Posturing can be good, when it’s yoga

Photographs of the young Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie levitating effortlessly, and scores of news items featuring many other Important People apparently sold on India’s hottest export — yoga, not Priyanka Chopra — should please more than just our own PM, a mean practitioner of the ancient Indian ascetic discipline himself. Of course, the athletic contortions of the Canadian couple are unlikely to be matched by too many of their peer group in the international arena — though politicians are perceived to be used to striking impossible positions when the need arises — but their affinity shows that yoga has wider acceptability and benefits beyond what its gurus propound.

Could India’s magnanimous gesture of not seeking IPR for yoga all these years — highlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his recent speech to the US Congress — be evidence of its long-standing use as a deliberate but never disclosed Indian diplomatic strategy? Now that India has assumed a natural leadership role in promoting yoga, and even UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon pulled off a few asanas last year, a special session for the UN Security Council should be the next goal. Inculcating a lot more flexibility among the members of that august body is, after all, a goal that India has been eyeing for a while now.