Storm in a Sherbet Cup | Power Play by Anand Mishra

Dear readers,

Remember Rooh Afza? That deep pink, very sweet, rose-flavoured drink that most of us grew up drinking? Come summer and Rooh Afza would be measured into glasses, water and ice added, and become a beloved thirst quencher across homes. Just like Rasna or Kissan Squash in later years. It was not branded colas but these squashes that ruled the roost. Mind you, Roof Afza divided opinion too—some people hated it for its syrupy sweetness.

Rooh Afza, which means “refresher for the soul”, was, and still is, a summer special across religions and regions. People simply drank it for summer survival. Nobody associated the 118-year-old drink with any religion.

Then along came yoga “guru” Ramdev. In a vicious advertisement for his Patanjali brand of, yes, a rose-flavoured, copycat drink, Ramdev warned, in Hindi, against Roof Afza: “Protect your family and innocent children from the poison of toilet cleaner being sold under the name of ‘sherbet jihad’ and cold drinks. Bring home only Patanjali sherbet and juices.”

The offensive video went on to say: “If you drink that sherbet, it supports the construction of mosques and madrasas. If you drink Patanjali’s rose sherbet, it funds gurukuls, Acharyakulam, Patanjali University, and the Bharatiya Shiksha Board. Just like there’s love jihad and vote jihad, there’s also sherbet jihad. You must protect yourself from this.”

Thankfully, the reaction was swift and angry, as people slammed the Patanjali ad, calling it the latest in Ramdev’s long line of attempts to fuse communal hatred with his business interests.

Hamdard Laboratories filed a suit against Patanjali. And on April 22, Ramdev received a sharp rebuke from the Delhi High Court for his incendiary “sherbet jihad” remark. The court observed that the comment shocked “the conscience of the court”.

The word “sherbet” is of Persian origin and refers to any sweet, non-alcoholic drink. Hindu religious texts have Soma instead, the drink of the gods, that some experts say was an intoxicant while others claim is non-alcoholic. Regardless of the origin of the word, the manufactured narrative over the sherbet is clearly less about Sanatan Dharma and more about sales.

In court, Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, representing Hamdard, said Ramdev’s campaign was “creating a communal divide” and that it verged on hate speech. The court directed Ramdev and his team to file an affidavit within five days, after forbidding Ramdev and his company from making any further defamatory statements or advertisements against competitors.

Reading the room, Ramdev’s legal team quickly pledged to withdraw the videos, social media posts, and advertisements, both in print and video. Just days earlier, the yoga guru had been defiant, claiming he hadn’t explicitly named Rooh Afza.

The controversy goes back to April 3, when Ramdev accused Rooh Afza’s makers of using their profits to fund mosques and madrasas. Congress leader Digvijaya Singh filed a police complaint in Bhopal, charging Ramdev under various sections for promoting religious enmity.

Sadly, this isn’t an isolated incident in India’s growing climate of Islamophobia. One recalls the 2020 “Corona jihad” saga, when fake videos of Muslims allegedly spitting on vegetables were circulated. TV channels loudly blamed a Tablighi Jamaat gathering at Delhi’s Nizamuddin Markaz for spreading the virus. Some housing societies began banning Muslim vendors. Several writers, such as the historian Sayan Dey, who wrote extensively on the pandemic, showed how “Corona jihad” had become a conduit to rebrand old hatreds during a global crisis.

Then, in 2024, the BJP governments in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand went so far as to say they would make a law against “thook jihad”, a bizarre theory concocted to allege that Muslims spit into food before serving it. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath talked about “Hapur wala juice” and “spit-smeared rotis” at an event, implying such incidents were commonplace.

Then, of course, there is the decades-old “love jihad” theory. It has been continuously debunked, but remains a political perennial in the Hindi heartland. In the 2024 Jharkhand Assembly election, BJP leaders shifted gears to allege a “land jihad”, accusing Bangladeshi Muslim migrants of marrying tribal women to usurp land. A PIL petition filed in the Jharkhand High Court alleged mass infiltration across six districts, which the district administrations unanimously denied in court. But that didn’t stop the BJP from pushing the narrative during the campaign. It lost the election anyway.

In Maharashtra, BJP leaders, including Devendra Fadnavis, revived the “vote jihad” alarm ahead of the 2024 election. Fadnavis lamented that “vote jihad” had cost the BJP key seats and called for a counter-offensive in the form of “Dharma Yuddha” (religious war). The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Asaduddin Owaisi hit back, saying, “Will Fadnavis, whose ancestors were writing love letters to the British, teach us about jihad?”

Now, thanks to Ramdev, even a harmless glass of rose sherbet has been dragged into the whirlpool of imagined jihads.

Will such attacks by greedy gurus tear the social fabric of India? Or will India show them the door as it has to many assailants in the past?

Until my next newsletter,

Anand Mishra | Political Editor, Frontline

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