{"id":12046,"date":"2007-01-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/01\/22\/indian-christians-protest-yoga-in-schools\/"},"modified":"2007-01-22T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-22T12:00:00","slug":"indian-christians-protest-yoga-in-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2007\/01\/22\/indian-christians-protest-yoga-in-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Christians Protest Yoga in Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\"><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.catholic.org\/international\/international_story.php?id=22696\">www.catholic.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">BHOPAL, INDIA, January 16, 2007: (HPI note: This report is from a Catholic on-line news service) The practices of a majority religion should not be imposed on other minority religions, said an Indian archbishop, reacting sharply to a decision of an Indian state government. In a January 15 interview with the Indian Catholic, the Internet news service of the Catholic Bishops&#8217; Conference of India, Archbishop Pascal Topno of Bhopal said that he had nothing against &#8220;Surya Namaskar&#8221; or other Hindu rituals, but questioned the Madhya Pradesh government&#8217;s decision to make the practice compulsory in all government schools and colleges. &#8220;People from other communities should be given the freedom and the choice to say &#8216;no&#8217; to it,&#8221; said Archbishop Topno, acknowledging that the Catholic Church had not received any direct orders from the government mandating the practice.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Surya Namaskar&#8221; or sun salutation or prayer, comprising of &#8220;pranayam,&#8221; the control of breath and several main yoga asanas, is a main component of yoga. Reports said that the government announced it will hold mass surya namaskar recitations in institutions across the state on January 25 as a precursor to a new yoga policy. The government has made it clear that it would encourage private schools and colleges to participate in the program. &#8220;But we have not yet received any such notice,&#8221; Archbishop Topno said. Muslim organizations in the Indian state are reportedly critical of the state government&#8217;s decision, threatening a boycott of student school attendance on January 25 as Islam does not allow Muslims to bow in front of anyone but Allah. Echoing those views, Archbishop Topno said that &#8220;similarly, one of our commandments also means that we should not bow down in front of any idol or any other god.&#8221; The Madhya Pradesh government has defended the measure as an innocuous step to promote the healthy practice of yoga in the state.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>www.catholic.org BHOPAL, INDIA, January 16, 2007: (HPI note: This report is from a Catholic on-line news service) The practices of,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}