Yoga Day: Modi has to do more if India is not to lose control of this ancient knowledge

The UN General Assembly yesterday (11 December) decided to adopt 21 June as International Day of Yoga. This is great news for India, the land that gave birth to yoga, and the Prime Minister expressed his happiness with these words in a tweet: “Elated! Have no words to describe my joy on the UN declaring 21st June as ‘International Day of Yoga.’ I fully welcome the decision.” Elation can soon turn to consternation if we do nothing beyond holding celebrations on 21 June every year. Reason: India has to take ownership of yoga and for this there is a lot of hard work ahead. Else, yoga will soon become a global free-for-all over which the land of its birth will have no control whatsoever. [caption id=“attachment_1847293” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. AFP[/caption] Narendra Modi and his HRD Minister Smriti Irani should move fast in this area before the rest of the world takes the game away from us. Some of us may be tempted to ask: why can’t all and sundry contribute to popularise yoga, which is a good thing in itself. But this would be short-sighted, if not downright stupid. Any society which does not establish and assert claims over its traditional knowledge - and build on it scientifically - is bound to lose it. Consider what would happen to Darjeeling tea, or Scotch whiskey or Champagne if the regions interested in these brands left it to the world to produce these beverages on their own. There would be fake Darjeeling tea (there already are many such pretenders in the market), fake Scotch, and fake Champagne. Yoga is vital to Brand India and this means we have to take ownership of it before it becomes everybody’s property – and slides downhill into nonsense. We are already halfway down this slippery slope. Even though there are many good schools of yoga in India – from BKS Iyengar’s version to Kaivalyadham’s to Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth and many others - there is no standardisation, no documentation, no benchmark about what can be taught, how it can be taught, who qualifies as a teacher of yoga, and which authority can certify proficiency for students and teachers. Some entrepreneurs – like Bharat Thakur – have even patented some poses of yoga (his is called Artistic Yoga), and various churches in the US have appropriated yoga as their own (calling it Christian yoga, for example), decapitating yoga from its Indian roots. The Indian government needs to step in and make sure that anything and everything cannot be called yoga. Yoga is not just a bunch of physical exertions and contortions – it is a holistic system of mental, spiritual, and physical health. No element of yoga (the initial invocations, the breathing techniques, and specific poses) can be taught in bits and pieces. Yoga is not a system whose parts can be used opportunistically. It is a complete system in itself. So, if something has to be called yoga, it must clear some benchmarks that we must set. Sparkling wine can be produced by any country, but Champagne can only be produced in the Champagne region of France. While India cannot claim the same exclusivity for yoga as Champagne for its variety of sparkling wine, it has to be quick to set the global standards for it. Currently, anyone who has spent a couple of weeks in a yoga class and has learnt (or mislearnt) a few asanas thinks he is good enough to impart that knowledge to other students. Many yoga schools have come up in all kinds of residential colonies due to the sheer demand for yogic knowledge. It is thus more than likely that many of them are either charlatans or well-intentioned practitioners with half-baked knowledge. Such charlatans may end up giving yoga a bad name, since they may be less than particular about what is taught and how it is taught. The truth is yoga and yogic poses are not for everybody and for all occasions. If yoga is done by the wrong people for the wrong reasons, it can do damage, as this New York Times article argues. Not just yoga, it is the same for anything: aerobic exercises are not for everybody, or jogging for all and sundry. If Narendra Modi wants to truly exult in the UN recognition for yoga, he has to get the following things done. One, bring all the major schools of Indian yoga together and ask them to evolve a clear code of what constitutes yoga, and how it must be taught or practiced. It is all right to have different schools of yoga, but there must be some commonality, and each school must codify its own essential knowledge and proposed curricula. Two, the yoga schools that are recognised as legitimate by the government should then put in place standards for teacher training, and learning modules in which yoga can be taught to various kinds of people. All people cannot be taught the same thing, for there could be differences in the kind of yoga men, women, adolescents, kids and the ailing may require. It cannot be one-cap-fits-all. Three, a yoga certification board comprising representatives of the main yoga schools and government administrators needs to be set up. Efforts have to be made to ensure that only clean and committed people are part of these boards – or else it will end up like the AICTE, complete with its corruption and arbitrariness. The Yoga Board must be empowered to set curricula, assess the performance of various schools, and award certificates of competence to both students. Higher levels of competence must be prescribed for those who want to teach yoga. Anyone intending to teach yoga abroad should have a certificate of competence from this board. Right now anyone who claims to teach yoga can do so – occasionally bringing disrepute to the craft. Four, research and dissemination of knowledge must be intrinsic to any effort to popularise yoga. There is no reason why we need someone in the US to tell us indiscriminate practice of certain yogic poses can do damage. While our ancient knowledge already prescribes many dos and don’ts, we should not assume that ancient knowledge is all there is to know. We have to expand the limits of our own knowledge of yoga by scientific affirmations. Continuous research should identify problems in their incipient stages so that we don’t end up doing damage to practitioners in the name of teaching yoga to them. A key part of the Hippocratic oath for doctors is that they will ensure that the patient does not suffer “hurt or damage”. Every yoga teacher must be asked to take a similar oath that the mental and physical health of their students is the first obligation. Clearly, a National Yoga Research Institute is overdue, apart from the certification boards. Modi and his HRD Minister Smriti Irani should move fast in this area before the rest of the world takes the game away from us. Irani has been criticised for following a Sangh parivar agenda. Here is something she can do both to please the parivar, the rest of India, and the world. An International Yoga Day is a double-edged sword. The world may now claim ownership of an idea that came from India. We should move quickly to claim ownership of what is ours. Yoga is India’s calling card in the world.