A ‘Marxist’ version to counter ‘Hindutva’ yoga?

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), Kerala’s principal Opposition, has ventured into the realm of yoga in Kannur district, where the party and the Sangh Parivar have for decades been shedding each other’s blood.

On Sunday, the CPI (M)-backed Indian Martial Arts Academy and Yoga Study Centre staged a massive yoga demonstration at Kannur’s Jawahar Stadium, fielding 1,200 yoga practitioners, mostly party cadre.

The ostensible aim: to popularise a non-religious, de-Hinduised, pure yoga as a way to promote people’s resistance to lifestyle diseases. The participants had been undergoing training for some months at the academy.

While CPI (M) leaders challenged allegations that the academy and the yoga programme were politically-motivated, the line-up of party leaders watching the demonstration gave the lie.

State secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, Polit Bureau member and former State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, and other important State-level functionaries like EP Jayarajan, MV Jayrajan and MV Govindan, along with dozens of local leaders representing feeder organisations showed up.

Party district secretary P Jayarajan claimed the party supported the yoga training programme because communal outfits (referring to the RSS) were hijacking yoga.

Kannur district has for long been considered a CPI (M) bastion, with extensive grassroot-level support.

However, the district has also been a major support base for the RSS, and for the past nearly four decades, rivalries between the CPI (M) and the RSS have claimed several lives.

The CPI (M) had last year tried to raise a Red Volunteer corps to fight off ‘attacks’ by the RSS.

It had also planned to give martial arts training to its cadre. The IMAAYSC was set up, allegedly, as part of the initiative.

However, E Rajeevan, chief coordinator of the yoga programme, told BusinessLine there was nothing political behind the initiative.

“We aim to create an interest in the minds of people about healthy living and the ways to ward off lifestyle diseases,” he said. He added the academy’s yoga syllabus focussed on the ‘Yama rules,’ not any religious beliefs.

At a time when the RSS is aggressively promoting yoga as a precious Hindu heritage and the Centre spending huge sums of money for popularising it, the CPI(M)’s ‘secular yoga’ initiative is naturally viewed as an ideological counter-weapon.

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