UNO declared June 21 as global Yoga day

Yoga Purush, Yug Purush

New Delhi, December 12: There is absolutely no doubt that Yoga is the most effective tool for preventive health and is being practiced the world over to keep diseases at bay. But India pulled off a coup of sorts by getting UNO to include Yoga, its traditional genre for keeping body in the pink of health, into the pantheon of myriad global health days.The international body on Thursday (11 December) declared June 21 as International Day of Yoga. Though Baba Ramdeo is generally credited with making Yoga a household name in India, this one belongs to PM Narendra Modi, the veritable zeitgeist. Modi had made a call for this in September in his maiden address to the U.N. General assembly in New York. He had proposed that world body should work towards adopting an International Yoga day. On Thursday (December 11), 177 countries co-sponsored the resolution to establish a global yoga day.

That the world body moved so swiftly on PM Modi’s Yoga global day proposal, speaks a volume about Yoga’s effectiveness in keeping people hale and hearty. Modi himself is an avid practitioner of Yoga and his unbounded energy and stamina for work is said to be the outcome of his yogic way of life. Though Muslim and Christian clerics oppose Yoga (as being a Hindu Health tool), there is a good chunk of people in these communities too who practice yoga on the sly to keep healthy.

Even modern practitioners of medicine concede Yoga’s great effectiveness in saving people from diseases and they themselves practice it to keep healthy but they have serious reservations about Yoga being touted as a curative tool for diseases. They warn that people already suffering from serious diseases, especially heart patients, should cautiously use it under the supervision of doctor or there could be serious outcomes too. They also concede that if yoga is used in the treatment of some disease with modern medicine under the supervision of experts, the rate of recovery could enhance manifold and it can save body from side effects of modern medicines. But they vigorously contest any idea of Yoga being an alternative to modern and scientific curative system.

However, all said and done, UNO’s move of declaring date for global Yoga day has enhanced its standing a great deal globally.