Baba Ramdev is all you could hope for from a guru. An aggressively luxuriant beard frames his almost manically lopsided smile. Clad entirely in orange, he is fantastically charismatic, occasionally enigmatic and belches with authoritative ease while waxing lyrical on the wonders of yoga.

So far, so cranky. But those under the illusion that swamis such as Baba Ramdev belong to a bygone era - to an India of maharajahs and rope tricks, if one ever really existed - should think again. Baba Ramdev will pull in revenues of at least £20 million this year. He represents a new generation of superstar lifestyle leaders, one that is gaining ever-greater traction both commercially and ideologically among the sub-continent's newly affluent middle classes.

It is an intriguing sales pitch. “I foresee nobody suffering from pain,” Baba Ramdev tells The Times at his 500-acre headquarters in Haridwar, a pilgrimage town built on an especially propitious spot where the Ganges emerges from the Himalayas.

Vegetarianism, breathing exercises and ayurvedic medicinal treatments (which range from having warm oil drizzled over one's body to the less-pleasant-sounding induced vomiting) are central to this vision - but so are population control, compulsory voting, an end to corruption and swadesi (a kind of economic nationalism). “With this, perhaps India will be a superpower in 15 or 20 years,” he says.

The blend of what many in the West will no doubt dismiss as new-age mumbo jumbo - Baba Ramdev has claimed, for instance, that yoga can cure HIV/Aids - with something more overtly rational encapsulates this swami's style.

Baba Ramdev has popularised yoga across India over the past decade through a combination of plain speaking, fierce diatribes against Western lifestyles and a cable TV channel. He spends part of each 18-hour working day in his laboratory, seeking empirical proof of yoga's worth.

Britain has no equivalent figure: Baba Ramdev's views on topics ranging from George Bush (thumbs down) to organic farming (thumbs up) make national headlines. His 5.30am yoga TV show attracts 20 million viewers a day and his monthly magazine has a circulation of 1 million. Last month he shared a stage with the Dalai Lama and politicians clamber to be pictured with him. When The Times first meets Baba Ramdev, a throng of middle-aged, middle-class women are paying their respects in the traditional manner, by touching his feet.

Besides the TV show, there are books, DVDs, CDs, medicines, soaps, oils, even a soft drink for sale online. Baba Ramdev's organisation runs a dental clinic, an eye clinic, a surgery for minor operations and owns a large farm. A pathology lab boasts the latest machines imported from Germany and Japan. His open-air yoga classes regularly attract crowds in excess of 10,000, where all but the poorest pay a mandatory “donation” of up to 1,100 rupees (£13.75) - a great deal in a country where 75 per cent of the population live on less than £1 a day.

He has just held his first yoga cruise. About 1,000 devotees paid as much as £1,000 each to tour the high seas of South Asia for eight days. Devotees range from India's IT professionals to their maids, cooks and drivers.

The only people whom it is hard to imagine as fans are India's ultra-rich and Western businessmen. “A Mukesh Ambani [India's richest man] cannot make a country great,” Baba Ramdev says. “Rich businessmen snatch the wealth of the poor.” Later, he accuses Western companies of “looting” India. The thing is, Baba Ramdev's pronouncements often diverge only a shade from those made by seemingly more sober commentators. When he adds that India could succumb to a civil war triggered by growing inequality, the prediction may sound outlandishly apocalyptic but the Bombay head of equities trading for a leading Western bank shared the same thought with The Times a few days later.

This year Baba Ramdev is on course to turn over about £20 million, funds that will be ploughed into his Divya Mandir Yog Trust, a charity that offers subsidised medical services and carries out scientific research on the benefits of yoga. “I own not an inch of land, nor do I own a single rupee,” he says.

One of the trust's projects involves a tie-up with the Indian Army, which wants to know whether practising yoga at boot camp makes for better soldiers. The findings should be heeded by those whom Baba Ramdev sets his sights against and anybody who thinks that yoga is for peaceniks, particularly if he is right about that civil war.

The early indications are that new recruits who do more yoga than regular military-style exercise have stronger grips and steadier hands: all the better to shoot their enemies.

An alternative view of the world

Mata Amritanandamayi known as Amma, or “the Hugging Saint”, Mata Amritanandamayi (mother of immortal bliss) is said to have hugged more than 26 million people around the world - an act that is claimed to heal minds. She has said a hug symbolises giving - her charity donated more than $25 million when the Asian tsunami of 2004 hit and $1 million to the victims of hurricane Katrina. It claims to have built more than 36,000 homes.

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar spiritual leader and the founder of the Art of Living Foundation, a non-profit social business that operates in 140 countries and is one of the largest non-governmental organisations recognised by the United Nations. This week the guru was called on to mediate in a conflict between the Indian Government and the Gujjar community that has threatened to cripple commerce in parts of the northern Indian region. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks he offered free courses in stress reduction to New Yorkers. A piece of shared wisdom: “Truth is spherical rather than linear; so it has to be contradictory.”

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