Are Muslims being kept out of Yoga Day?

A report published in Time magazine almost a decade ago made the point that Muslims in the US as well as in West Asia happily did ‘Yoga’. Indeed the report made the following points:

• In some West Asian countries, the exercise is commonplace since the 1990s.
• In Iran, Yoga was popular enough to warrant its own magazines
• In cities like Cairo and Beirut, Yoga was popular among the upwardly mobile Yuppies

However, with attempts to link Yoga with religion and spirituality, controversies were waiting to emerge. And, after the Ministry of Ayush (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) last year was hard put to explain an RTI reply in which it allegedly said that the Government policy was not to recruit Muslim Yoga teachers, Yogi Adityanath Government has now caused another controversy by apparently keeping Muslim teachers out of the Yoga Day festival to be held in Lucknow on June 21.

While teachers of all state-run schools in and around Lucknow have been asked to attend the function and perform Yoga with the PM and the CM, the Education Department has caused a furore by approving a list of teachers from a school in Chinhat on the outskirts of Lucknow without the Muslim teachers.

Four Muslim teachers – Abdul Hamid Khan of Primary school Baurumau, Fazil Ahmad Khan of Primary school Raipur, Shaila Jabi and Adil Mansauri from Juggaur Primary Schools – found their names missing from the final list. Two of these four teachers Fazil Ahmad and Adil Manuasri are President Awardees for excellence in teaching.

“I do not know why our names are not there in the list though we teach Yoga to students as it has been introduced in the school curriculum by this (Yogi) government,” said Abdul Hamid Khan.

Khan tries to play it safe and suggests that probably Muslims have been kept out because of the month of Ramzan and fasting. “But nobody asked us for our opinion nor were we given any option. In the first list, our names were there but it was missing from the second and the final list,” one of them said.

Rashmi Airy, Assistant Block Resource Centre Co-ordinator, said some Muslims might have been left out inadvertently. “There is no design in this,” she said but could not furnish the number of Muslim teachers who would be taking part in the Yoga festival.

“These teachers might have shown reluctance to participate in Yoga event because majority of them observe Roza. There is no religious bias. Even Muslim students take part in Yoga, she said and added that she is just a teacher and will do what she is asked to do.

The Yoga festival will be held by Uttar Pradesh Government in collaboration with Ayush Ministry. Over 60,000 volunteers including members of Patanjali, Art of Living, teachers, students and government employees would take part in this event. Each participant would be given water bottles, T-shirts and Yoga mat.

During Akhilesh Yadav’s regime, International Yoga Day was celebrated on a low key in the state. Central Government organisations, including CRPF, held Yoga camp at KD Singh Babu stadium last year which was led by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. This camp was primarily attended by BJP leaders and officials of the Central Government.

With the change of government, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has declared that Yoga should be made compulsory in schools and has asked sports teachers to learn Yoga during the summer vacation and train students after June.