Baba Ramdev’s sermons on Patanjali’s cure-all drugs are flirting with the law

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Editor's note: For the past three years, Baba Ramdev has been headlining a special programme on India TV. The show, called “Yog ke Rang, Swami Ramdev Ke Sang”, is broadcast between 8 and 9 am every day. It follows a template the yoga guru is best known for: leading viewers through various yoga poses. Often, he doubles up as an ayurveda expert, doling out remedies for a host of diseases. On 9 February, while Ramdev was in the middle of a leg raise, the anchor asked him a question about glaucoma. “They say this disease can only be controlled, not cured,” the anchor said. “Once your eye is injured, a glaucoma infection is said to be inevitable. How does one treat it?” “What you say is something that would have happened 30 years ago,” said Ramdev, settling into a lotus position. “But unfortunately, allopathy, which considers itself a superpower, is a victim of such misconceptions. Like you can’t get rid of spectacles.” Nearly a decade ago, he went on, the late BJP leader Bhairon Singh Shekhawat had come to inaugurate a Patanjali …