I BOOKED INTO a hotel, a three-storey brown brick building opposite Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth headquarters, a 20-minute bus journey from Haridwar. The Patanjali Yogpeeth itself sits in a slowly industrialising semi-rural landscape.

Amidst the agriculture, amidst the mist – which may have been smog - there were factories and incongruously, many slick, high rise apartment buildings under construction. On the road-side were hut-like shops, whose owners dressed in drab, ill-fitting Western-style clothes. Their customers burned pungent, plastic rubbish to keep warm. It was the day before the interview, and I thought I’d have a wander around Ramdev’s headquarters. Across the roaring, beeping highway stood Pantajli Yogpeeth’s grand entrance – an imposing 10 metre-high ornate Asian arch at the entrance, heavily guarded by a half-dozen private security guards. This leads into a huge area with more buildings spread around it than you could take in at one glance. I walked around sheepishly, doing my best to smile at the staff dressed all in white, down a driveway flanked with manicured lawns, palm trees, trimmed hedges, flowering rhododendrons and about half a dozen elegant fountains. A slick banner flies outside the entrance to the main building – an advertisement for brand-new luxury apartments with a picture of the Swami saying: “With the blessings of Baba Ramdev”.

Ramdev once said “profiting from patients is against the philosophy of Ayurveda”.

The contrast of the complex to the world outside its gates was one of the most vivid metaphors of economic inequality I had seen after nearly two months in India. Most of Patanjali Yogpeeth's buildings looked like a cross between a palace and a private hospital. And that's exactly what the front section of Ramdev's headquarters was - a private hospital, albeit one that dispenses mainly herbs and which has framed pictures of a smiling, radiant Ramdev in every single room. Just out of view were Patanjali Yogpeeth's University campus and a 5600 sqm air-conditioned auditorium. I was on the lookout for people being given free food or medicine. Ramdev’s trust describes “charitable” aims for healthcare. He has also claimed that all of the profits from Patanjali limited go to charity. He once said “profiting from patients is against the philosophy of Ayurveda”. What activities Ramdev’s charities undertake is not clear because he is not required under Indian law to report their financial activities. In the past, he has explained allegations of the trust’s apparent accounting irregularities by saying that missing stock not accounted for sales tax records had been given to the “poor and the needy”. These claims have previously been questioned by investigative journalists in India. If Ramdev does do charity work, I didn’t see any direct evidence of it happening at his headquarters. I didn’t see anything like the Sikh temple in Punjab where there are thousands of people lining up at time to get fed, nor did I see anybody, in a nation which has one of the lowestper capita public health spends in the world, lining up to receive free medicines. Indeed, I was reminded of when the Indian Medical Association asked: if Ramdev can cure cancer, why he doesn’t offer it for free in his country’s overstretched public hospitals? I returned to my hotel that night, and called Sanjeev Sabhlok to ask about Ramdev’s charity claims. Sabhlok said that one of Ramdev’s trusts did offer free daily yoga classes. He added that there is a place for homeless people to stay in an emergency. “The building is pretty ramshackle, with broken windows. I think there were some poor people living there, but if I'm not mistaken, they are expected to leave after a few days. This is not intended to be a permanent shelter for the poor”. “There is undoubtedly some charitable work being undertaken,” Sabhlok explained. “However, there is no beeline of people coming from across the country to get these free facilities since the main business model is for-profit and/or donation based. “I have nothing against a commercial model. The only issue would be: are any tax benefits being obtained in the name of being charitable, consistent with activities on the ground.” That night, I tracked down a third former employee of Ramdev’s. He had been a very high-ranking member of the executive who left Patanjali Yogpeeth because he said the organisation had “hypocrisy at its core”. However, he said he remains moderately loyal to Ramdev and refutes the suggestion he is “dangerous”. He said he believed that Ramdev had opened up orphanages and “during disasters at Kedarnath in 2013, Patanjali organised rescue camps sent truckload of food medicine.” He said he believed Patanjali at times distributed food to rural villages. Vijay Paes, though, told me: “The only charity he does is for the cameras. Ramdev is a businessman, if he does anything it is for the cameras.” Paes alleged that staff within Patanjali use “charitable money to avoid tax and build his empire, he charges for everything, his products, his hospitals”. Trusts associated with Ramdev, including the Patanjali Yoga Peeth and Divya Yoga Trust, have previously been required to pay tax after Government officials found they had declared activities charitable, but the national Revenue Department declared they were actually commercial in nature because people attending had to pay a fee. Local investigative journalists have also raised issues about discrepancies in the sales-tax records of a company associated with Ramdev, Divya Pharmacy – which the company explained by saying the missing stock in question had gone to “the poor and the needy”. Tehelka, the media group which uncovered these issues, also questioned whether trusts associated with Ramdev had circumvented land law regulations and tax liabilities by purchasing land in the name of other people, often Patanjali employees whose declared income indicates it would be near impossible for them to own large tracts of expensive land (almost always surrounded by land official owned by Patanjali or Ramdev). The Wall Street Journal has also previously raised questions about missing information in Ramdev’s financial records for his charitable trusts. Ramdev has come under the tax scanner in 2012 when the National Congress were in power, with the revenue department saying that it “believes that the activities of Ramdev's trusts are commercial in nature and are far from charitable works.”

TWO MONTHS AFTER my initial enquiries about speaking with the Swami, the interview day had arrived. When I walked across to the Patanjali Yogpeeth, I decided that when I had my time with the 'Great Lord' Ramdev, I would go by instinct and ask whatever came to mind.

Patanjali Yogpeeth: Swami Ramdev's headquarters near Haridwar.

I called Ramdev's personal assistant who wasn’t answering. I walked inside the main building, past the water foundations, the trimmed hedges and the brilliant rhododendrons - still no answer from the PA. Somebody was speaking on a microphone outside. Through a window, I saw a group of at least 200 people waving Indian flags standing around a stage in the middle of a garden. On the stage, Swami Ramdev. Joining him, I counted no less than 14 private security guards and three deftly expressionless government commandos in blue camouflage holding large, black guns which if stood upright on the ground would have gone up way past their waist. It was him. Moving outside, I felt more than a twinge of celebrity-recognition. So, too, did the people hunched in tightly around the little stage. As well as bombastically waving Indian flags, many were watching him through their smartphones as they made recordings. One even managed to elbow in me in the head as she tried to get closer. Most giggled in delight as Ramdev circled the stage with a microphone.

“Swami Ramdev says you must be very proud to be Indian… and if you do yoga all the time, you won't need to see a doctor.”

The audience were a cheerful and orderly bunch. They weren’t poor or sick or hungry, they weren’t angry or calling for a revolution, they reminded me of people at a middle-income shopping mall who had just stumbled across their favourite TV celebrity signing his latest book. Ramdev was relaxed and in good humour. He owned the crowd. He was confident enough to leave long, dramatic pauses. He made lots of eye contact and lots of jokes - I knew that not only because everybody laughed on cue, but because of how he stopped and looked around, like a little boy who knows he is cute and has said something cute to a bunch of adoring relatives. I asked a young man dressed in a tracksuit, standing next to me, what the speech was about. He responded in delight: "Swami Ramdev says you must be very proud to be Indian, because being Indian is a wonderful thing … and if you do yoga all the time, you won't need to see a doctor.” I kept trying to call Ramdev’s personal assistant. No answer. I headed to the back of the stage, which was also crowded with people, hoping to meet Swami, or at least his PA. Just then, I felt a tap on my shoulder. "You can't stand here," said the young man in the tracksuit.

“Army trainees do our military training here. We do yoga and meditation. He teach us. He is a wonderful man and you are wonderful for coming to see him.”

I had somehow missed the fact that this entire section of the crowd was in tracksuits, and lined up in very ordered single-line rows as if at primary school assembly. "I am in the army," he said. "Actually, you shouldn't have been standing in this part - this is for the army and in rank order.” "Why is the army here?" I asked. "We live here," he said. “Army trainees do our military training here. We do yoga and meditation. He teach us. He is a wonderful man, and you are wonderful for coming to see him." The links between Ramdev and the BJP are persistent. A BJP state government offered Ramdev cabinet ministry status (which he actually declined). The national government made him a medical tourism advisor and other BJP MPs talked about providing him a second Island to build yet another yoga centre – this one off India’s east coast. The federal BJP Government has also granted Ramdev and his Patanjali Yogpeeth ‘Z-Class security’ which means that he and his headquarters are entitled to be guarded by up to 40 government paramilitary commandos. One of the biggest policy shifts to favour Ramdev was Modi's decision to upgrade the 'traditional medicines' department to cabinet status.

Ramdev has long argued that killing cows should be banned nationally.

Ramdev put his fist in the air and groaned. Everybody else did the same. He repeated it three times.

In late 2016, Ramdev defended Modi's controversial plan to demonetise higher-value currency notes in India, telling the media that crowds lining up at ATMs were fakes planted by Modi's political opponents. Ramdev would also enter the debate after a Muslim leader refused to chant "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" ("Victory for Mother India"), a nationalistic slogan traditionally used by the Indian Army. Ramdev reportedly said that "if weren't for the rule of law", he would behead people by the thousands if they would not chant the words. A number of country’s top intellectuals have accused the BJP of cynically turning the electorate against minority groups to gain power, leading many to hand back their national awards, including Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy. Earlier last year, Ramdev was awarded lucrative national Government defence contracts to help the military manufacture and marketing their own herbal supplements and food products. And as I discovered during my visit – a few days before the official announcement – Ramdev is now directly, and often personally, training soldiers at his Patanjali Yogpeeth, which I learned is at once a university, a hospital and a military training centre.

When Ramdev got into a car, accompanied by four security guards, his facial expression changed.