On Sunday, June 18, New Zealand woke up to a generous display of India’s soft power and civilisational values when hundreds of Yoga enthusiasts gathered at different locations around the country under different banners of equally motivated Yoga gurus and Yoga-preaching organisations to demonstrate their fondness and commitment to this ancient practice of Yoga.
The event was to commemorate and celebrate the third International Yoga Day, which was observed later in the week on June 21.
Indian Weekender keenly supported all the celebrations around the country bringing live from major locations such as Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and reporting about others on the print and web edition.
The occasion brought many individuals, children and families from different walks of life, representing different socio-ethnic background, together on one common platform feeling proud about this ancient practice and the value it brings towards healthy living.
Yoga is a 5,000-year-old practice to foster good mental and physical health widely acknowledged to have originated in the ancient Hindu civilisation.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed the idea of an International Yoga Day to the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) in 2014, which was eventually adopted by the United Nations with the support of 177 countries to celebrate June 21 as International Yoga Day.
The first International Yoga Day was celebrated in 2015, with Indian Prime Minister taking the lead in performing Yoga with a large public gathering of about 35,000 yoga-enthusiasts in New Delhi, which coincided with several simultaneous global events around the world.
Since then, the Indian government has made it a point to demonstrate leadership and ownership of global celebrations of International Yoga Day.
In New Zealand, celebrations were led by Indian High Commissioner Sanjeev Kohli, who was present with his entire team at an event organised at Bharat Bhawan, Wellington, to demonstrate Indian government’s full commitment to support the celebration of Yoga around the world.
However, Indian Association of New Zealand (erstwhile Manukau Indian Association) took the laurels of being the first to organise an event celebrating the International Yoga Day anywhere in the world this year by starting early at 9 am. All other events possibly started a bit later in the day at 10.30 am.
It is important to note that ‘Yoga’ and ‘diaspora’ are two integral components of Indian Prime Minister Modi’s drive toward developing India’s soft power in international politics. ‘Soft power’ in international politics is described by Harvard academic Joseph Nye as "the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments."
Many experts believe that this initiative is a welcome departure from India’s previously noted cultural lethargy, where there was an acute absence of a sense of pride and a concerted push for India’s cultural gifts for the rest of the world.
Today, perhaps a hundred million people in the world practice some form of Yoga. Though asanas remain the main focus, pranayama, mantra and meditation are also included. Yoga training programmes around the world routinely examine traditional Yoga texts like the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita. This obviously provides an added opportunity to share India’s cultural gifts with rest of the world.
The popularity of yoga all around the world has also contributed in some way to the popularity of many spiritual gurus from India, thus spreading the value of Indian culture globally. Great gurus like Paramahansa Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Satya Sai Baba, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Mata Amritanandamayi, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, and many others have become recognisable names in numerous countries. And for many of their disciples, yoga is more a spiritual journey than a mere physical exercise.
In this regard, if Indian government’s motive behind the push for celebrations of International Yoga Day is to spread the values of India’s cultural gifts to the world along with inculcating a sense of pride among people of Indian descent and diaspora around the world so as to create a favourable international image, then this was generously achieved in New Zealand.
The enthusiasm and excitement among participants from different walks of life were abundantly evident and infectious.
Indian Weekender partnered with many Yoga initiatives nationally and took the lead in covering generously many other events were partnership opportunity was not available for the benefit of the entire Indian diaspora in New Zealand who could not be present at these events.