Why faraway nation stands up for yoga

Sandeep Dikshit

In Margarita Island (Venezuela)

Yoga, surprisingly, is an essential ingredient that has helped Venezuelan beauty queens cruise to 21 global titles, a record for any nation. Some aspiring beauty queens are even known to have made the 15,000-km trip to India for picking up the finer points of this ancient Indian art from leading yoga masters, say those in the know.

The addiction to yoga may perhaps be the most savoury aspect of the manner in which an assembly line prepares Venezuelan girls for appraisal by talent scouts of four international beauty contests. India’s winners Aishwarya Rai and Priyanka Chopra, among others, might never have known the extremes which this Latin American country’s girls are subjected to from the age of five.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Yoga-induced mental relaxation does offset the trauma of surgery to shorten intestines so that they eat less and the immense psychological pressure of competitions. But in Venezuela, for reasons none can satisfactorily explain, yoga is a rage. Public parks every morning in the national capital Caracas are full of yoga enthusiasts. It says something for its popularity that yoga flourishes despite just 50 Indians living in Venezuela, although four of them run successful yoga institutes.

How and why did yoga gain popularity in this distant land where Indians generally stand for the indigenous people, now reduced to a minority? Some speculate that yoga might have diffused from Surinam or Guyana, both bordering Venezuela, where people from Bihar and UP brought as indentured labour comprise 25 and 40 per cent of the population, respectively.

Others feel its popularity ratcheted with the advent of Indian spiritualism. The ISKCON temple in Caracas has a large following while the death of Sai Baba of Puttaparthi saw the Venezuelan Parliament passing a unanimous resolution hailing him as “one of the greatest’’ Mahatmas. Taking the cue, Sri Sri Ravishankar visited the country to a rapturous reception and the Brahmakumaris are also treated with respect.  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphasis on yoga has seen the setting up of two Chairs in Venezuelan universities. However, despite the Modi hard sell, the second International Day of Yoga on June 19 this year did not get the anticipated traction. It is said the date clashed with Father’s Day, proclaimed in the US by then President Lyndon Johnson in 1966. The cultural influence of the Yankees evidently is hard to trump in this part of the world despite the prevailing anti-western political orientation.