International support vindicates Modi’s UN call
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi had proposed an International Day for Yoga at the UN General Assembly in September, his critics at home panned him for bringing up what they believed was a parochial issue at an international forum. They had sniggered at his efforts to supposedly go all desi and sought to portray him as a country bumpkin. Especially his comment on how yoga could help fight climate change by connecting the individual to his natural environment, was taken out of context and singled out for harsh criticism. Now, all these detractors have been silenced as 50 nations have signed up to co-sponsor India's draft resolution at the UN to declare June 21 as the International Yoga Day.
The resolution has already received the support of some of the most powerful countries in the world, including the US and China. It has also found favour with India's neighbours in the sub-continent such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri lanka, as well as other Asian powers such as Indonesia, Japan and South Korea. Even countries with who India doesn't share deep civilisational linkages such as Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Nigeria, have joined hands. In fact, Indian diplomats at the UN are optimistic that the proposal will be adopted by the end of the year. If all goes according to plan, and the first International Day for Yoga is indeed celebrated in 2015, it will be a major victory for Prime Minister Modi, who would have scripted the first official global acknowledgement of sorts of India's tremendous soft power.
Equally importantly, a UN-sanctioned International Day would also contribute significantly to yoga's mainstreaming process worldwide. Though the West has been familiar with yoga since the late 19th century, even up until a few decades ago, yoga practitioners were mostly considered to have an ‘alternate' lifestyle. For many, yoga also came with religious and cultural baggage. But popular perceptions have changed over time and today most people accept yoga for what it is: A holistic set of physical, mental and spiritual practices that brings about harmony within the body, mind and soul. Though it stems from Hindu philosophy, yoga is essentially a ‘secular' regime for individual well being.
The rising popularity of yoga can be judged from the fact that an unofficial World Yoga Day is already being celebrated since 2007. In fact, the next one is scheduled for February 22, 2015. In the US alone, there were 20.4 million people who regularly practiced yoga in 2012, up 29 per cent from the 15.8 million practitioners reported in a similar study in 2008. Even the White House now openly promotes yoga, which has also been adopted by some state-funded US schools, otherwise required to keep religion out of the curriculum. In the conservative Muslim world too, yoga has found many followers — Iran and Turkey are good examples — although there is still some resistance from religious hardliners.