Foreigners effort to revive Indian culture

YOGA•to yoke•unite

The latest "Yoga in America" study, just released by Yoga Journal shows that 20.4 million Americans practice yoga, compared to 15.8 million from the previous 2008 study*, an increase of 29 percent. In addition, practitioners spend $10.3 billion a year on yoga classes and products, including equipment, clothing, vacations, and media. The previous estimate from the 2008 study was $5.7 billion.

Gender: 82.2 percent are women; 17.8 percent are men.Age: The majority of today's yoga practitioners (62.8 percent) fall within the age range of 18-44.

In INDIA??

Sanskrit &Bhagavad Gita

Many poets and scholars of Europe in early 19th century like Sir William Jones, William Wordsworth, P.B.Shelly, William Blake, Coleridge, Sir Edwin Arnold, Annie Besant.

American seminal thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman

Many scientists and Nobel Laureates like Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Neil Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, Dr Fritjof Capra and Robert Openheimer, used Gita and Upanishads to explain the properties of sub-atomic particles.

Bhagwad Gita was first translated into English in 1785 by Charles Wilkins. Abbe Peraud in 1787 translated English Gita into French language.

Sanskrit Studies became a large-scale formal activity in most European universities since 1790.

 According to Forbes magazine, (July, 1987), "Sanskrit is the most convenient language for computer software programming."

Even today Sanskrit and Vedas are taught in more universities of USA and Europe than in Bharat.

Today’sl Leading schools of management such as Harvard Business School, `````Northwestern's Kellogg School of Business, and the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, Bhagwad Gita is taught and about 10% professors there are of Indian descent

BRITAIN backed by $19.5 million (Rs 100 Crores) in aid will start a State Funded Hindu school. Krishna-Avanti primary school would be based in the northwest London suburb of Harrow, with space for 240 children

In 25 years, an estimated 7 million people have attended spoken Sanskrit classes offered by Samskrita Bharati in India and abroad, says Shastry. There are 250 full-time volunteers and 5,000 part-time teachers in the United States and India, and their numbers are growing.

Beijing’s Peking University has now launched an ambitious programme to train more than 60 Chinese students in Sanskrit, with the hope of creating a team of researchers to help translate hundreds of manuscripts containing scriptures that have been found in Tibet and other centres of Buddhism, such as Hangzhou in China’s east.

RAMYAN & MAHABHARAT

Over the last few years, Indian classical dance has found a growing tribe of foreign disciples – Russians, Americans, Japanese, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, Italy and Croatians. Dance forms like Mohiniyattam, Kathak, Odissi, Bharatanatyam and Chhau offer a form of spiritual emancipation, with its emphasis on creative freedom and the chance to express themselves through such nuanced physical language.

Classical dance

Ayurveda

Interest in Ayurveda in the United States began in the 1970's,

Interest continued to grow as Indian physicians came to the United States in the 1980's.

In 2004, the National Ayurvedic Medical Association established the first educational standards in the United States consisting of a minimum of 500 hours of education

Although progress is slow, the Ayurvedic profession is growing steadily in the United States of America. Educational institutions are becoming more established and associations are working to give the profession a voice and address regulation issues. Ayurveda is likely to continue to grow in America and eventually take its place among the other licensed health care professions.

-Rohith Raj