Indian students ignore fatwa for mass yoga session

NEW DELHI // Despite a fatwa issued by Muslim religious scholars against a mass yoga session, thousands of school pupils went ahead and performed the exercise yesterday.

Three scholars from the state of Madhya Pradesh accused the organisers of promoting idolatry and forcing non-Hindu students to further the Hindu agenda of the ruling nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The event was organised by Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the state's chief minister and a BJP member.

More than 50,000 students participated, according to the state government. Their aim was to find themselves a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest gathering of people performing an aerobic exercise.

The yoga ritual is called the surya namaskar, or sun greeting, where a person bows to the morning sun in a series of postures.

The state's education minister, Archana Chitnis, said during a news conference yesterday that the exercise was voluntary.

"The sun is neither saffron nor green. It has nothing to do with religion or religious rituals or ceremony," said Ms Chitnis. Saffron is a colour associated with Hindu religious ceremonies and green is a colour that represents Islam.

Ms Chitnis added: "We are not imposing it. It is not mandatory for all."

A few days before the gathering, during a news conference in Bhopa on Tuesday, the three scholars, Mohammad Abdul Kalam Kasmi, Raees Ahmed Khan Kasmi and Sayyed Babbar Hussain Nadvi, urged Muslim students not to participate in an "un-Islamic" event, equating the exercise with idol worship, which is prohibited in Islam.

In Madhya Pradesh, the government has increasingly resorted to symbolic gestures that have Hindu resonance, including having passed a law this week to protect cows, considered a Hindu sacred animal. The new law imposes up to seven years in prison for someone convicted of slaughtering the animal.

In 2004, Uma Bharti, the then chief minister of the state from the BJP, banned the sale of liquor and meat in three cities, including Maheshwar, Amarkantak and areas of Ujjain, declaring them holy, Hindu areas.

Ashok Malik, a political columnist, said that Hindutva, or advocating Hindu nationalism by the BJP, was more resonant in the 1990s and early 2000s. He said that while Hindu symbolism is important to the BJP, the fatwa "played into their hands, where an issue does not exist".

Instead, he saw yesterday's exhibition as a harmless demonstration by a state eager to be noticed by the rest of India.

"This is not a political or long-standing issue," Mr Malik said.

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