Indian television celebrity and health guru Swami Ramdev has been accused of using macabre ingredients in his cures. According to BBCNews, marxist leader and feminist author Brinda Karat told journalists, “the impotency drug contains testicles of animals, crushed to powder. [Human] bone and skull powder was also detected.” The swami has called Karat to an agent for multinational companies and further alleges that she is after him because he opposes the multinational pharmaceutical industry.

The entire dilemma is quite a Gordian Knot. To begin with, is this guy Swami Ramdev the real deal? It’s always advisable to question the authenticity of any guru, especially one that doubles as a television personality. But it’s also strange, if we believe Ramdev (and he certainly ought to be observing Satya, or truthfulness), that the communist party of India, the feminists, and the multinational pharmaceutical industry are in cahoots. Hows that for irony?

This, however, is not an isolated incident, but part of a broader attempt to discredit India’s prevalent and popular traditional medicines. And here, the critics may even have truth on their side, literally speaking: in some of India’s more esoteric traditions, the use of human bones and ash are quite commonplace. Further still, the Aghoris, goddess worshippers who are infamous for doing spiritual worship in charnel grounds, consider sexual energy to have a spiritual nature. And Ayurveda, being a living folk tradition, has absorbed some of these methods.

• Guru accused of ‘human bone’ drug—BBCNews
• Guru offers comrade free yogic ‘treatment’—India’s Economic Times
• A Guru’s Gruesome Medicine—Guruphiliac
• Swami Ramdev: Yoga does it and Ramdev vs Karat: who’s right?—Rediff India
• For Baba, attack is the best defence—Times of India
• Brinda flays yoga guru—Deccan Herald
• There’s a slew of coverage at Rednews.org—“daily communist news from around the world”
• Swami Ramdev in the New York Times—“I want to remove the glasses of Western culture from your eyes.. Do not eat pizza, burgers or fast food. And use cold drinks like colas as toilet cleaner.”
• A Sepia Mutiny post on the Februrary 1, 2005, New York Times piece on Ramdev
• Watch the saga unfold at Google News