Rajiv Dixit | |
|---|---|
| Born | 30 November 1967 (1967-11-30) Nah in Aligarh district |
| Died | 30 November 2010(2010-11-30) (aged 43)[1] Bhilai, Chhattisgarh, India |
Rajiv Dixit[a] (30 November 1967 – 30 November 2010)[3] was an Indian social activist who founded theAzadi Bachao Andolan.
His organisation promoted a message ofswadeshi-economics that opposedglobalisation andneo-liberalism. In alliance withRamdev, he formed theBharat Swabhiman Andolan and its political offshoot, which combined the economic message with promotion ofyoga andAyurveda.
In 1984, theBhopal 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 byDharampal, aGandhian 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 through thousands of speeches delivered across the country and through recordings on CDs and tapes distributed by the organisation.[4][5] In 2004, Dixit faced allegations that he had misappropriated funds from theAzadi Bachao Andolan to benefit his brother, and his relation with the organisation were estranged.[6]
Also in 2004,Ramdev, who at that time was a travelingyoga teacher with a considerable following of his own, sought out Dixit and the two met inNashik. Over the next few years Dixit became a mentor to Ramdev and their campaigns, against globalisation and for yoga respectively, merged.[7] The two founded theBharat Swabhiman Andolan (Indian Self-respect Movement), with Dixit serving as its national secretary. The new organisation had political ambitions. Prior to the2009 Indian general election, it agitated alongside theVishwa Hindu Parishad and alliedHindu organisations in a movement to clean theGanga river, and in March 2010, theBharat Swabhiman party was launched with an aim to contest the2014 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 inChhattisgarh, under murky circumstances.[8][9]
Dixit's death, and the surrounding controversy, ended Bharat Swabhiman party's ambition to field electoral candidates.[10]
Dixit held that globalisation andeconomic liberalisation represented a new form of colonialism and blamed them for India's "dependency on the West, lack of domestic production, the rise of excessiveconsumerism, the weakening of the agrarian sector, and farmers’ suicides." He re-appropriated the termswadeshi for this message, thus linking it to theSwadeshi movement pioneered byAurobindo Ghosh andMahatma Gandhi during theIndian independence movement.[11]
After the formation of theBharat Swabhiman Andolan, the message ofswadeshi economics was extended to include concerns about governmental corruption and economic inequalities, and interwoven with promotion ofyoga andayurveda.[12]
In 2023, video emerged of a speech given several years earlier in which Dixit celebrated India's national anthem,Jana Gana Mana, repeating a controversial narrative of its creation as an homage toKing-Emperor George V, and that the King-Emperor later awarded theNobel Prize in Literature to its author, the poet and polymathRabindranath Tagore. The claims were originally published in contemporary Anglo-Indian media when the song was first performed in 1911, andhave been shown to be mistaken. Tagore himself denied that the song was a tribute to the British monarch, and George V was not chairman of theSwedish Academy in 1913 when Tagore was awarded the prize.[13]
Dixit died on his 43rd birthday, on 30 November 2010, at a hospital inBhilai, Chhattisgarh; the attending doctor declared the cause to be cardiac arrest. Dixit had been brought to the hospital after collapsing in a bathroom at anashram in the nearby town ofBemetara.[b] 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 toHaridwar and lay in a hall atPatanjali 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.[15][2] In 2019, thePrime Ministers Office ordered a new inquiry into Dixit's death.[14]