Baba Ramdev and his "withdrawal" symptoms

Raju Korti
I find people who go back on their words interesting examples in case studies. In my four thankless decades career in Media, I have seen people spout gibberish out of complacency, misplaced audacity and in the hope they will get away in their considered superiority or power. For some of them, retraction makes bigger news than what was said with full understanding.

That's where the problem is!

It is not my case here to discuss the semantics of "retracting a statement, withdrawing a statement or refuting/rebutting a statement". What does it mean, anyway, to "retract" what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought once spoken with perceived conviction is no longer valid? Somewhere ages back, I remember Milan Kundera saying in the "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" that a thought can be refuted but not retracted. And here, it is not even a thought. It has crossed the mind barrier to be told to all and sundry.

I am alluding to Yoga Guru Ramdev who recently on television poked fun at Allopathy, terming it as "a stupid aur diwaliya science" claiming "lakhs of people have died taking allopathic medicines." He also rubbed the Drug Controller General the wrong way by declaring Remdesivir and Faviflu as complete failures. I am not sure whether this bluster was the result of his (flopped) medicine that claimed to cure Covid, but the man hiding behind his smirk and cagey eyes has been brought to his senses -- if it really has -- by the red flag shown at him by Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan. Harsh Vardhan, himself an allopathic doctor, lost no time in asking him to take back his unintelligent statement that offended doctors who are treating Covid patients 24x7. 

A chastened Ramdev now realizes in his infinite spiritual wisdom that "he respects all forms of sciences." How does one suddenly respect something that one so contemptuously and crudely dismissed barely a day ago? But then there are legion who will take his contrived apology in stride and move on. You can rest assured that Ramdev's conviction which drops from his beard to his marbles, is none the wiser. A brain mapping test (!) will show that he carries the same thought that he so pompously claims to have "withdrawn." 

He is, of course, one of the leading lights of this "retract and withdraw" brigade. Remember our very polite, genteel Ajit Pawar who stopped short of unzipping himself while making that coarse "dharnaat paani naahi tar mutayche kay?" The list is long. Politicians are known to gauge public reaction and mood with such beaten-to-pulp tricks. But Ramdev, who is now more of an entrepreneur and less of a Yoga exponent, has a considerable following and from what I hear, his products are not doing too badly.

Since he claims, among other things, to cure homosexuality "a bad addiction" through Yoga, he could also find a medicine for his own indiscretion in the spirit of physician heal thyself.