Beyond sideshows of wellness

NEW DELHI: In the backdrop of International Day of Yoga that was observed recently, an untoward incident left people with a bad taste in the mouth. At a yoga event organised by the Indian High Commission in Male, the capital of Maldives, protesters brandishing placards that said yoga was against the tenets of Islam barged into a stadium where over 150 people including diplomats and government officers had converged to celebrate the international observance. Participants were attacked and the venue was vandalised. Luckily, there were no casualties.

While the President of the Maldives said the incident would be treated seriously, the development was a reminder of how practices that have been a part of India’s soft power for decades, have often stoked a raw nerve beyond our borders. Back in 2008, Malaysia’s leading Islamic council issued an edict prohibiting its Muslim population from practicing yoga on account of fears that the Hindu roots of the practice could corrupt the devout. Following widespread protests in Malaysia, its PM proceeded to reverse the outright ban encouraging members of all communities to take up the fitness routine.

The practice of yoga that has been India’s gift to the world has found itself sacrificed at political bonfires on many occasions. In May 2021, the State of Alabama in the US lifted an almost three-decade long ban on yoga in school, while maintaining that the poses will still have to be referred to by their Anglicised names, such as Downward Dog and the Warrior pose. The judgement retained the ban on any kind of meditation — whether Hindu or Buddhist, ruling out the chanting of mantras or even addressing each other with a Namaste. The justification given by one of the committee members was that “embracing yoga was symptomatic of our postmodern spiritual confusion, which shamefully reaches into the church.”

One could argue that yoga has come a long way from the swinging 60s, when anything exotic, especially the reliance on spiritual practices from the East, was considered as a symbol of youthful decadence, for conservatives in the Western world. It took the likes of legendary exponent BKS Iyengar to spread the universal message of yoga through his interactions with some of the greatest artistes of the West — from the American violinist Yehudi Menuhin and writer Aldous Huxley, to designer Donna Karan. Subsequently, thanks to the flower power generation of Woodstock, and the Beatles who approached Ramana Maharshi to assuage their anxieties on fame, yoga had found a conduit to be mainstreamed into the collective pop consciousness of the world.

In the years since then, yoga has turned into a global phenomenon that has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry populated by celebrities, godmen, politicians and fitness gurus pining for a share in the yogic pie. Political brownie points aside, Prime Minister Narendra Modi could be credited with championing the importance of this practice as a globally unifying force of peace, wellness and harmony at the United Nations in 2014, a year after which June 21 was designated as the International Day of Yoga.

Undoubtedly, it’s nothing short of a matter of pride that something as intrinsically Indian has found a space in the hearts of millions globally. It would do a whole lot of good if those in power, which includes politicians and power brokers, to remember that India has always been a nation that has led the world by its example of multiculturalism. Which is also why our mantras regarding the embracing of diversity by different communities should not be limited to a one-day affair as a side-show in the carnival of our democracy.

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