Yoga, India's ethos of harmony with nature can help environment, UN told

Pressing ahead with the campaign for an International Day of Yoga, India projected yoga and its reflection of "Indian ethos of harmony with nature" as factors that can help the environment in an age of globalisation and rapid development.

"The holistic approach to life that yoga fosters could contribute not only to an improvement in quality of life but also greater harmony between people and between man and nature," Amit Narang, a counsellor at the Indian mission here, said Monday.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the UNGA last month spoke of what yoga can do for the environment. "By changing our lifestyle and creating consciousness, it can help us deal with climate change," Modi had said proposing that June 21 be declared International Yoga Day.

Echoing the theme, Narang asserted that that the nation's wisdom of millennia emphasised a "culture of frugality, of doing more with less, of taking only as much as required from nature and of no wastage. It was particularly relevant for today's world struggling to manage global commons and achieve sustainable development," he said during a discussion on globalization and interdependence at a meeting of a UNGA committee.

"The Indian ethos of harmony with nature, of treating nature's bounties as sacred, of seeking a dialogue with nature rather than seeking to dominate it has special relevance in today's day and age," he said.

Globalisation required a free flow ideas and embracing the good ones from all over, he said, adding that India "as a millennia old civilization and with its multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual social ethos and a pluralistic, democratic polity, has a lot to contribute to enrich the global discourse of ideas."

On other issues impacting globalisation, Narang called for liberalising movement of temporary workers across nations, he said. "Such liberalization would permit mutually beneficial solutions, matching the demand for specialists in developed countries with the availability of such talent in developing countries."

At the same time, he said international coordination was needed to tackle "irregular migration" which had "serious security implications" and also had led to people trafficking.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in)