The Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s quest for two Guinness world records on International Day of Yoga reveals a psychology that seeks to overcome feelings of mediocrity, even inferiority, through illusory or shallow triumphalism. The government presumably hopes its endeavour will win it brownie points because of India’s well-known obsession with records.
The two Guinness world records the Ayush Ministry is seeking to establish on June 21 are for the most participants in a yoga class and for people from the largest number of nationalities doing yoga in one place. The government already holds a world record – opening 18 million new bank accounts in a week, which was achieved in August. The Guinness organisation formalised this achievement with a certificate that was handed over to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on January 20.
In comparison to the record for opening new bank accounts, the twin yoga feats the government is hoping to achieve on June 21 will be a cakewalk. A check of the Guinness site shows that the existing record for the largest yoga class was set in November 2005, when Vivekanand Kendra at Jiwaji University in Gwalior held an 18-minute class involving 29,973 students, drawn from 362 schools.
No contest
Considering the vast resources at the command of the Central government and the backing International Day of Yoga has received from yoga gurus, the Vivekanand Kendra’s record should easily be breached.
The second category – the largest number of nationalities doing yoga in one place – doesn’t even exist on the Guinness website. Whether the Ayush Ministry collects yoga participants of 10 or 50 nationalities, the record is its for the taking.
Perhaps the government could have tried taking a crack at the record for the largest yoga class (multiple venues) held by D Veerendra Heggade, President of Shanthivana Trust. In December 2013, he got 62,824 people spread over 47 locations across two districts of Karnataka to do yoga. Perhaps the Modi government scaled down its ambitions because of the problems Guinness would have encountered in simultaneously verifying results, a mandatory requirement, at multiple venues. It would have also turned away the spotlight from India Gate.
The government’s attempt at easy-to-achieve records is designed to appeal to Indians whose obsession with the Guinness organisation is proverbial. The New York Times reported in January that nearly a tenth of all Guinness World Record submissions come from India, which, in 2013, applied for roughly 3,000 world records, just behind the United States and Britain. The newspaper also said the number of Indian record-holders had grown 250% over the past five years. It quoted the Guinness world record adjudicator Nikhil Shukla as saying that 2 million people had gathered in Rajkot in January 2012 to setting a record for the most simultaneous handshakes.
A variety of endeavours
Guinness world records can be divided into several categories. There are those that require practice, regardless of their inherent silliness. For instance, to beat Chris Hughff’s world record of throwing a mobile phone the farthest distance (95.83 m), you’d need to undergo a few days of trials and smash a good many handsets in the process.
There are some records that require infinite endurance and patience. For instance, you need to take meticulous care to grow a moustache 14-foot-long as Ram Singh Chauhan has to done to become the record-holder in this category. Sridhar Chillal stopped clipping the fingernails on his left hand in 1952, and their combined length is now 20 feet, a world record. He doesn’t use the left hand lest he should break the nails and fall out of the Guinness list.
You have categories for which individuals do not have to struggle, for the quality measured is innate to them, such as the shortest and tallest woman and man or having the widest mouth (17 cm). There are other records that defy categorisation, such as most jam doughnuts eaten in one minute, most jam doughnuts eaten in three minutes, the fastest time to eat a jam doughnut with no hands and the longest dosa, which measured 54 ft 8.69 inches.
Against this backdrop, the government’s ambition to set new Guinness world records on yoga speaks poorly of its imagination, besides mocking and trivialising the hallowed Indian practice. No doubt, the Guinness world records have become a mechanism for many Indians to prove their own worth to themselves. For them, securing the world record certificate has become a badge of glory that they hope will help them to transcend their lives of mediocrity and anonymity. It is a desperate attempt at carving a distinct identity for themselves.
Hollow triumphalism
Perhaps all this is true of the Modi government as well.
Judging from its efforts, the government will portray the record-smashing event at India Gate as a great triumph. But this triumphalism will be illusory because no previous government in India has ever pressed its resources to set a yoga record. The Guinness world records have a great deal to do with thinking up categories and standards that did not exist previously. It’s illusory also because it isn’t a world competition in which other governments will participate: it is more a case of the Indian government competing against a previous endeavour of an organisation that cannot match the state apparatus.
India’s obsession with world records, mostly of the trivia kind, inspired Vinay Lal, professor of history at the University of California, to write a book, Of Cricket, Guinness and Gandhi: Essays on Indian History and Culture. In one of his essays Prof Lal writes, “A certain anxiety over the manliness of a people, no less of a nation, may perhaps account to a great degree for the quest among Indians to have their names etched in the Guinness Book.”
Prof Lal says this is partly on account of the colonial experience, which still has Indians “look up to the white European male, who confers recognition upon inferiors, and who has established the standard that the Indian must meet. The Guinness Book is there to remind that such recognition is possible and desirable.”
High-pitched campaign
The government’s high-pitched campaign announcing that yoga is India’s gift to the world (as if this hadn’t been known and recognised earlier), and its over-the-top proposed celebration of International Yoga Day, seem to reflect the vision of state managers who wish to persuade themselves that they have the confidence to stand with citizens of the developed world. We Indians must feel inferior to bring up the fact that even US President Barrack Obama’s had expressed an interest in yoga. Such self-conscious attempts at bolstering pride speak a lot of our own sense that we lack something – a sense that the government seems to share.
The government is about setting a goal it can’t but achieve. On June 21, an infantile sense of grandeur will be on display.
The BJP has already displayed its desire for superlatives. For instance, Gujarat is building the statue of Sardar Patel, billed as the Statue of Unity, and self-consciously projected as being taller than the Statue of Liberty. However, instead of counting the number of bank accounts opened in a week, shouldn’t we be trying to figure how many of them are in operation? Truly, all these are examples of form trumping substance.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.
Discuss this story on Facebook here.
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The two Guinness world records the Ayush Ministry is seeking to establish on June 21 are for the most participants in a yoga class and for people from the largest number of nationalities doing yoga in one place. The government already holds a world record – opening 18 million new bank accounts in a week, which was achieved in August. The Guinness organisation formalised this achievement with a certificate that was handed over to Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on January 20.
In comparison to the record for opening new bank accounts, the twin yoga feats the government is hoping to achieve on June 21 will be a cakewalk. A check of the Guinness site shows that the existing record for the largest yoga class was set in November 2005, when Vivekanand Kendra at Jiwaji University in Gwalior held an 18-minute class involving 29,973 students, drawn from 362 schools.
No contest
Considering the vast resources at the command of the Central government and the backing International Day of Yoga has received from yoga gurus, the Vivekanand Kendra’s record should easily be breached.
The second category – the largest number of nationalities doing yoga in one place – doesn’t even exist on the Guinness website. Whether the Ayush Ministry collects yoga participants of 10 or 50 nationalities, the record is its for the taking.
Perhaps the government could have tried taking a crack at the record for the largest yoga class (multiple venues) held by D Veerendra Heggade, President of Shanthivana Trust. In December 2013, he got 62,824 people spread over 47 locations across two districts of Karnataka to do yoga. Perhaps the Modi government scaled down its ambitions because of the problems Guinness would have encountered in simultaneously verifying results, a mandatory requirement, at multiple venues. It would have also turned away the spotlight from India Gate.
The government’s attempt at easy-to-achieve records is designed to appeal to Indians whose obsession with the Guinness organisation is proverbial. The New York Times reported in January that nearly a tenth of all Guinness World Record submissions come from India, which, in 2013, applied for roughly 3,000 world records, just behind the United States and Britain. The newspaper also said the number of Indian record-holders had grown 250% over the past five years. It quoted the Guinness world record adjudicator Nikhil Shukla as saying that 2 million people had gathered in Rajkot in January 2012 to setting a record for the most simultaneous handshakes.
A variety of endeavours
Guinness world records can be divided into several categories. There are those that require practice, regardless of their inherent silliness. For instance, to beat Chris Hughff’s world record of throwing a mobile phone the farthest distance (95.83 m), you’d need to undergo a few days of trials and smash a good many handsets in the process.
There are some records that require infinite endurance and patience. For instance, you need to take meticulous care to grow a moustache 14-foot-long as Ram Singh Chauhan has to done to become the record-holder in this category. Sridhar Chillal stopped clipping the fingernails on his left hand in 1952, and their combined length is now 20 feet, a world record. He doesn’t use the left hand lest he should break the nails and fall out of the Guinness list.
You have categories for which individuals do not have to struggle, for the quality measured is innate to them, such as the shortest and tallest woman and man or having the widest mouth (17 cm). There are other records that defy categorisation, such as most jam doughnuts eaten in one minute, most jam doughnuts eaten in three minutes, the fastest time to eat a jam doughnut with no hands and the longest dosa, which measured 54 ft 8.69 inches.
Against this backdrop, the government’s ambition to set new Guinness world records on yoga speaks poorly of its imagination, besides mocking and trivialising the hallowed Indian practice. No doubt, the Guinness world records have become a mechanism for many Indians to prove their own worth to themselves. For them, securing the world record certificate has become a badge of glory that they hope will help them to transcend their lives of mediocrity and anonymity. It is a desperate attempt at carving a distinct identity for themselves.
Hollow triumphalism
Perhaps all this is true of the Modi government as well.
Judging from its efforts, the government will portray the record-smashing event at India Gate as a great triumph. But this triumphalism will be illusory because no previous government in India has ever pressed its resources to set a yoga record. The Guinness world records have a great deal to do with thinking up categories and standards that did not exist previously. It’s illusory also because it isn’t a world competition in which other governments will participate: it is more a case of the Indian government competing against a previous endeavour of an organisation that cannot match the state apparatus.
India’s obsession with world records, mostly of the trivia kind, inspired Vinay Lal, professor of history at the University of California, to write a book, Of Cricket, Guinness and Gandhi: Essays on Indian History and Culture. In one of his essays Prof Lal writes, “A certain anxiety over the manliness of a people, no less of a nation, may perhaps account to a great degree for the quest among Indians to have their names etched in the Guinness Book.”
Prof Lal says this is partly on account of the colonial experience, which still has Indians “look up to the white European male, who confers recognition upon inferiors, and who has established the standard that the Indian must meet. The Guinness Book is there to remind that such recognition is possible and desirable.”
High-pitched campaign
The government’s high-pitched campaign announcing that yoga is India’s gift to the world (as if this hadn’t been known and recognised earlier), and its over-the-top proposed celebration of International Yoga Day, seem to reflect the vision of state managers who wish to persuade themselves that they have the confidence to stand with citizens of the developed world. We Indians must feel inferior to bring up the fact that even US President Barrack Obama’s had expressed an interest in yoga. Such self-conscious attempts at bolstering pride speak a lot of our own sense that we lack something – a sense that the government seems to share.
The government is about setting a goal it can’t but achieve. On June 21, an infantile sense of grandeur will be on display.
The BJP has already displayed its desire for superlatives. For instance, Gujarat is building the statue of Sardar Patel, billed as the Statue of Unity, and self-consciously projected as being taller than the Statue of Liberty. However, instead of counting the number of bank accounts opened in a week, shouldn’t we be trying to figure how many of them are in operation? Truly, all these are examples of form trumping substance.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.
Discuss this story on Facebook here.