As Modi and his Hindutva base rise, so too does yoga tycoon Baba Ramdev

Narendra Modi leaned to whisper in the ear of the man sitting next to him, the one clad in saffron robes with a long beard and squinty gaze. It was in the afternoon of March 23, 2014 in New Delhi and the start of national elections was a fortnight away.

Minutes later, the yoga guru and entrepreneur Baba Ramdev urged the crowd before him to mobilise votes for Modi: “You’ll make other people understand, won’t you?” The crowd roared back, “No!” Modi grinned. Ramdev laughed. The politician and the co-founder of a billion-dollar consumer products business were both headed to the pinnacle of a right-wing Hindu movement that seeks to shape the destiny of the world’s fastest-growing economy. About two months after the rally, Modi’s BJP swept the long-ruling Congress from power. Modi had prevailed, in part, with promises to reform the economy and root out corruption. His business-friendly language won widespread praise. But it was also his trumpeting of a Hindu nationalist message — that India should be ruled as a nation by and for Hindus — that helped propel him to victory.

In ways not previously disclosed, Modi and Ramdev, each a product of the Hindu right, owe part of their success to the other. The yoga guru and his company’s traditional foods and health supplements are among the country’s fastest-growing brands. He tapped his following as a TV yoga celebrity and deployed resources from his consumer goods empire, mobilising voters and synchronising messaging with the BJP in a 2014 campaign that was larger and more tightly coordinated with Modi’s party than is publicly known.

In return, leading BJP figures have endorsed Ramdev’s vision for India, a populism laced with assertions of Hindu primacy that twins nostalgia for ancient glory with suspicion of foreign influence.

Since Modi came to power, Ramdev’s company has received more than an estimated $46 million in discounts for land acquisitions in states controlled by the BJP, according to a Reuters review of state government documents, interviews with officials and real estate estimates. It gained access to other land free of charge. The firm, Patanjali, has also received something of an official imprimatur from a newly created ministry and BJP leaders. It is a partnership that reveals the inner workings of influence and money in Modi’s India, where the relatively secular world view of the Congress is being chipped away.

Three weeks after the rally in New Delhi, a trust controlled by Ramdev released a YouTube video in which senior BJP members posed with a signed shapath patra. The document, reviewed by Reuters, laid out nine pledges. These included the protection of cows, and reforming much of Indian life to make it ‘swadeshi’. That set of beliefs, the oath said, extended to the courts, government, cultural institutions and education. The five signatories pictured in the video included the present ministers of foreign affairs, finance, internal security and transportation. None of the ministers responded to questions about the pledge. A spokesman for one of the signatories, LK Advani, at first denied knowledge of the document and then said it was unrelated to Ramdev. “It was the party’s programme and all the senior leaders had signed it,” Advani’s personal secretary Deepak Chopra said. A Patanjali official familiar with the document said senior members of the BJP had put their names to it as a condition of Ramdev’s support.

Ramdev’s business has boomed since the BJP took power. Revenues at his consumer goods enterprise are soaring — from about $156 million in the financial year ending March 2013 to more than $322 million in the year to March 2015, according to financial filings. In early May, Ramdev said revenues in the financial year just ended had jumped to about $1.6 billion. The firm’s products range from toothpaste to clarified ghee butter and household cleaning materials. Its foods, which include rice, biscuits and chutney, are sold in the canteens of India’s security forces and served on some tables in the nation’s parliament. Advertisements for Patanjali’s products stress that they are ayurvedic, meaning they are rooted in ancient Indian tradition. The ads echo the talking points of Modi’s support base by appealing to consumers’ patriotism, urging them to avoid giving cash to foreign firms.

Ramdev is at once effusive about Modi and reluctant to give details about their relationship. “Modi-ji is a close friend,” he said. Modi’s office did not respond to questions for this story. Of his role in Modi’s success in 2014, Ramdev said, “It’s not good form to praise yourself.” He added, “I won’t say much, but I prepared the ground for the big political changes that occurred.”

Since Modi took office in May 2014, Patanjali has acquired almost 2,000 acres of land for building factories, research facilities and establishing supply chains of herbs for its products, according to state land documents and interviews with officials. During the rule of the previous Congress-led government the firm had been selling large tracts of its land holdings. Two of the four acquisitions exceeding 100 acres were in BJP-controlled states. A third was in an area where the governing party was in the process of partnering with the BJP. In the BJP-controlled states, Patanjali received a discount on the land purchased of 77 per cent off market prices, according to state government documents, interviews with officials and land values provided by local real estate agents. The company has pledged to use the property to create more jobs with new factories.

Official reporting of land transactions in India is patchy, especially of deals involving smaller acreages. But some do surface. For example, Patanjali received a discount of more than $10 million, or 88 percent, on a 40-acre plot in Madhya Pradesh last year. Neither the PMO nor Patanjali executives, including Ramdev, responded to questions about the transactions, which were lawful.

At a stone-laying ceremony for a Patanjali food processing plant in Nagpur last September, Transportation Minister Nitin Gadkari was asked by Patanjali’s managing director Acharya Balkrishna for “a road” leading to the site of the planned factory. The minister smiled. “This road you’re talking about, I’ve decided to make it a national highway,” he said.

Patanjali had paid some Rs 590 million for the 234-acre property. The land abuts a special economic zone (SEZ) promoted by the state and its market price was more than Rs 2.6 billion, according to comments submitted to Assembly by Fadnavis. “The land outside the SEZ was given cheaply to Patanjali because it has not been developed. There is no approach road,” Fadnavis said in a written reply to an opposition lawmaker who questioned the price.

A trip to the site found it sits just on the other side of a small wall from a police and fire station and across the street from a corporate park. A road under construction at the back of the property will be accessible to Patanjali. A spokesman for the development authority that oversees the area said the deal included commitments to the community: buying from local sources, training 2,000 farmers in new skills and employing 5,000 people from nearby villages.

The largest transaction was a transfer of some 1,200 acres of undeveloped land in Assam in October and December 2014. The deal was struck by the Bodoland Territorial Council, an agency that oversees an autonomous region and is controlled by the Bodoland People’s Front (BPF). The BPF had broken from a Congress-led coalition in the state in 2014, before allying with the BJP in January 2016. Documents reviewed by Reuters state, the land was “allotted without cost” to Patanjali Yogpeeth