Sunday Times 2
Has Yoga been of benefit to the land of its origin?
View(s):Indian Premier Narendra Modi demonstrated to the world his country’s power — Soft Power as he claimed — in the sprawling green of New York’s United Nations East Park by the Hudson River on Wednesday morning. The gravel-voiced Indian leader proclaimed that five years ago he asked the United Nations to declare an International Yoga Day and on Tuesday representatives of the 123 nationalities were sprawled out on symmetrically placed mats stretching throughout the UN lawn demonstrating that the world had accepted Yoga, to the benefit of all humanity.
Modi quite patriotically and modestly said that Yoga was made in India millennia ago and his contribution was only the proposal for an International Day for Yoga.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (on screen) leads a session during International Yoga Day at United Nations headquarters in New York City on June 21, 2023. Pic by Ed Jones/AFP
This was in contrast to Narendra Modi at home where it was claimed before multitudes of his followers that all things good and beautiful are made by Narendra Modi and his party, the BJP.
Seated on a stage with Modi were (as we heard on TV), the President of the UN General Assembly, a tough-looking black mayor of New York, and two women instructors in Yoga who were to conduct the first-ever universal demonstration of the ancient practice. Modi was in white longs and white shirt, sans the traditional skirt that went around his national dress, and so were most participants.
Modi extolled Yoga: Yoga was peace, yoga was love, yoga was joy and happiness, it was a way of life; it brought together the working of the forces of nature and humanity together and so many good things.
Modi’s claims on yogic virtues were strongly endorsed by the UN head, the tough-looking New York Mayor responsible for keeping law and order in the city known for violent crimes being committed every minute, and also by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who addressed the gathering on video. They certainly did not seem to be practitioners of Yoga— the Indian art/science.
This writer, being a sceptic and rationalist and never having attempted Yoga, found this near-universal unanimity on the virtues of Yoga somewhat jarring. Our memory went back to a saying we accepted decades ago: When two people agree on everything on a subject, only one person has done the thinking. Thus, when the whole world says it is unanimous in its opinion on Yoga, who has done the thinking?
This writer not having tried out Yoga cannot comment on the efficacy of this universally recommended panacea.
However, about the sponsor of Yoga Day, we are certain that UN and American diplomats are quite familiar with his contributions towards all living beings since he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. The development of diplomatic amnesia is well known in international relations such as Modi being denied a visa to enter the United States.
The biggest issue that comes to our mind is whether Yoga which is claimed to bring peace joy, happiness, and better understanding among humans etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, has resulted in the manifestation of these effects on the people of the land of the origin of Yoga, India, in the eons it has been practised in that land?
Apparently not.
Without delving into ancient history, let’s reflect on the Lok Sabha elections of 2019 won by Modi and the BJP. Twenty percent or more than 150 current Lok Sabha members have been accused of criminal offences.
According to the NGO Association for Democratic Reform (ADR), 233 members–43 percent–have criminal charges against them; 29 cases are connected with rape, murder or crime against women. All those who fall into the criminal category would not be solely from Modi’s party. But they are products of the Land of Yoga and have not been touched by it.
In the ranking of the Global Hunger Index, (for the year 2022), India ranked 107 of 121 countries and is behind Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Are we being geopolitically heretical, trying to focus on the dark side of a rising world power whose leader is given ‘rockstar receptions’ wherever he goes–by the expatriate Indian community, of course?
Grateful Lankans are with Modi. Didn’t he give us billion-dollar loans when we were going round and round in queues in Colombo and other towns for gas, diesel, fuel, bread, milk powder and candles when the power went off the national grid? He only wants India to control Trincomalee harbour, the oil tank farm, other ports around the islands, the northern islands, and the administration of the north and East. He is still continuing to provide security by sending submarines into the Colombo port. Who is going to invade us? It can’t be China because they consistently stood by us providing us with armaments and finance in the terrorist War.
That is why we are trying to be Indian in every way. Days before Modi stretched himself out on the UN lawns, we staged another demonstration at Independence Square with the Indian High Commissioner teaching us how to breathe alongside Lanka’s notables and preferably ‘unquotables’–swinging our hands, bodies and legs. This was a part of India’s International Day of Yoga and we Lankans had to be joyously, a part of it.
A new feature to Yoga was contributed by Sri Lanka–umbrellas being held over the self-appointed VIPs’ heads to protect them. Our ‘VIPs’ do not seem to be accustomed to sun or rain.
Demonstrations of the glorious benefits of Yoga should we thought be held not in the UN’s East Lawn by the Hudson or at Colombo’s Independence Square but in Kashmir where Peace, joy and a way of life could be demonstrated as well as in Ladakh and the Line of Actual Control where military confrontation is the order of the day.
(The writer is a former editor of The Sunday Island, The Island and consultant editor of the Sunday Leader)