New Delhi: Baba Ramdev has had an injunction put on a book about his life written by Priyanka Pathak-Narain and published by Juggernaut Books, according to a statement released by the publisher.
On August 4, 2017, the court of the ACJ -CCJ – ARC (East), at the Karkardooma district courts in Delhi said Juggernaut could not publish or sell Godman to Tycoon: The Untold Story of Baba Ramdev. According to the publisher’s statement, they received a written copy of the order on August 10 and complied with it.
The court issued the injunction on an ex parte basis – which means the publisher and author were not asked to present their version of events. This was done in order to avoid “the delay which would be caused during the process of serving the notice and hearing the defendants,” the order said.
The publisher has said they will fight the injunction in court and stand behind the book completely.
Every person is entitled to approach a court of law with a grievance that must be decided in a fair manner. In this case, the allegation of defamation must certainly be heard in the courts and we welcome the chance to defend our book. Godman to Tycoon is a work of serious journalism. It is the product of over fifty interviews, many of them taped, with key players in Baba Ramdev’s life, including with Ramdev himself and close aides and family members. The book contains a detailed 25-page note on sources that lists the interviews, articles, police reports and RTI replies that are the basis of each chapter.
The injunction is on Juggernaut Books, the author and also the printers, Amazon and Flipkart.
In an interview with The Wire, Pathak-Narain had talked about the research that went into the book and the people she spoke to about Ramdev:
Some sources were easy to find, others took months to identify and track down. Nearly everyone asked me: ‘Are you writing for him or against him?’ No one seemed to believe me when I replied, ‘I have no angle. I just want to hear the story as you remember it.’
Yet, they all talked and connected me to someone else who wanted to talk. It felt as if they had been waiting for someone to knock at their door and ask them their story. It need not have been me. It could have been anyone. They were, all of them, ready to share their memories of their time with Baba Ramdev and his growing empire.
