New Delhi, June 14: Retired Supreme Court judge Justice V R Krishna Iyer has lashed out at yoga guru Swami Ramdev on his satyagraha against black money.
Writing in The Times of India, the retired judge says: “Ramdev is not a poor man. His assets of Rs 1,100 crore put him in the richer classes who cannot shed tears for the poor. India has two crore people who go to bed every night without food, thousands of children who go without proper nutrition and millions of mothers who are unable to give healthy food or milk to their babies. They need social justice.
”Ramdev only gives the appearance of an idealist and a yogi. Given his wealth and his alleged wish to raise a sena, he is far from that. Will he give away his wealth to the large number of poor devotees, chanting as Vivekananda did, ‘daridradevo bhava'? Baba Ramdev's heart is with the wealthy not the ‘illthy'.
”When corruption was mounting — and even judges like a former chief justice of the Supreme Court allegedly touched Everest-like heights of bribery and grab — Ramdev remained a ‘moundev'. We need men whose every dimension of personality speaks for the have-nots, not ones who wake up only when corruption is at its darkest and even then ask for a sena, knowing well that violence can never produce justice.
”It is unfortunate that in India today there's no effective instrument to fight corruption. The poor are desperate as they cannot go to court whose procedures are expensive, dilatory and do not promise justice within a lifetime.
“Courts have lost their credibility especially because judges are thought to be associated with bribery and other vices, with no machinery to investigate their conduct. The most notorious example is that of a former chief justice against whom the CBI has found evidence but the executive has not moved even a little finger to take action. Parliament too had not found the time to discuss the monstrous issue of judicial terrorism and rampant bribery.
Anarchy, alas, has come to stay and Ramdev is one of its symbols. He is a great yogi and naturally commands respect. He has a large number of followers and it's a fact that people are fascinated by his campaign against corruption.
That is because the executive today is vitiated with bribery. Even the judiciary, once regarded as untouchable and unapproachable by money power, is tarnished and sullied. People will soon cry for a national revolution. Not mere socialism but a republic governed by the little man and not as Churchill put it ‘rogues, rascals and freebooters'. Judges have lost the values of the Preamble and the significance of the oath of office. Legislators have forgotten what Edmond Burke said about nationalism:
”Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.”
'MPs today only keep their little constituency in mind and therefore are busy making money. The executive has no sense of accountability. As Abraham Lincoln eloquently put it: “If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.
”This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.
”Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”
”Indians who launched a liberation struggle by a do-or-die campaign will never forget the power of the vote. The little man, walking into a little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper — no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point. Ramdev, you are too eminent for the average Indian.
“A popular daily reports that you are a super yogic teacher (Mathrubhumi, dated June 11, 2011). It appears the front members of your audience have to pay Rs 50,000 and others behind lesser sums. Only princes can then be your disciples and you have forfeited the right to speak for the kuchela section of India. We want yogis not bhogis to salvage the have-not masses from their dire distress. Be a kuchela yogi, not a regal kuber”, concludes Justice Krishna Iyer.
