By Ananya Bhardwaj
At the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) ministerial meeting in Pokhara, India has taken a commendable initiative in promoting and guaranteeing education in yoga, Indian culture and arts, and ancient Indian languages to its member countries. Under the SAARC Scholarship Scheme, 14 scholarships will be offered annually; two to each member country to pursue UG, PG and PhD courses on behalf of SAARC Division of MEA (Ministry of External Affairs).
Growing interest in cultural exchange around the world
This has led to an intensive inclusion of students and professionals from SAARC nations into these courses and degrees offered exclusively in India. Keeping in mind the soaring popularity of these initiatives, India now seeks to extend the same to students from the UK and the US and Europe. This is a rather smart decision since India has friendly relations and bilateral treaties with most countries in Europe where there are scholarships offered to Indian students. India also has initiatives for creating sister cities like Bengaluru-San Fransisco and Pune-Bremen.
India has a multitude diverse cultures, traditions, traditional expressions and intangible cultural heritage comprising masterpieces which need institutional support and encouragement to address areas critical for the survival and propagation of these forms of cultural heritage. However, such preservation efforts are being carried out in a scattered form and thus need to have an institutionalized scheme for concerted efforts in the direction of professionally enhancing awareness and interest in Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), safeguarding, promoting and propagating it systematically.
Initiative by the MoC
For this purpose, the Ministry of Culture (MoC) has formulated a scheme titled Scheme for Safeguarding the Intangible Heritage and Diverse Cultural Traditions of India. The objective of this scheme is to reinstitute and revitalize various institutions, groups, individuals, identified non-MoC institutions, non-government organisations, researchers, and scholars so that they may engage in activities/projects for strengthening, protecting, preserving and promoting the rich intangible cultural heritage of India.
The Himalayan town of Rishikesh in northern India is welcoming hundreds of foreign tourists for its annual yoga festival, with visitors keen to learn the ancient art by the sacred River Ganges. “Yoga doesn’t flow in our veins like it does in Indians so I came here to go back to basics,” said French yoga teacher Juliette Allard, 38, who lives in Barcelona and has been coming to the festival for the last three years. The Beatles visited Rishikesh in 1968 to learn about transcendental meditation from the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, helping to popularise ideas about Indian spirituality.
The East and the West
The West has slowly started adopting Indian techniques for healing and spirituality. Many Americans now promote a holistic approach to life by opening yoga studios in the US and gaining a formal education and license to practice it from Indian institutes that offer courses in the same.
This interest in Indian culture and language stems from the growing awareness about natural and healthy mechanisms for self-healing and self-awareness. People from the West are slowly proceeding towards consciousness about the food they consume and the lifestyle they adopt. India offering education and resources to promote yoga institutes, courses on learning Sanskritwhich is widely regarded as the mother of all languagesand other holistic expeditions is a huge step towards building ties with western nations and bridging the gap between the East and the West.
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