Indian government's ICCR working to spread 'spirituality as soft power'
ICCR Director General Dinesh K Patnaik
Indian government is all set to focus on spreading the word of Indian spirituality abroad. For this, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) has started making concerted efforts.
The director general of ICCR Dinesh K Patnaik held meetings with spiritual organisations in the country last week to evolve a strategy.
Speaking to WION, he said, "Spirituality as soft power has not been used by the government. A lot of spiritual organisations in India have centers abroad. The idea is to work with organisations, which are already in the field and government organisations like ministry of Ayush, ICCR, MEA, Ministry of health, etc to work together to share the great treasure we have with rest of the world."
Founded in 1950, ICCR is an autonomous body under the ministry of external affairs. Its main function is to work towards the spread of Indian culture. Last week, ICCR organised a programme for foreign diplomats based in India on spirituality traditions. The programme was a full house.
ICCR DG explained, "ICCR's job is to take Indian culture abroad. Spirituality, yoga, Indic traditions and other traditions of India is a large part of our culture. ICCR is trying to make spirituality and yogic tradition a part of our soft power."
One of the major initiatives to spread Indian tradition was Indian PM Modi's proposal at the United Nations to celebrate June 21 as Yoga Day. He gave the proposal during his first address at the United Nations General Assembly in 2014.
Since then, the celebrations on Yoga Day have grown in size. Indian missions have been engaged in spread of yoga, including yoga certification programmes.
Dinesh Patnaik highlighted, "Spirituality is where mind and matter gettogether. There are many spiritual organisations, which spread spirituality across the world. Especially at a time like this, our spirituality, our age-old traditions give us a wonderful opportunity to give solace to the world."
Rishikesh is one of the key locations in India, which have seen a lot of foreign visitors. In fact, spirituality is one of the biggest searches on Google.