India is making all efforts to get yoga, one of the oldest holistic health systems of India aimed at physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing, the status of the intangible cultural heritage of the UNESCO by 2016.
If this happens, Yoga will be the 31st intangible cultural heritage that has been listed from India so far with the UNESCO.
Sources in the Union Culture Ministry which is a nodal agency to submit the project in the UN cultural and educational body said that Ayush Department of the Health Ministry has been asked to prepare a dossier for yoga.
The sources further said that the documentation processis in a nascent stage and efforts are on to include best streams from the yoga that is being practiced in India for more than five thousand years. The experts are holding brain storming session to deliberate on including the type of practices, parparmparas (traditions) being followed as Yoga is itself an elaborate system.
Inclusion of Yoga in the inscription list with the UNESCO would provide better visibility for the art, help improve its significance besides offering international assistance for its promotion and preservation.
Presently, around 30 performing arts and traditions from India are already on the UNESCO intangible culture heritage list. Kerala’s Mudiyettu (dance drama), Chhau of East India and Kalbelia (snake charmers dance) of Rajasthan are among those in the list.
Others are Buddhist chanting of ladakh, Chaar Bayt (A Muslim tradition in lyrical oral poetry from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Dashavatar (traditional folk theatre) form Maharashtra and Goa, Festival of Salhesh from Bihar, Hingan (Votive Terracotta Painted Plaque) from Molela, Rajasthan, and Kolam (Ritualistic threshold drawings and designs) from Tamil Nadu.
Though Yoga has originated in India, it is the western world that is making the most of it. But the country’s effort to preserve yoga got a major boost last year when the World Health Organisation (WHO) designated Delhi-based Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga as its collaborating centre (CC) for developing research guidelines for yoga studies.
The Institute of PG Training and Research in Ayurveda in Jamnagar in Gujarat has been identified for researches in ayurveda by the WHO.