Should Indian Schools and Universities Teach Yoga?

As nearly 80% of the 1.3 billion people of India are Hindus, it becomes a virtual compulsion for all political parties to woo Hindu voters. Politicians, therefore, play all types of tricks to bind Hindus with common threads. Yoga is one of them.

By Rakesh Raman

The unemployment in India is spiralling at such a threatening pace that it has become almost impossible for even post-graduates and Ph.D. degree holders to get a job. Most of them are running in a mad scramble to get even a peon’s job.

But here is a strange paradox. An uneducated woman has managed to become the education / Human Resource Development (HRD) minister of India. As it is expected of her, she is hell-bent to destroy the entire education edifice of the country.

Today, the employment situation and education systems are equally bad in all parts of the country. It is reflected in the worsening Human Development Index (HDI) of India which falls at a poor rank of 130 in the world.

But instead of improving the general quality of education in the country, the education minister has decided to change the focus toward an utterly useless pursuit – Yoga, which is being promoted as an exercise for Hindus.

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The education minister reveals that six Central Universities of India will have full-fledged Yoga departments from academic session 2016-17 and the number would be raised to 20 within one year.

She also said that in view of significant role of Yoga in life, her HRD ministry has taken steps to popularize yoga from school to university levels.

It seems that this illiterate woman was made the education minister just to dance as a puppet whose strings are in the hands of the Hindu regime BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. An educated education minister would have resisted the promotion of Yoga.

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But why is the BJP government so eager to promote Yoga? Yoga is largely a Hindu-only exercise, as it was first practiced in ancient India by Hindu Sanyasis (or ascetics) as part of their lifelong practice of self-denial.

However, the Hindu politicians in India – in their attempt to spread Hinduism or the poison of religion across the world – are trying to deceptively position Yoga as a universal human need.

Recently Rajnath Singh, another BJP government minister in India, said that Yoga has a universal appeal and it cuts across all religions. He was speaking at a three-day International Yoga Fest in New Delhi.

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Rajnath Singh also expressed that Yoga is getting popular because of the “vision of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi” who is a Hindu politician.

The Modi-led BJP, which is an overtly Hindu party, has gone to an extreme to make India a Hindu Rashtra (a nation only for people who belong to the Hindu religion).

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Recently, Modi and BJP joined hands with a Hindu leader who is commercializing Yoga and selling it as a proprietary service. Modi even participated in the Hindu event which was mostly attended by hired singers, dancers, and the workers of RSS, the parent organization of BJP.

While Hindu leaders of India are spreading Hinduism under the garb of Yoga, there is hardly any scientific evidence that says Yoga is good for human body. It is a dull drill that does not even warm your body up.

Actually, doctors and scientists suggest that physical exertion with sweating is a must if you want to stay fit. That’s why athletes, players, and physically fit actors go to gymnasiums. They don’t sit like a tortoise on a jute mat to perform Yoga.

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Yoga being a passive exercise makes you lazy and lethargic, although modern Yogis try to falsely convince themselves that they are getting healthier. Hindu Sanyasis in ancient India never performed Yoga as a physical exercise. They adopted it as a mind-control method, which was part of a series of actions toward self-discipline and selflessness.

In fact, self-denial is a prerequisite to perform Yoga. In the current world full of greed and selfishness, Yoga is an utterly useless practice and therefore it will be difficult to find any person around you who is eligible to perform Yoga.

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But Modi and his friends – with their eyes on Hindu votes – are trying to create a country-wide Hindu group tied with the falsehood of Yoga. Similarly, they want to draw the attention of Hindus who are spread across the world by saying Yoga has a universal appeal.

Now, Modi-led BJP wants to promote Yoga in schools and universities as a Hindu exercise produced and directed by BJP because today’s students will be tomorrow’s voters.

But it is only a hogwash. Let’s stay away from the Yoga being preached by the Hindu politicians and fraudsters related to them.

By Rakesh Raman, the managing editor of RMN Company

Photo courtesy: Press Information Bureau