Whose Yoga Is It Anyway?

As the second International Yoga Day was marked on 21 June, Varun Bidhuri explores various theories of inception of this philosophy as the govt fails to offer historical evidence.

- Varun Bidhuri

Yoga has become the international logo of fitness and mythology in India and across the world after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called upon the global community to declare 21 June as International Yoga Day while addressing the UN General Assembly on 27 September 2014.

The Government of India and Yoga lovers recently marked Yoga Day in Chandigarh. But are the origins of yoga known?

The government of India itself seems clueless about how yoga originated. In response to an RTI seeking information about the inception of Yoga, the government cited a mythological definition of yoga instead of giving a historical account. “According to Shastras, Lord Shiva is the real god of Yoga, he created Yoga. Different Granths give different versions about how yoga originated,” reads the written reply of RTI as possessed by TEHELKA.

Condemning the government’s mythical explanation, well-known historian DN Jha says, “This is all wrong. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his latest address to the US Congress Joint Session, joked that as per Siri there are over 30 million practitioners of Yoga in the US yet India has not claimed intellectual property right for its ancient heritage.”