Patanjali Ayurved has turned out to be the most disruptive force in the Indian FMCG market...it witnessed a whopping annual growth of 146% in fiscal year 2016, grossing a turnover of $769 million.'-Assocham-TechSci research report When in 1965, at Saidalipur, a nondescript village in Haryana, a baby boy was born to a marginal farmer, there was hardly any celebration. They were happy to receive what they believed was 'the most precious gift from God' but there was no time to pause, reflect or celebrate. People needed to get on with their lives. Little did they realize that the newborn would take this philosophy of detachment to a different level altogether. And if this detachment was induced in their life by poverty and hardship, three decades later their child was to show the world how to practise the same philosophy and even, while doing so, gather unimaginable wealth-an approximate net sum of `10,000 crore. He was to become Baba Ramdev, the celebrated yoga guru, and one of the founders of Patanjali Ayurved Limited and Patanjali Yogpeeth. The Baba Ramdev Phenomenon offers a detailed account of Ramdev's journey from attaining moksha in the Himalayas to ruling the market, especially the FMCG sector, with his Patanjali products. It captures the rise and rise of Patanjali and the various factors that worked for it, most importantly, the vision of Ramdev and the able assistance of his associate Acharya Balkrishna.

The continuing saga of a contemporary mass leader who sought out a vision and a method to amalgamate yoga and health care into the mainstream consciousness Baba Ramdev’s emergence as the new ideologue of a national and global spiritual resurgence is considered by many as a curious phenomenon. This work is a study on the making of the Ramdev spectacle with all its inescapable assertiveness, mass enthusiasm and, of course, controversies. It seeks to locate his philosophy in today’s socio-cultural milieu, while tracing its origins in Indian spiritual history, and the past landmark reformist movements that have been initiated in the country by earlier path-breakers including Sri Aurobindo, Swami Dayananda, Paramhansa Yogananda, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, Bhagwan Nityananda, J. N. Krishnamurty and Sri Ramana Rishi. Indeed, Ramdev represents a renewed continuity to the great revival of the ancient Indian spiritual traditions and yoga that took place in the twentieth century and received recognition worldwide. With his own version of holistic yoga as a ploy for instituting the universal right to health, Baba Ramdev has proposed two distinct ideological alternatives to the current established order of the world – pranayama and the yogic way of life as the key to health restoration and well-being; and manifestation of an enabling spiritual environment for personal and social transformation. Ramdev’s arrival once again underlines the continuing significance of Oriental spiritualism the world over as it offers perhaps the most promising insights for the creation of a ‘new spiritually-awakened man’ – a man at ease with himself and with the world around him.

'Can anyone imagine that a man with such a strong, continuous and unbroken will has been reaching out to the masses with the goal 'one life-one mission'. He has been travelling the country round the clock and has been meeting lakhs of people every-day and motivating them through yoga. If Baba Ramdev would have been in any other country then there would have been so many Universities that would have done PhD on his life history.' I had once asked Baba Ramdev that yoga gives energy, good-health and zeal but how does it help when you are surrounded with so many problems? 'Baba Ramdev had started his journey for the well being of this country's citizens through yoga, especially for the poor who were not able to afford medicines. After travelling for ten years across the country he noticed that it's not only the health of the citizens that needed attention but also the 'health of the country' so from then onwards he began to voice his concerns related to the dysfunctions of the nation. Baba Ramdev is such a personality who doesn't rest till he achieves his goals.'

Patanjali Ayurved has turned out to be the most disruptive force in the Indian FMCG market..it witnessed a whopping annual growth of 146% in fiscal year 2016, grossing a turnover of $769 million.'-Assocham-TechSci research report When in 1965, at Saidalipur, a nondescript village in Haryana, a baby boy was born to a marginal farmer, there was hardly any celebration. They were happy to receive what they believed was 'the most precious gift from God' but there was no time to pause, reflect or celebrate. People needed to get on with their lives. Little did they realize that the new-born would take this philosophy of detachment to a different level altogether. And if this detachment was induced in their life by poverty and hardship, three decades later their child was to show the world how to practise the same philosophy and even, while doing so, gather unimaginable wealth-an approximate net sum of 10,000 crore. He was to become Baba Ramdev, the celebrated yoga guru and one of the founders of Patanjali Ayurved Limited and Patanjali Yogpeeth. The Baba Ramdev Phenomenon offers a detailed account of Ramdev's journey from attaining moksha in the Himalayas to ruling the market, especially the FMCG sector, with his Patanjali products. It captures the rise and rise of Patanjali and the various factors that worked for it, most importantly, the vision of Ramdev and the able assistance of his associate Acharya Balkrishna.

Conventional wisdom says that integration into the global marketplace tends to weaken the power of traditional faith in developing countries. But, as Meera Nanda argues in this path-breaking book, this is hardly the case in today’s India. Against expectations of growing secularism, India has instead seen a remarkable intertwining of Hinduism and neoliberal ideology, spurred on by a growing capitalist class. It is this “State-Temple-Corporate Complex,” she claims, that now wields decisive political and economic power, and provides ideological cover for the dismantling of the Nehru-era state-dominated economy. According to this new logic, India’s rapid economic growth is attributable to a special “Hindu mind,” and it is what separates the nation’s Hindu population from Muslims and others deemed to be “anti-modern.” As a result, Hindu institutions are replacing public ones, and the Hindu “revival” itself has become big business, a major source of capital accumulation. Nanda explores the roots of this development and its possible future, as well as the struggle for secularism and socialism in the world’s second-most populous country.

This 2006 book is an innovative study of warrior asceticism in India from the 1500s to the present.

Gurus of Modern Yoga explores the contributions that individual gurus have made to the formation of the practices and discourses of yoga in today's world.