Culture

The Great Indian Yoga Show: Projecting soft power across continents

- by Manish Chand

It promises to be a spectacular show, inviting the world to revitalize its sinews through the ancient Indian practice of yoking body, mind and spirit. With barely days to go for the first International Yoga Day, the Indian government is leaving no stone unturned to showcase the country’s greatest soft power export to a global audience, cutting across hemispheres and continents.

The UN will commemorate the inaugural edition of International Yoga Day on June 21, with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and General Assembly President Sam Kutesa in attendance. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will represent India at the event, commemorating the first International Day of Yoga at the UN Headquarters in New York. It will be broadcast live at Times Square, the pulsating heart of Manhattan, to a global audience.

Showcasing Soft Power

In a curtain-raiser media event giving a peek into an array of events lined up to celebrate this high moment in yoga’s global journey, Sushma Swaraj eloquently described yoga as “the soft power of India” which can usher in lasting peace for a violence-wracked world.

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Greedy little worlds: Need to reconsider ‘responsible consumerism’

- by India Writes Network

The “greedy little world” that Shania Twain alludes to in her superhit single is not something which we can unfortunately hum along and forget about. The World Environment Day, celebrated globally on June 5, passed by with nothing much happening in India, except the usual call for planting more trees. An interesting comment, however, was made by Union Minister for Science & Technology, Dr Harsh Vardhan, who bringing in the theme of this year’s global events (‘Seven billion dreams. One planet. Consume with care.’), called for “a culture of responsible consumerism”.
Given that revisiting the past glories (imagined and real) of India is in vogue, it may be worthwhile to recall that the pursuit of ‘the good life’ through practice of renunciation of material goods- Vairāgyara (loosely translated as detachment towards worldly possessions) – and respect for all forms of life (with animism surviving even in mainstream religion) has a strong lineage in several socio-religious-cultural traditions of the subcontinent. Invoking these cultures of sharing, community living and responsibility towards all living creatures rather than a watered down Western ideal when giving a broad brush theme for environmental conservation, could then be more useful.

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Holocaust course in Hungary: Remembrance and national identity

- by India Writes Network

A news item likely to go unnoticed by most is that of a university in Hungary making a course on the Holocaust compulsory for all undergraduate students. It is not the content of the course (which is no doubt very important for a discussion on its possible impacts) but a larger context of remembrance- how it shapes national consciousness and its international ramifications- that this article deals with.

Recently, the Peter Pazmany Catholic University, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Hungary, made a course on the holocaust, titled ‘The Holocaust and its Remembrance’, compulsory for all students in its undergraduate program. It’s the kind of news report that is likely to go unnoticed by most, but such an initiative deserves closer reflection and need to be placed in the larger context of remembrance – how it shapes national consciousness and its international ramifications.

Hungarian Jews, too, suffered terribly during the Second World War, with several thousand being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps, into forced labour camps and summarily executed on the banks of the Danube.

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