http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-new-prime-minister-narendra-modi-wants-to-rebrand-and-promote-yoga-in-india/2014/12/02/7c5291de-7006-11e4-a2c2-478179fd0489_story.html
India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi, aims to rebrand
and promote yoga in India
Indian students of Delhi Public School perform yoga in
Hyderabad on Oct. 20. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has
appointed a yoga minister in a major revamp of his government
in a bid to promote the ancient practice. (NOAH
SEELAM/AFP/Getty Images)
By Annie Gowen December 2
NEW DELHI -- Shripad Yesso Naik, India's new yoga
minister, dreams of a day when sun salutations and
downward-facing dog pose will be as popular in
their homeland as they are around the world.
Yes, India now has a minister of yoga -- and he and his
government want their cultural bliss back.
Indian yogic tradition appears in Hindu texts written
thousands of years ago. But the discipline bears scant
resemblance to the popular exercise regime that has become a
multibillion-dollar industry in the West, home of $90
Lululemon stretch pants and Mommy and Me fitness classes.
In recent weeks, Indian officials have begun efforts to
reclaim yoga for the home team, making plans for a broad
expansion of the wellness practice into all facets of civic
life -- including more than 600,000 schools, and thousands of
hospitals and police training centers. They are spearheading
efforts to promote and protect India's most famous export,
even quietly weighing a "geographical indication" for yoga, a
trade protection normally given to region-specific goods such
as Champagne from France or oranges from Florida.
"There is little doubt about yoga being an Indian art form,"
Naik said. "We're trying to establish to the world that it's
ours."
Newly appointed Indian Yoga Minister Shripad Yesso Naik poses
at his residence in New Delhi on Nov. 10. (PRAKASH
SINGH/AFP/Getty Images)
India's new prime minister, Narendra Modi, is pushing the
effort. The 64-year-old premier rises at 5 a.m. daily for
yoga stretches and deep breathing, and he credits this
regimen with his ability to sleep just a few hours each
night.
"I am equally energetic from morning till night," Modi told
fans during a Google Hangout. "I guess the secret behind it
is yoga and [breathing exercises]. Whenever I feel tired, I
just practice deep breathing and that refreshes me again."
Modi's devotion to the practice is so heartfelt that during
his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly as
prime minister in September, he discussed peace, global
development -- and International Yoga Day.
This disappointed some of his followers, who had hoped that
he would use the grand occasion to say something more
significant; also, there already was a World Yoga Day. But
more than 130 countries have signed on to Modi's proposal,
which the U.N. General Assembly is set to consider Dec. 10.
Although yoga has been a part of India's heritage for
centuries and Westerners flock to the country's ashrams for
enlightenment, it was only in the past two decades or so that
yoga became trendy in India, with studios opening and
Bollywood celebrities making fitness videos.
Some of the credit goes to Baba Ramdev, the saffron-robed
guru who popularized yoga and what he says are its health
effects -- he claims it can reverse homosexuality and cure
cancer and swine flu -- on a morning TV program watched by
millions. Baba Ramdev also is a close ally of Modi's.
"The saints and gurus practiced in the Himalayas
but never took it to the general public," Naik
said. "Only Baba Ramdev knew how to take it to the
people. Now it's our turn to promote it more
vigorously."
India's new embrace comes during an ongoing public debate
over the genesis of yoga and whether the bastardized and
secular versions practiced in the West -- nude yoga, rave
yoga, kickboxing yoga -- are even yoga at all. The discussion
was fueled by The Washington Post's On Faith blog in 2010,
when a board member of the Hindu American Foundation (HAF)
exhorted Hindus to "take back yoga and reclaim the
intellectual property of their spiritual heritage." Mega-guru
Deepak Chopra fired back, saying that "yoga belongs to the
whole world."
Sheetal Shah, a senior director of HAF, which spearheaded the
"Take Back Yoga" campaign, said: "Nobody owns yoga. Our idea
was not to claim ownership; it was just to acknowledge that
the philosophy behind yoga is based in Hinduism."
The Indian government has not been pleased when Western
practitioners of holistic medicine have tried to patent or
copyright the traditional practices. First, there was the
great turmeric war of 1997, after the University of
Mississippi Medical Center patented the healing properties of
turmeric, a spice used in every Indian kitchen and known for
medicinal qualities. The Indian government filed a complaint,
and the patent was revoked. Then Bikram Choudhury, the
Indian-born founder of hot yoga who practices in Los Angeles,
tried to copyright his yoga series.
He was not successful, but Indians learned a lesson. For more
than a decade, they've been building a vast compendium of
age-old medicines and practices, the Traditional Knowledge
Digital Library, which is now available to patent offices
worldwide. They are documenting 1,500 yoga poses, some by
videotape, which will be added online next year to help
prevent the "misappropriation" of yoga by commercial
enterprises, said Archana Sharma, the project's leader.
Meanwhile, Modi, has started a "Make in India" campaign to
boost manufacturing and attract foreign investors to
opportunities in the country, including its $8 billion
wellness industry. Modi said the country had missed the
opportunity to market its industry of yoga and herbal
medicine globally.
In recent days, a new energy enlivened the normally quiet
halls of New Delhi's Morarji Desai National Institute of
Yoga, the government's premier yoga academy, which is helping
implement the regimen's expansion throughout India's public
sphere.
Students and office workers gathered for lunchtime sessions
at the institute, which is named after an Indian prime
minister who once told Dan Rather on "60 Minutes" that he
drank his own urine for medicinal purposes. The practice
rooms were decidedly sparse -- not a candle or top-brand yoga
mat in sight -- and near a library holding volumes of ancient
Vedic texts.
In one room, several students in their 20s who are studying
to be instructors went through a series of asanas, or poses,
and breathing exercises.
They said they were happy that India had begun to promote
yoga.
"The West has manipulated yoga for their own benefits. It's
more like exercise. But traditional yoga is much more than
that; it's ultimately about achieving enlightenment for the
soul," said Tarosh Rao, 25. "It is making us aware of
something that is ours, part of our heritage."
Jalees Andrabi contributed to this report.
Annie Gowen is The Post's India bureau chief and has reported
for the Post throughout South Asia and the Middle East.
