'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.'

India, with its vast population, has become a focal point of global attention due to its remarkable economic growth and potential. In addition, India's geo-political influence has assumed significance within the context of Indo-Pacific strategy. This has further intensified the need to understand and examine India's great transition from an inter-disciplinary perspective. The first two decades following independence were significant in highlighting the challenges faced by a newly independent nation and the strategies employed to address them. The pivotal turning point in 1991, when India initiated comprehensive economic reforms, also set the stage for a diverse political climate characterized by evolving ideologies.This book comprehends ongoing transition in India from interdisciplinary perspective. The chapters in the book highlight the key milestones and shifts in India's journey since its inception as an independent nation in 1947. Written in a simple and accessible manner, the book comprehensively addresses a diverse range of issues concerning India's significant transition, engaging prominent scholars from respective fields.

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.

Through an exploration of subjects such as Gandhi impersonators, performance artists, and ritual participants, Mimetic Desires makes an intervention toward understanding the phenomenon of impersonation and guising in South Asia and the world. This volume defines impersonation as the temporary assumption of an identity or guise in social and aesthetic performance that is perceived as not one’s own, and guising as sartorial and kinetic play more generally. Interrogating the legitimacy of the purported dialectic between the “real/original” and “fake/dupe,” Mimetic Desires refutes the ordering of identity along the lines of a binary or dichotomy that presupposes the myth of an original identity. By peeling back the layers of performative masks to reveal the process of the masquerade itself, we can see that those with the most social capital are often those with the most power and opportunities to impersonate “up” and “down” social hierarchies. The book’s twelve chapters disclose sites and processes of sociopolitical power facilitated by normative markers of social status relating to race, ethnicity, gender, caste, class, and religion—and how those markers can be manipulated to express and enhance individual and group power. The first comprehensive study to focus on impersonation in South Asia, Mimetic Desires expands on previous scholarship on impersonation and guising in vernacular theatre, dance, public processions, and religious rituals. It is particularly in conversation with the robust scholarship on gender performance in South Asia’s theatrical and dance forms. Mimetic Desires explores some of the contexts and forms of impersonation in South Asia, with its remarkable array of performing arts, to gain insight into the very human and quotidian practices of impersonation and guising.

THE following pages are derived from "The Book of the Golden Precepts," one of the works put into the hands of mystic students in the East. The knowledge of them is obligatory in that school, the teachings of which are accepted by many Theosophists. Therefore, as I know many of these Precepts by heart, the work of translating has been relatively an easy task for me. It is well known that, in India, the methods of psychic development differ with the Gurus (teachers or masters), not only because of their belonging to different schools of philosophy, of which there are six, but because every Guru has his own system, which he generally keeps very secret. But beyond the Himalayas the method in the Esoteric Schools does not differ, unless the Guru is simply a Lama, but little more learned than those he teaches. The work from which I here translate forms part of the same series as that from which the "Stanzas" of the Book of Dzyan were taken, on which the Secret Doctrine is based. Together with the great mystic work called Paramartha, which, the legend of Nagarjuna tells us, was delivered to the great Arhat by the Nagas or "Serpents" (in truth a name given to the ancient Initiates), the Book of the Golden Precepts claims the same origin. Yet its maxims and ideas, however noble and original, are often found under different forms in Sanskrit works, such as the Dnyaneshvari, that superb mystic treatise in which Krishna describes to Arjuna in glowing colors the condition of a fully illumined Yogi; and again in certain Upanishads. This is but natural, since most, if not all, of the greatest Arhats, the first followers of Gautama Buddha were Hindus and Aryans, not Mongolians, especially those who emigrated into Tibet. The works left by Aryasanga alone are very numerous.