Of Swamis and Kings

A Swami's reputation and a King's proposal are currently on the table.

The swami is a millionaire togic guru by the name of 'Ramdev' who has almost revolutionised the concept of Yoga and Ayurved but as is true with most swamis, be they Swami Dhirendra Brahmachari (Indira's personal spiritual guru), or Swami/Bhagwan Sri Sathya Saibaba or Swami/Osho/Bhagwan Rajneesh...even this one of the high flyers is on his way to hit the ground with a loud 'thud'. Though the matter is still to be decided and prima-facie, I don't see much reason for the accuser(Brinda Karat- a self confessed communist and an athiest activist, to have reasons to take money (as the swami defends himself) from foreign multinational drug makers in order to make up this controversy. The reasons are two:

1. Communists are ideologically non-supportive of organised capitalists.
2. Of the recent scandal that involved disclosure of the prevalent practise of 'cash for questions' amongst our 'esteemed' elected parliament members, someone was caught from almost every political party except CPI members. That doesn't mean that there exists no bad apples amongst them but it just gives me lesser reasons to doubt Brinda's credibility of the charges.

Next is the impending visit of King Abdullah of the 'infamous' Saudi Arabia. A controversy over his offer to give funds to renovate and re-paint Jama Masjid in Old Delhi is being raised. In a new report I read: "The media report had said the Saudi ruler, who will be the chief guest at Republic Day, 2006, had made the offer of renovating and repairing the historic mosque to Jama Masjid Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari. The intelligence agencies, however, were reported to have reservations about flow of funds from the Arab country. Asked whether there were any laws in India allowing flow of funds, Sarna said that is what was being examined with various agencies."

Amazing....These agencies would do themselves a small favour if they dig out their files to get to know the source of funds that helped in construction of (now in a dilapidated state) Indira Gandhi International Airport and Indraprastha (since renamed to Indira Gandhi) Indoor stadium of Delhi?

What a skewed logic there? Talk about flow of funds from Arab countries...Huh!! 1.6m Indians in Saudia with over 3.5m in the whole of Gulf, these guys contributes over 50% of India's Foreign exchange reserves of $102b in yr 2002-2003. It's the firang and confused desis of Us and UK who remit funds back in their country, it's more of the Gulf based Indians who don't have/get citizenship in the gulf countries, who do the hard work and pay it back to Indian reserves.

Talk about laws of allowing flow of funds....!! Sometimes mediamen ask really ignorant questions and equally ignorant officials happily oblige.