On the occasion of the 9th International Yoga Day, Sputnik spoke with Asoke Mukherjee, India's Former Permanent Representative to the United Nations (2013-2015).
Back in 2014, Mukherjee led India's campaign at the UN together with 177 co-sponsor countries, to implement Narendra Modi's proposal to declare June 21 as International Yoga Day to promote the benefits of practicing yoga.
The date was chosen based on its coincidence with the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
In an exclusive interview with Sputnik, Ambassador Asoke Mukherjee (Retd.) shares how International Yoga Day was adopted by the UN, how yoga became a symbol of India's cultural heritage worldwide and whether he himself practices yoga on a regular basis. Enjoy!
Sputnik: It's been nine years since International Yoga Day was officially adopted. Can you tell us how the UN adopted the resolution unanimously in such a short time? Could you share the history behind this initiative?
Mukherjee: In September 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi came for the first time to the United Nations after becoming Prime Minister. And, he didn’t have a written speech. He said that he would speak without any text, and therefore, we did not know what topics he would cover.
It was only in the morning that we learned he would propose that the United Nations declare International Yoga Day. This was a very unusual proposal [at the time] because there had been no discussion of this kind in the United Nations [ever before].
I had a very active and energetic team of eight diplomats under me, and we met to brainstorm how to implement this idea.
As per the UN system, any international day has to follow two criteria: First, the concern has to be linked with international cooperation and benefit people in the UN member states, especially in developing countries.
And the other criterion was that such proposals for international days could meet directly in the UN General Assembly, rather than going into the Committee of the General Assembly for first discussions and then from the committee coming up to the General Assembly for a decision.
And we thought that it would be important to get a group of countries to support the idea as co-sponsors. And then, we identified a few countries. This also helps in bringing other countries to the list.
I reached out to China because Chinese President Xi Jinping had visited India earlier in September (the same year) with his wife, and they visited a school in New Delhi, during which students from this school and the Jinyuan Senior High School in Shanghai had demonstrated the practice of Yoga and Tai-chi through a video-link.
I met the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations. And a few days after, [the] Chinese government agreed to be the co-sponsor. China became our first major co-sponsor for this resolution, which also brought in most of the developing countries.
The second approach was to take into the list countries where Yoga had been popular. And here, Russia was a very early supporter. Because I knew from my experience of having worked in the country, that Yoga had spread all over Russia. There are yoga groups in various cities of Russia. And this had been done through mainly non-governmental activity. But there was very big popular support. Hence, Russia also turned in a co-sponsor for the resolution.
And similarly, countries where Yoga was popular, like the United States, France, Germany, and Japan, joined in and became co-sponsors.
One big group of countries in the UN was Muslim countries — 56 out of 193 are Muslim nations. Eventually, 48 countries supported us, these included Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, the five Central Asian states, and South Asian countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and the Maldives.
By the end of November, when we finished having these discussions in the General Assembly informally, we had 129 countries that had signed as co-sponsors of the resolution. We had already crossed the halfway mark to get the resolution adopted.
And by the time the President of the General Assembly asked us to formally table the resolution, 177 nations had adopted it. And we got it done within 75 days -- between September 27, and December 11 -- in 2014.
Sputnik: Do you think that Yoga has been a great help in uniting people beyond nationalities? How?
Mukherjee: When the Prime Minister spoke on the need for an International Day of Yoga in September 2014, he brought in the role that Yoga had played in the development of people, of mankind, [and] of societies.
In addition, Prime Minister Modi mentioned the role of Yoga in contributing to meeting environmental concerns as well as in sustainable development. So, when we proposed the resolution, the United Nations itself was in the major process of uniting people and taking forward an agenda for climate change and development.
And both these processes concluded in 2015, the first process of climate change and Environment Protection was under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The second framework of negotiations was on sustainable development. And in 1987, the UN decided that climate change had to be converged with development. We were, therefore, able to use the negotiations on sustainable development, especially on SDGs that involve global health, the climate, and lifestyles, if you see those 17 goals, several SDGs allowed us to include Yoga in these goals.
So in the convergence of these two processes, Yoga has not only been seen to be something that unites people in the United Nations Framework, which means beyond national boundaries, but also implements the agreed-[on] agenda that we have adopted from 2015 onwards on how to make this a reality.
Sputnik: Do you think Yoga should be considered one of India's top cultural heritage practices worldwide?
Mukherjee: So far, I’ve explained (in previous questions) how Yoga has become a building block for India's projection of how India can contribute through its cultural heritage to the objective of global cooperation through the United Nations.
And in the process of implementation over these last nine years, every year on 21 June, you will see reports which come from all over the world, not just from big countries but from countries including the Pacific Ocean, Africa and Latin America, in Central Asia, where the media normally does not carry reports of how International Yoga Day is acknowledged as a contribution of India's cultural heritage.
In Russia, for example, across the nine time zones of Russia, Yoga Day is celebrated enthusiastically. And, you know, we have on our website of the External Affairs Ministry, as well as of the Indian Embassy in Russia, shows that [a] number of event[s] takes place on Yoga Day, in which middle-aged, working person[s], young students, as well as very older people participate. So, it is an activity that crosses even age groups and unites people together. And I think that is something which needs to be recognized and emphasized.
Sputnik: Do you also practice Yoga?
Mukherjee: I was introduced to Yoga when I was working in Dubai in 1998-1999. And I was introduced by an Indian practitioner of Yoga to the art of meditation and breathing through pranayama.
And I must say that meditation and breathing exercises helped me to be calm even in a very stressful environment. It contributed to finding solutions, which we may not be able to see sometimes in the heat of the moment.
And I think that Yoga gives an individual the capacity to approach life with a certain degree of not detachment, but calmness.
And, once you're calm, you can see more than what is just around you, you can see deeper. And from my own experience, I would recommend Yoga.
Practicing Yoga daily helped me conduct diplomacy more effectively.
Sputnik: Could Yoga be used as soft power and help project a positive image of India & its culture worldwide? How can it help enhance India's people-to-people ties with other nations?
Mukherjee: When we were starting with this initiative. At that time, I did not know how much Yoga was practiced in China. But every year for the last nine years, when we see the reports, especially the photo reports that come from our consulate in Shanghai, [the] consulate in Guangzhou, [the] Guangzhou Embassy in Beijing, of the houses of people in China who practice Yoga. It frankly, comes to me as a revelation of the positive image of India and its culture in a country like China.
Similarly, in New York, Yoga Day is displayed at Times Square every year on 21 June.
Not just that, every year, they cordon off the heart of Manhattan, the busiest part of New York, and they practice Yoga on the streets. And this is done voluntarily by the traders' association of Manhattan.
I came to know how many different kinds of yoga schools and yoga associations, they are in the United States, I think it has perhaps the most number of yoga associations in the world, outside India.
Similarly, when I met my Mozambican counterpart, they told us that they have been looking at Yoga to develop their tourism. And explained that they developed many unknown beaches of Mozambique as yoga tourism beaches. So, people come to enjoy the seaside and the beach, but they also come to do Yoga on the beach. And similar activities have been going on in Latin America, a lot of my friends from South America told me that Yoga is practiced in Peru, Brazil, Mexico, etc.
And then, to my surprise, I found that even in the Pacific Islands, there's some awareness about Yoga among individuals, and they practice Yoga voluntarily. They see Yoga as an Indian cultural heritage without any government involvement.
And I think that's why this initiative is sustainable. It doesn't require official bureaucratic funding, budgeting, and even implementation. It comes from the heart and sustains itself because people see the value of practicing Yoga.