World Yoga Day (but without rules)
On the summer solstice for the past eight years, the Indian government has publicly celebrated the practice as a form of natural medicine. But on the domestic front it continues to delay the adoption of a national law defining who is really entitled to teach it.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) - After two years of forced suspension due to Covid-19, India returned today to publicly celebrate International Yoga Day on the summer solstice. Narendra Modi, who pursued its institution at the UN when he took office as prime minister in 2014, personally participated this morning in a mass exercise session in the palace grounds of Mysore in the state of Karnataka, where he is currently visiting to inaugurate some infrastructure projects.
All over India public tributes to yoga are multiplying, from Bollywood stars to the army, which has released which has released images of soldiers engaged in different postures on their mats under the Himalayan mountains.
On this very day, however, India's online newspaper The Wire points out a major paradox in the midst of this revival: despite all the attention the nationalist BJP government is devoting to the culture of this discipline for the health of body and spirit, India's parliament has so far been unable to pass a law defining who is really entitled to teach it.
It is the only one of the so-called Ayush disciplines (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and naturopathy and Homoeopathy) that does not provide a national register for those who promote it. With the paradox that both those who have taken a university course and those who have learned the positions in a few weeks' seminar can freely teach yoga classes.
All this has spawned a proliferation of initiatives that are capitalizing on the wave, but-claim some natural medicine experts-without the proper knowledge even this practice can put health at risk rather than promote it. The Modi government has so far defended itself by claiming that since it does not involve the use of drugs a registry would not be necessary.
But The Wire reports the concerns of the Indian Naturopathy and Yoga Graduate Medical Association (INYGMA), which says it encounters people every day with a condition made worse by misguidance by an unregistered practitioner. "If a person with hypertension practices the Kapalbhati technique, his or her blood pressure will rise and even a stroke may occur," protests President Naveen Visweswaraiah. "Similarly, Bhastrika-also known as hyperventilation-can trigger seizures. These are conditions that should also be checked with thorough examinations."
More than 50 parliamentarians from different sides of the aisle reportedly asked the Modi government to take action on the matter. The Ministry of Ayush responded that it would be considering legislation. But in eight years it has not yet arrived, so as not to displease anyone in the vast world in India around this discipline.
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