" alt="Featured 468x60 Ad" />
Swami ‘Baba’ Ramdev Claims Homosexuality Can Be “cured” By Yoga
July 20, 2009 by Ray Baskerville
The claims that yoga can cure homosexuality were made in response to the recent legalization of homosexuality in India, and just prove that prejudice can be found in all religions.
One source for this story, the UK daily telegraph claims Swami ‘Baba’ Ramdev is the most popular Hindu guru, which surprised me because I’d never heard of him. It seems he is on a mission to popularize yoga and ayurveda and that’s great. He’s using modern media technology to promote his yoga teaching through a tv show watched by a reported 85 million people.
His comments to the press before and after the passing of the decriminalization of homosexuality in India show the Swami in less than illustrious light – ""The verdict will encourage criminality and sick mentality. This kind of thing is shameful and insulting. We are blindly following the West in everything. This is breaking the family system in India. Homosexuals are sick people, they should be sent to hospitals for treatment."
In India sadly he is not alone in his condemnation of the legislation which has also been voiced by Muslim, Christian and other Hindu leaders in India.
The "we are blindly following the West" line has sway with many on the Indian subcontinent and it is understandable. I remember years ago sitting in a cinema in Calcutta watching what in the West would be a not so great movie because it was in English and thinking to myself what on earth does this look like to them, dubious morality, sexuality and so on. And hey I have issues with a lot that is distinctly normal and mainstream in the west too. So I do agree that there many things about Indian culture that deserve preservation and honoring.
That said when some one says things like comparing homosexuals to "other anti-social groups", and "it can be treated like any other congenital defect" is heading down a road of fundamentalism that worships ignorance and dogma.
Inevitable I am left wondering why? What is the perceived threat that warrants such inflammatory rhetoric. Maybe when you have a pulpit you need something to shout about. In many ways it is ironic because in India – and this is seldom spoken about – one avenue that gay men have taken in life is to become sadhus, wandering ascetics.
This is one of many things in Indian culture that are swept under the carpet by the strong moral values. Swami ‘Baba’ Ramdev also claims that the legislation will increase the prevalence of AIDS. In fact as a result of the strong moral values around sexuality the main cause of AIDS spreading is prostitution.
“Living Liberation - Meditation Training, and so much more" "It changed my life"Find out more
Welcome back! Keep updated - Subscribe to my RSS feed & Scroll Down to leave a Comment
Related posts:
- Can Yoga Fix Health Care? Most of us agree that America’s health care system...
- The Power Of Yoga—for Kids Yoga is becoming a powerful tool in our goal...
- Lululemon’s Yoga Cult Of Selling Lululemon has created a cult following for its yoga...
Baba ji has always proved everything by results (MASS RESULTS) , so if he feels that homo behavior is illness … cure it on mass basis and prove… people will again agree. I have actually benefited from his yoga but in this opinion i differ with him that homo nature is illness!
From what I have read homosexuality is a result of ones karma. This being so, would it not be a behavior to be overcome in this life time? Not that it is ones place to condem anyone else for thier behavior , but to simply say a person is born a certain way with certain tendencies, so God must condone it resists the concept of Karma altogether. To reason God created male and female to procreate, and did so with both man and lower life forms reveals the truth behind our Creators desire for us. I appreciate the material on your site and all you have to share. I have been studying all books I can aquire by P. Yogananda and look to him as my teacher within. I can not begin to tell you how my life has changed.
Thanks for your comment Opal
We can say that all human likes, dislikes, tendencies and desires arise from the conditioning of past experiences. We continue to add to or diminish these subconscious ‘karmas’ & ‘vasanas’ by present time actions. Human sexuality is not so neatly divided into hetero and homo and in my experience it is one of the most distorted energies in our consciousness.
Two great hindrances to the diminishing of our distortions and the process of awakening to undistorted consciousness, are judgment and denial. Unfortunately the distortions in our consciousness from these karmas and vasanas creates strong tendencies toward judgment and denial in the mind. My point being life is as it is, segmenting it into right/wrong, moral/immoral, tends to lead to more distortion rather than more awakening. Instead we might think what serves ‘me’ in the process of awakening and consider less what other people ’should’ be doing.
As for God, to attribute to the absolute the capacity to condone or condem, i would suggest is a projection of the human mind and it’s own distortions and a rigid limitation on the unlimited absolute.
It is great to hear you have found a source of inspiration in your spiritual life and i wish you well
blessings
Ray
I find it funny that I came to your site following a link from God knows where about “meditation for beginners” and am commenting on an article on, of all things, Baba Ramdev.
I am an Indian BTW.
Ramdev has charm, I will give him that. He uses it to great effect when popularising Yoga. But he does tend to jump into matters of morality too often. I think religions are often too obsessed with people’s personal morality.
And seeing that most of the points he made regarding homosexuality being against Hinduism and Indian culture are not at all in tune with what old Hindu texts and even a great many Indians think, I find his claims to be laughable. God, that was a long sentence.
You keep a great site Ray. My best wishes. I only commented to let you know that the Ramdev brand of antics classifies as trash TV in India. Nobody pays them much attention.
PS: The “meditation for beginners” article was very useful. Thanks for that.
Baba Ramdev is a stupid, dirty freak who wants everyone to drink cow piss, eat cow dung and worship the cow twice a day. A naive and narrow minded man who thinks that by pumping his solar plexus in and out at the drop of a hat!, and making uninformed and reactionary political statements (which he has no business getting into) often bordering on communal/gender/sexual bias and regional/caste/class divisiveness, he may now assume the mantle of some great saint…! I think he is simply a nut-case. This very uneducated Haryanvi man who till a few years ago was no more than a shy Yoga teacher, has now reached new levels of confidence in his rhetoric and simply revels in his mediocre charlatan act. ‘I will cure cancer, AIDS and leukemia he claims, Homosexuality is a disease, the west is evil, the Muslim world is full of cow eating barbarians, Vedas are the best he arrogantly preaches (This fool who has no knowledge of Sanskrit and has never read the Vedas!), CPM is bad, Congress is impotent and BJP is good, he croons… wonder why all these pakhandi babas arrive at the same political conclusion??? Isn’t it obvious, Ramdev is about to buy a Scottish isle! His bullshit yoga camps earn him millions of dollars, and I am certain that his extended family and well wishers (since he probably has no sperm of his own left by now) will run his fraudulent empire very profitable after he dies. RAMDEV IN SHORT SHOULD SPEND A REALLY REALLY LONG TIME IN A MENTAL ASYLUM WITH REGULAR ELECTRO-SHOCK THERAPY TO HIS BALLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
))
Peace
Thanks for your comment Vimoh
I appreciate having the perspective you offer from India which places Baba Ramdev him in the context of ‘trash tv’
Thanks too for your kind words abut the site
blessings
Ray
Hi Bilal
I’m going to take your comment as a comedic rant because it reads that way to me and it made me chuckle. I hope no one else takes it too seriously.
What’s valuable here i feel is for us all to remember that because someone is in the role of teacher/guru, doesn’t mean we turn of our faculty of discernment, in fact we need to turn it up. Additionally I feel a sense of humour is a helpful lens to look at these things through.
Blessings
Ray