stupid science” and held Allopathic practice/medicine responsible for the deaths of thousands of Indians, got a taste of his own medicine the other day when he was forced to eat crow after a reprimand by Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan.

However, his retraction came with a rider. Ramdev had claimed that medicines such as Remdevisir and Fabiflu were of no value to COVID patient, and that they had failed to treat COVID-19 patients. A day later, while condemning media and others for taking his statement “out of context”, Ramdev qualified the apology by saying, “Allopathy doctors have termed Indian medical science as quackery and pseudoscience several times.”

The counterattack on Allopathy sounded like an assault on Allopath Dr Harsh Vardhan, and has laid the ground for further debates on Allopathy versus Ayurveda.

The Union minister had in a letter to Baba Ramdev said that Ramdev’s words had hurt and insulted COVID warriors who are at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19. Earlier, the Indian Medical Association had sent Baba Ramdev a legal notice and had asked the Modi Government to take strict action against him for “misleading people” and making “unlearned” comments.

But it will be a miracle if the Modi government will go another step forward, beyond Dr. Harsh Vardhan’s letter, to reprimand Baba Ramdev.

Baba Ramdev had on Saturday, while telling Allopath doctors to take a hike, said that it was “shocking that Remdesivir failed, steroids failed and now plasma therapy has also been banned.”

Ramdev, who peddles the Patanjali line of Ayurvedic mishmash, including all sorts of sweet and sour ‘churans’, is a marketer of an un-Colgate like toothpaste and stuff made from extracts of Himalayan and other flora with medicinal properties, as the firm claims.

In fact, his frequent diatribes against the science of Allopathy has more to do with his businesses than to knowledge he has come upon or gained from credible research done in Haridwar in Uttarakhand, which is where he spends quality time. In fact, Baba Ramdev and R&D are, to the best of anybody’s knowledge, complete strangers.

So, when Yoga guru Ramdev says “the medicines doctors are giving (to COVID) patients for getting the fever down such as Fabilflu is not doing

any good to them”, you know he’s talking through his hat, and that, too, only because he wants to see the sales of ‘Coronil’, which he claims has ‘anti-COVID-19’ properties, soar.

Patanjali also sells bottled gomutra (cow urine), whose packaging advises people to take it regularly in the morning on an empty stomach for best results.

Of course, Baba Ramdev is not the sort who gives practical demonstrations of him or others gulping gomutra or plastering themselves with cow-dung, but there are lots of people, including BJP politicians, who swear that Patanjali’s gomutra is a panacea for a number of illnesses, and along with cow-dung, a deadly combination to keep COVID-19 at bay.

What should get every Allopathic doctor’s goat is Baba Ramdev’s assertion that “we have lost lakhs of people due to Allopathic medicines and not due to shortage of oxygen”. That, in effect, means that AIIMS doctors and Apollo doctors and Medanta doctors, even doctors who abandoned COVID-19 patients when the oxygen cylinders ran dry, are all wilful killers. If so, why does Modi never tire of praising the tens of thousands of Allopathic doctors who spend their waking hours saving the lives of COVID-19 patients?

If any bunch of people are saving the COVID-19 infected, it’s the tribe of Allopathic doctors, and the science of Allopathy. The least Modi should

do is bundle Baba Ramdev into a hospice and keep him there till the last of COVID-19 is history.

The Indian Medical Association has condemned Ram Kishan Yadav alias Baba Ramdev for using “derogatory” language against Allopathic science and “medical doctors”.

The question is, is that enough condemnation? A case should be lodged against Baba Ramdev and the Government of India should publicly ask him to stick to his business and not let his business instincts dictate the course of the nation’s battle against the coronavirus. The country’s COVID-situation is in the pits, and there’s a third COVID wave coming, one which will target children, and it would be best for the children if Baba Ramdev is banished from even television.

(IPA Service)

Views are personal