☀️ JOIN SPN MOBILE
Forums
New posts
Guru Granth Sahib
Composition, Arrangement & Layout
ਜਪੁ | Jup
ਸੋ ਦਰੁ | So Dar
ਸੋਹਿਲਾ | Sohilaa
ਰਾਗੁ ਸਿਰੀਰਾਗੁ | Raag Siree-Raag
Gurbani (14-53)
Ashtpadiyan (53-71)
Gurbani (71-74)
Pahre (74-78)
Chhant (78-81)
Vanjara (81-82)
Vaar Siri Raag (83-91)
Bhagat Bani (91-93)
ਰਾਗੁ ਮਾਝ | Raag Maajh
Gurbani (94-109)
Ashtpadi (109)
Ashtpadiyan (110-129)
Ashtpadi (129-130)
Ashtpadiyan (130-133)
Bara Maha (133-136)
Din Raen (136-137)
Vaar Maajh Ki (137-150)
ਰਾਗੁ ਗਉੜੀ | Raag Gauree
Gurbani (151-185)
Quartets/Couplets (185-220)
Ashtpadiyan (220-234)
Karhalei (234-235)
Ashtpadiyan (235-242)
Chhant (242-249)
Baavan Akhari (250-262)
Sukhmani (262-296)
Thittee (296-300)
Gauree kii Vaar (300-323)
Gurbani (323-330)
Ashtpadiyan (330-340)
Baavan Akhari (340-343)
Thintteen (343-344)
Vaar Kabir (344-345)
Bhagat Bani (345-346)
ਰਾਗੁ ਆਸਾ | Raag Aasaa
Gurbani (347-348)
Chaupaday (348-364)
Panchpadde (364-365)
Kaafee (365-409)
Aasaavaree (409-411)
Ashtpadiyan (411-432)
Patee (432-435)
Chhant (435-462)
Vaar Aasaa (462-475)
Bhagat Bani (475-488)
ਰਾਗੁ ਗੂਜਰੀ | Raag Goojaree
Gurbani (489-503)
Ashtpadiyan (503-508)
Vaar Gujari (508-517)
Vaar Gujari (517-526)
ਰਾਗੁ ਦੇਵਗੰਧਾਰੀ | Raag Dayv-Gandhaaree
Gurbani (527-536)
ਰਾਗੁ ਬਿਹਾਗੜਾ | Raag Bihaagraa
Gurbani (537-556)
Chhant (538-548)
Vaar Bihaagraa (548-556)
ਰਾਗੁ ਵਡਹੰਸ | Raag Wadhans
Gurbani (557-564)
Ashtpadiyan (564-565)
Chhant (565-575)
Ghoriaan (575-578)
Alaahaniiaa (578-582)
Vaar Wadhans (582-594)
ਰਾਗੁ ਸੋਰਠਿ | Raag Sorath
Gurbani (595-634)
Asatpadhiya (634-642)
Vaar Sorath (642-659)
ਰਾਗੁ ਧਨਾਸਰੀ | Raag Dhanasaree
Gurbani (660-685)
Astpadhiya (685-687)
Chhant (687-691)
Bhagat Bani (691-695)
ਰਾਗੁ ਜੈਤਸਰੀ | Raag Jaitsree
Gurbani (696-703)
Chhant (703-705)
Vaar Jaitsaree (705-710)
Bhagat Bani (710)
ਰਾਗੁ ਟੋਡੀ | Raag Todee
ਰਾਗੁ ਬੈਰਾੜੀ | Raag Bairaaree
ਰਾਗੁ ਤਿਲੰਗ | Raag Tilang
Gurbani (721-727)
Bhagat Bani (727)
ਰਾਗੁ ਸੂਹੀ | Raag Suhi
Gurbani (728-750)
Ashtpadiyan (750-761)
Kaafee (761-762)
Suchajee (762)
Gunvantee (763)
Chhant (763-785)
Vaar Soohee (785-792)
Bhagat Bani (792-794)
ਰਾਗੁ ਬਿਲਾਵਲੁ | Raag Bilaaval
Gurbani (795-831)
Ashtpadiyan (831-838)
Thitteen (838-840)
Vaar Sat (841-843)
Chhant (843-848)
Vaar Bilaaval (849-855)
Bhagat Bani (855-858)
ਰਾਗੁ ਗੋਂਡ | Raag Gond
Gurbani (859-869)
Ashtpadiyan (869)
Bhagat Bani (870-875)
ਰਾਗੁ ਰਾਮਕਲੀ | Raag Ramkalee
Ashtpadiyan (902-916)
Gurbani (876-902)
Anand (917-922)
Sadd (923-924)
Chhant (924-929)
Dakhnee (929-938)
Sidh Gosat (938-946)
Vaar Ramkalee (947-968)
ਰਾਗੁ ਨਟ ਨਾਰਾਇਨ | Raag Nat Narayan
Gurbani (975-980)
Ashtpadiyan (980-983)
ਰਾਗੁ ਮਾਲੀ ਗਉੜਾ | Raag Maalee Gauraa
Gurbani (984-988)
Bhagat Bani (988)
ਰਾਗੁ ਮਾਰੂ | Raag Maaroo
Gurbani (889-1008)
Ashtpadiyan (1008-1014)
Kaafee (1014-1016)
Ashtpadiyan (1016-1019)
Anjulian (1019-1020)
Solhe (1020-1033)
Dakhni (1033-1043)
ਰਾਗੁ ਤੁਖਾਰੀ | Raag Tukhaari
Bara Maha (1107-1110)
Chhant (1110-1117)
ਰਾਗੁ ਕੇਦਾਰਾ | Raag Kedara
Gurbani (1118-1123)
Bhagat Bani (1123-1124)
ਰਾਗੁ ਭੈਰਉ | Raag Bhairo
Gurbani (1125-1152)
Partaal (1153)
Ashtpadiyan (1153-1167)
ਰਾਗੁ ਬਸੰਤੁ | Raag Basant
Gurbani (1168-1187)
Ashtpadiyan (1187-1193)
Vaar Basant (1193-1196)
ਰਾਗੁ ਸਾਰਗ | Raag Saarag
Gurbani (1197-1200)
Partaal (1200-1231)
Ashtpadiyan (1232-1236)
Chhant (1236-1237)
Vaar Saarang (1237-1253)
ਰਾਗੁ ਮਲਾਰ | Raag Malaar
Gurbani (1254-1293)
Partaal (1265-1273)
Ashtpadiyan (1273-1278)
Chhant (1278)
Vaar Malaar (1278-91)
Bhagat Bani (1292-93)
ਰਾਗੁ ਕਾਨੜਾ | Raag Kaanraa
Gurbani (1294-96)
Partaal (1296-1318)
Ashtpadiyan (1308-1312)
Chhant (1312)
Vaar Kaanraa
Bhagat Bani (1318)
ਰਾਗੁ ਕਲਿਆਨ | Raag Kalyaan
Gurbani (1319-23)
Ashtpadiyan (1323-26)
ਰਾਗੁ ਪ੍ਰਭਾਤੀ | Raag Prabhaatee
Gurbani (1327-1341)
Ashtpadiyan (1342-51)
ਰਾਗੁ ਜੈਜਾਵੰਤੀ | Raag Jaijaiwanti
Gurbani (1352-53)
Salok | Gatha | Phunahe | Chaubole | Swayiye
Sehskritee Mahala 1
Sehskritee Mahala 5
Gaathaa Mahala 5
Phunhay Mahala 5
Chaubolae Mahala 5
Shaloks Bhagat Kabir
Shaloks Sheikh Farid
Swaiyyae Mahala 5
Swaiyyae in Praise of Gurus
Shaloks in Addition To Vaars
Shalok Ninth Mehl
Mundavanee Mehl 5
ਰਾਗ ਮਾਲਾ, Raag Maalaa
What's new
New posts
New media
New media comments
New resources
Latest activity
Videos
New media
New comments
Library
Latest reviews
Donate
Log in
Register
What's new
New posts
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Welcome to all New Sikh Philosophy Network Forums!
Explore Sikh Sikhi Sikhism...
Sign up
Log in
Discussions
Hard Talk
Interviews
Indian-Americans Hindu Group Stirs A Debate Over Yoga's Soul
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Archived_Member16" data-source="post: 137714" data-attributes="member: 884"><p style="text-align: left"><strong><span style="font-size: 18px"><span style="color: navy">Indian-Americans Hindu group stirs a debate over yoga's soul</span></span></strong></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">Paul Vitello, NYT News Service, Nov 28, 2010, 11.42am IST</span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy"><strong>NEW YORK:</strong> </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Yoga" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy">Yoga</span></a><span style="color: navy"> is practiced by about 15 million people in the </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/United-States" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy">United States</span></a><span style="color: navy">, for reasons almost as numerous — from the physical benefits mapped in brain scans to the less tangible rewards that New Age journals call spiritual centering. Religion, for the most part, has nothing to do with it. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">But a group of Indian-Americans has ignited a surprisingly fierce debate in the gentle world of yoga by mounting a campaign to acquaint Westerners with the faith that it says underlies every single yoga style followed in gyms, ashrams and spas: Hinduism. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">The campaign, labeled "Take Back Yoga," does not ask yoga devotees to become Hindu, or instructors to teach more about Hinduism. The small but increasingly influential group behind it, the Hindu American Foundation, suggests only that people become more aware of yoga's debt to the faith's ancient traditions. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">That suggestion, modest though it may seem, has drawn a flurry of strong reactions from figures far apart on the religious spectrum. Dr </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Deepak-Chopra" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy">Deepak Chopra</span></a><span style="color: navy">, the New Age writer, has dismissed the campaign as a jumble of faulty history and Hindu nationalism. R Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has said he agrees that yoga is Hindu — and cited that as evidence that the practice imperiled the souls of Christians who engage in it. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">The question at the core of the debate — who owns yoga? — has become an enduring topic of chatter in yoga Web forums, Hindu American newspapers and journals catering to the many consumers of what is now a multibillion-dollar yoga industry. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">In June, it even prompted the Indian government to begin making digital copies of ancient drawings showing the provenance of more than 4,000 yoga poses, to discourage further claims by entrepreneurs like Bikram Choudhury, an Indian-born yoga instructor to the stars who is based in </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Los-Angeles" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy">Los Angeles</span></a><span style="color: navy">. Mr Choudhury nettled Indian officials in 2007 when he copyrighted his personal style of 26 yoga poses as "Bikram Yoga." </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">Organizers of the Take Back Yoga effort point out that the philosophy of yoga was first described in Hinduism's seminal texts and remains at the core of Hindu teaching. Yet, because the religion has been stereotyped in the West as a polytheistic faith of "castes, cows and curry," they say, most Americans prefer to see yoga as the legacy of a more timeless, spiritual "Indian wisdom." </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">"In a way," said Dr Aseem Shukla, the foundation's co-founder, "our issue is that yoga has thrived, but </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Hinduism" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy">Hinduism</span></a><span style="color: navy"> has lost control of the brand." </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">For many practitioners, including Debbie Desmond, 27, a yoga instructor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the talk of branding and ownership is bewildering. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">"Nobody owns yoga," she said, sitting cross-legged in her studio, Namaste Yoga, and tilting her head as if the notion sketched an impossible yoga position she had never seen. "Yoga is not a religion. It is a way of life, a method of becoming. We were taught that the roots of yoga go back further than Hinduism itself." </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">Like Dr Chopra and some religious historians, Ms Desmond believes that yoga originated in the Vedic culture of Indo-Europeans who settled in </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/India" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy">India</span></a><span style="color: navy"> in the third millennium BC, long before the tradition now called Hinduism emerged. Other historians trace the first written description of yoga to the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred Hindu scripture believed to have been written between the fifth and second centuries BC. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">The effort to "take back" yoga began quietly enough, with a scholarly essay posted in January on the Web site of the Hindu American Foundation, a Minneapolis-based group that promotes human rights for Hindu minorities worldwide. The essay lamented a perceived snub in modern yoga culture, saying that yoga magazines and studios had assiduously decoupled the practice "from the Hinduism that gave forth this immense contribution to humanity." </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">Dr Shukla put a sharper point on his case a few months later in a column on the On Faith blog of The Washington Post. Hinduism, he wrote, had become a victim of "overt intellectual property theft," made possible by generations of Hindu yoga teachers who had "offered up a religion's spiritual wealth at the altar of crass commercialism." </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">That drew the attention of Dr Chopra, an Indian-American who has done much to popularize Indian traditions like alternative medicine and yoga. He posted a reply saying that Hinduism was too "tribal" and "self-enclosed" to claim ownership of yoga. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">The fight went viral — or as viral as things can get in a narrow Web corridor frequented by yoga enthusiasts, Hindu Americans and religion scholars. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">Loriliai Biernacki, a professor of Indian religions at the University of </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Colorado" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy">Colorado</span></a><span style="color: navy">, said the debate had raised important issues about a spectrum of Hindu concepts permeating American culture, including meditation, belief in karma and reincarnation, and even cremation. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">"All these ideas are Hindu in origin, and they are spreading," she said. "But they are doing it in a way that leaves behind the proper name, the box that classifies them as 'Hinduism.' " </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">The debate has also secured the standing of the </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Hindu American Foundation" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy">Hindu American Foundation</span></a><span style="color: navy"> as the pre-eminent voice for the country's two million Hindus, said Diana L Eck, a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard. Other groups represent Indian-Americans' interests in business and politics, but the foundation has emerged as "the first major national advocacy group looking at Hindu identity," she said. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">The debate has also secured the standing of the Hindu American Foundation as the pre-eminent voice for the country's two million Hindus, said Diana L Eck, a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard. Other groups represent Indian-Americans' interests in business and politics, but the foundation has emerged as "the first major national advocacy group looking at Hindu identity," she said. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">Dr Shukla said reaction to the yoga campaign had far exceeded his expectations. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">"We started this, really, for our kids," said Dr. Shukla, a urologist and a second-generation Indian-American. "When our kids go to school and say they are Hindu, nobody says, 'Oh, yeah, Hindus gave the world yoga.' They say, 'What caste are you?' Or 'Do you pray to a monkey god?' Because that's all Americans know about Hinduism." </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">With its tiny budget, the foundation has pressed its campaign largely by generating buzz through letters and Web postings to academic journals and yoga magazines. The September issue of Yoga Journal, which has the largest circulation in the field, alluded to the campaign, if fleetingly, in an article calling yoga's "true history a mystery." </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">The effort has been received most favorably by Indian-American community leaders like Dr Uma V Mysorekar, the president of the </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Hindu Temple Society of North America" target="_blank"><span style="color: navy">Hindu Temple Society of North America</span></a><span style="color: navy">, in Flushing, Queens, which helps groups across the country build temples. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">A naturalized immigrant, she said Take Back Yoga represented a coming-of-age for Indians in the United States. "My generation was too busy establishing itself in business and the professions," she said. "Now, the second and third generation is looking around and finding its voice, saying, 'Our civilization has made contributions to the world, and these should be acknowledged.'" </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">In the basement of the society's Ganesha Temple, an hourlong yoga class ended one recent Sunday morning with a long exhalation of the sacred syllable "om." Via the lung power of 60 students, it sounded as deeply as a blast from the organ at St Patrick's Cathedral. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">After the session, which began and concluded with Hindu prayers, many students said they were practicing Hindus and in complete sympathy with the yoga campaign. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">Not all were, though. Shweta Parmar, 35, a community organizer and project director for a health and meditation group, said she had grown up in a Hindu household. "Yoga is part of the tradition I come from," she said. </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy">But is yoga specifically Hindu? She paused to ponder. "My parents are Hindu," she said. But in matters of yoga, "I don't use that term." </span></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left"><span style="color: navy"><strong>source:</strong> </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/7004072.cms?prtpage=1" target="_blank"><u><span style="color: navy">http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/7004072.cms?prtpage=1</span></u></a></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Archived_Member16, post: 137714, member: 884"] [LEFT][B][SIZE=5][COLOR=navy]Indian-Americans Hindu group stirs a debate over yoga's soul[/COLOR][/SIZE][/B][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]Paul Vitello, NYT News Service, Nov 28, 2010, 11.42am IST[/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy][B]NEW YORK:[/B] [/COLOR][URL="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Yoga"][COLOR=navy]Yoga[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=navy] is practiced by about 15 million people in the [/COLOR][URL="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/United-States"][COLOR=navy]United States[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=navy], for reasons almost as numerous — from the physical benefits mapped in brain scans to the less tangible rewards that New Age journals call spiritual centering. Religion, for the most part, has nothing to do with it. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]But a group of Indian-Americans has ignited a surprisingly fierce debate in the gentle world of yoga by mounting a campaign to acquaint Westerners with the faith that it says underlies every single yoga style followed in gyms, ashrams and spas: Hinduism. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]The campaign, labeled "Take Back Yoga," does not ask yoga devotees to become Hindu, or instructors to teach more about Hinduism. The small but increasingly influential group behind it, the Hindu American Foundation, suggests only that people become more aware of yoga's debt to the faith's ancient traditions. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]That suggestion, modest though it may seem, has drawn a flurry of strong reactions from figures far apart on the religious spectrum. Dr [/COLOR][URL="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Deepak-Chopra"][COLOR=navy]Deepak Chopra[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=navy], the New Age writer, has dismissed the campaign as a jumble of faulty history and Hindu nationalism. R Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has said he agrees that yoga is Hindu — and cited that as evidence that the practice imperiled the souls of Christians who engage in it. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]The question at the core of the debate — who owns yoga? — has become an enduring topic of chatter in yoga Web forums, Hindu American newspapers and journals catering to the many consumers of what is now a multibillion-dollar yoga industry. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]In June, it even prompted the Indian government to begin making digital copies of ancient drawings showing the provenance of more than 4,000 yoga poses, to discourage further claims by entrepreneurs like Bikram Choudhury, an Indian-born yoga instructor to the stars who is based in [/COLOR][URL="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Los-Angeles"][COLOR=navy]Los Angeles[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=navy]. Mr Choudhury nettled Indian officials in 2007 when he copyrighted his personal style of 26 yoga poses as "Bikram Yoga." [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]Organizers of the Take Back Yoga effort point out that the philosophy of yoga was first described in Hinduism's seminal texts and remains at the core of Hindu teaching. Yet, because the religion has been stereotyped in the West as a polytheistic faith of "castes, cows and curry," they say, most Americans prefer to see yoga as the legacy of a more timeless, spiritual "Indian wisdom." [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]"In a way," said Dr Aseem Shukla, the foundation's co-founder, "our issue is that yoga has thrived, but [/COLOR][URL="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Hinduism"][COLOR=navy]Hinduism[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=navy] has lost control of the brand." [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]For many practitioners, including Debbie Desmond, 27, a yoga instructor in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the talk of branding and ownership is bewildering. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]"Nobody owns yoga," she said, sitting cross-legged in her studio, Namaste Yoga, and tilting her head as if the notion sketched an impossible yoga position she had never seen. "Yoga is not a religion. It is a way of life, a method of becoming. We were taught that the roots of yoga go back further than Hinduism itself." [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]Like Dr Chopra and some religious historians, Ms Desmond believes that yoga originated in the Vedic culture of Indo-Europeans who settled in [/COLOR][URL="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/India"][COLOR=navy]India[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=navy] in the third millennium BC, long before the tradition now called Hinduism emerged. Other historians trace the first written description of yoga to the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred Hindu scripture believed to have been written between the fifth and second centuries BC. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]The effort to "take back" yoga began quietly enough, with a scholarly essay posted in January on the Web site of the Hindu American Foundation, a Minneapolis-based group that promotes human rights for Hindu minorities worldwide. The essay lamented a perceived snub in modern yoga culture, saying that yoga magazines and studios had assiduously decoupled the practice "from the Hinduism that gave forth this immense contribution to humanity." [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]Dr Shukla put a sharper point on his case a few months later in a column on the On Faith blog of The Washington Post. Hinduism, he wrote, had become a victim of "overt intellectual property theft," made possible by generations of Hindu yoga teachers who had "offered up a religion's spiritual wealth at the altar of crass commercialism." [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]That drew the attention of Dr Chopra, an Indian-American who has done much to popularize Indian traditions like alternative medicine and yoga. He posted a reply saying that Hinduism was too "tribal" and "self-enclosed" to claim ownership of yoga. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]The fight went viral — or as viral as things can get in a narrow Web corridor frequented by yoga enthusiasts, Hindu Americans and religion scholars. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]Loriliai Biernacki, a professor of Indian religions at the University of [/COLOR][URL="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Colorado"][COLOR=navy]Colorado[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=navy], said the debate had raised important issues about a spectrum of Hindu concepts permeating American culture, including meditation, belief in karma and reincarnation, and even cremation. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]"All these ideas are Hindu in origin, and they are spreading," she said. "But they are doing it in a way that leaves behind the proper name, the box that classifies them as 'Hinduism.' " [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]The debate has also secured the standing of the [/COLOR][URL="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Hindu American Foundation"][COLOR=navy]Hindu American Foundation[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=navy] as the pre-eminent voice for the country's two million Hindus, said Diana L Eck, a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard. Other groups represent Indian-Americans' interests in business and politics, but the foundation has emerged as "the first major national advocacy group looking at Hindu identity," she said. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]The debate has also secured the standing of the Hindu American Foundation as the pre-eminent voice for the country's two million Hindus, said Diana L Eck, a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard. Other groups represent Indian-Americans' interests in business and politics, but the foundation has emerged as "the first major national advocacy group looking at Hindu identity," she said. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]Dr Shukla said reaction to the yoga campaign had far exceeded his expectations. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]"We started this, really, for our kids," said Dr. Shukla, a urologist and a second-generation Indian-American. "When our kids go to school and say they are Hindu, nobody says, 'Oh, yeah, Hindus gave the world yoga.' They say, 'What caste are you?' Or 'Do you pray to a monkey god?' Because that's all Americans know about Hinduism." [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]With its tiny budget, the foundation has pressed its campaign largely by generating buzz through letters and Web postings to academic journals and yoga magazines. The September issue of Yoga Journal, which has the largest circulation in the field, alluded to the campaign, if fleetingly, in an article calling yoga's "true history a mystery." [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]The effort has been received most favorably by Indian-American community leaders like Dr Uma V Mysorekar, the president of the [/COLOR][URL="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/search?q=Hindu Temple Society of North America"][COLOR=navy]Hindu Temple Society of North America[/COLOR][/URL][COLOR=navy], in Flushing, Queens, which helps groups across the country build temples. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]A naturalized immigrant, she said Take Back Yoga represented a coming-of-age for Indians in the United States. "My generation was too busy establishing itself in business and the professions," she said. "Now, the second and third generation is looking around and finding its voice, saying, 'Our civilization has made contributions to the world, and these should be acknowledged.'" [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]In the basement of the society's Ganesha Temple, an hourlong yoga class ended one recent Sunday morning with a long exhalation of the sacred syllable "om." Via the lung power of 60 students, it sounded as deeply as a blast from the organ at St Patrick's Cathedral. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]After the session, which began and concluded with Hindu prayers, many students said they were practicing Hindus and in complete sympathy with the yoga campaign. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]Not all were, though. Shweta Parmar, 35, a community organizer and project director for a health and meditation group, said she had grown up in a Hindu household. "Yoga is part of the tradition I come from," she said. [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy]But is yoga specifically Hindu? She paused to ponder. "My parents are Hindu," she said. But in matters of yoga, "I don't use that term." [/COLOR][/LEFT] [LEFT][COLOR=navy][B]source:[/B] [/COLOR][URL="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/7004072.cms?prtpage=1"][U][COLOR=navy]http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/7004072.cms?prtpage=1[/COLOR][/U][/URL][/LEFT] [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Discussions
Hard Talk
Interviews
Indian-Americans Hindu Group Stirs A Debate Over Yoga's Soul
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
Accept
Learn more…
Top