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Rajiv Dixit (30 November 1967 – 30 November 2010) was an Indian social activist who founded the Azadi Bachao Andolan and promoted a message of swadeshi-economics that opposed globalisation and neo-liberalism. In alliance with Ramdev, he formed the Bharat Swabhiman Andolan and its political offshoot, which combined the economic message with promotion of yoga and ayurveda.

Life and Career

Dixit was born in the village of Nah in Uttar Pradesh and studied in Allahadbad towards an engineering degree.

In 1984, the Bhopal disaster, in which a gas leak from a pesticide plant owned by a multinational corporation resulted in thousands of deaths, led Dixit to question the role of such corporations in the Indian economy. His thinking on the subject was subsequently shaped by Dharampal, a Gandhian historian and thinker. In 1992, Dixit founded the trust, Azadi Bachao Andolan (Save Independence Movement), with the stated mission to "counter the onslaught of foreign multinationals and the western culture on Indians, their values, and on the Indian economy in general". Dixit's message was spread though thousands of speeches delivered across the country and through recordings on CDs and tapes distributed by the organisation. In 2004, Dixit faced allegations that he had misappropriated funds from the Azadi Bachao Andolan to benefit his brother, and his relation with the organisation were estranged.

Also in 2004, Ramdev, who at that time was a traveling yoga teacher with a considerable following of his own, sought out Dixit and the two met in Nashik. Over the next few years Dixit became a mentor to Ramdev and their campaigns, against globalisation and for yoga respectively, merged. The two founded the Bharat Swabhiman Andolan (Indian Self-respect Movement), with Dixit serving as its national secretary. The new organisation had political ambitions. Prior to the 2009 Indian general election, it agitated alongside the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and allied Hindu organisations in a movement to clean the Ganga river, and in March 2010, the Bharat Swabhiman party was launched with an aim to contest the 2014 Indian general election. Dixit and Ramdev set out on a tour (Bharat Nirman yatra) across India to campaign for the party but Dixit died during a stop in Chhattisgarh, under murky circumstances.

Dixit's death, and the surrounding controversy, ended Bharat Swabhiman party's ambition to field electoral candidates.

Ideology and rhetoric

Dixit held that globalisation and economic liberalisation represented a new form of colonialism and blamed them for India's "dependency on the West, lack of domestic production, the rise of excessive consumerism, the weakening of the agrarian sector, and farmers’ suicides." He re-appropriated the term swadeshi for this message, thus linking it to the Swadeshi movement pioneered by Aurobindo Ghosh and Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian independence movement. The neologism bharatiyata (lit. Indian-ness) adopted by Ramdev to describe his ideology, also likely traces its origins to Dixit, according to anthropologist Venera R. Khalikova.

After the formation of the Bharat Swabhiman Andolan, the message of swadeshi economics was extended to include concerns about governmental corruption and economic inequalities, and interwoven with promotion of yoga and ayurveda.

Death

Dixit died on his 43rd birthday, on 30 November 2010, at a hospital in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh; the attending doctor declared the cause to be cardiac arrest. Dixit had been brought to the hospital after collapsing in a bathroom at an ashram in the nearby town of Bemetara. In later interviews, Ramdev said that Dixit refused to accept treatment despite the advice Ramdev gave him in an hour-long phone conversation that day; Dixit's family dispute that this happened. Dixit's body was flown to Haridwar and lay in a hall at Patanjali Yogpeeth as a large number of mourners gathered. The body was cremated the next morning on Ramdev's insistence, who overruled demands for a post-mortem by Dixit's family and colleagues. Suspicions regarding the cause of Dixit's death and Ramdev's involvement have persisted. In 2019, the Prime Ministers Office ordered a new inquiry into Dixit's death.

References

1. Kidwai, Rasheed (19 June 2016). "Baba's 'plan' that went bust". The Telegraph. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
2. ^ Worth, Robert F. (26 July 2018). "The Billionaire Yogi Behind Modi's Rise". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 July 2024.
3. Pathak-Narain 2017, p. 133.
4. Dwivedi, Avinash (30 November 2017). "राजीव दीक्षित (पार्ट 1): जिनकी डिग्रियां खुद उनके फर्जीवाड़ों का खुलासा करती हैं". Firstpost (in Hindi). Archived from the original on 7 June 2019.
5. Pathak-Narain 2017, pp. 71–73.
6. "कहानी राजीव दीक्षित की". Jansatta (in Hindi). 1 June 2022. Archived from the original on 11 July 2024.
7. Pathak-Narain 2017, pp. 71–73, 115–116.
8. Pathak-Narain 2017, pp. 116–119, 133.
9. Kanungo 2019, pp. 127–129.
10. Deka, Kaushik (2017). "The political animal". The Baba Ramdev Phenomenon: From Moksha to Market. Rupa. ISBN 978-81-291-4637-3.
11. Khalikova, Venera R. (2 January 2017). "The Ayurveda of Baba Ramdev: Biomoral Consumerism, National Duty and the Biopolitics of 'Homegrown' Medicine in India". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 40 (1): 105–122. doi:10.1080/00856401.2017.1266987.
12. Khalikova, Venera R. (2017). Institutionalized alternative medicine in North India: Plurality, legitimacy, and nationalist discourses (PhD thesis). University of Pittsburgh.
13. Kanungo 2019, pp. 127–128.
14. ^ Shukla, Satya Narain (23 January 2019). "BREAKING : क्या राजीव दीक्षित की मौत के रहस्य से उठेगा पर्दा ? #PMO ने दिए जांच के आदेश | Will the curtain rise from the secret of the death of Rajiv Dixit?". Patrika (in Hindi). Archived from the original on 11 July 2024.
15. Pathak-Narain 2017, pp. 133–141.

Notes

1. Name sometimes spelled as Rajeev Dixit.
2. In later speeches, Dixit made several false claims about his education and experience, including that he had researched anti-gravity at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and stopped his research when Germany's Max Planc Institute tried to steal it in an effort that was aided by the Indian government. His supporters have also made several incorrect claims about his educational qualifications.
3. Some sources report, instead, that Dixit collapsed at the residence of a Bharat Swabhiman Andolan officer in Durg.

Sources

• Kanungo, Pralay (2019). "Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Politics: The Baba Ramdev–BJP Partnership in the 2014 Elections". In Ahmad, Irfan; Kanungo, Pralay (eds.). The algebra of warfare-welfare: a long view of India's 2014 election. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press. pp. 119–142. ISBN 978-0-19-948962-6.
• Pathak-Narain, Priyanka (2017). Godman to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev. Juggernaut. ISBN 978-93-86228-38-3.

• 1967 births
• 2010 deaths
• Activists from Uttar Pradesh
• Swadeshi activists
• Unsolved deaths in India
• Writers from Prayagraj