Yoga piracy: India shows who's the guru

Instances of self-styled yoga gurus claiming copyrights to ancient ‘asanas', especially from the West, is now becoming rampant. This has made 200 scientists and researchers from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Union health ministry's department of Ayush join hands to put on record all known yoga postures and techniques that originated in India.

Scientists are presently scanning through 35 ancient Sanskrit texts, including the Mahabharata, Bhagawad Gita and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali to identify and document all known yoga concepts, postures and terminology.

Till now, 600 ‘asanas' (physical postures) have already been documented. The team plans to put on record at least 1,500 such yoga postures by the end of 2009.

Once completed, they will be put in the world's first Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) created by India. They will then be recognised as India's public property.

The TKDL, 30 million pages of information, has been created to prevent those living abroad from claiming patent for existing knowledge.

Patent offices across the world are being given access to the database in TKDL "for establishing prior art" whenever patent applications based on Indian systems of medicine (ISM) are filed.

However, TKDL's information will be restricted only for patent search and examination purposes. Patent offices will not be able to disclose the information to a third party.

TKDL already contains two lakh medical formulations of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani.

CSIR's Dr V P Gupta, who created TKDL, told TOI: "Around nine well known yoga institutions in India are helping with the documentation. We hope to finish putting on record at least 1,500 yoga postures by the end of 2009."

"Besides photos and explanation of the postures, video clips of an expert performing them will be put inside the TKDL. A voice-over will also point out which text mentions the posture. The information will be available in five international languages."

Among the books being scanned by scientists are Hatha Praditika, Gheranda Samhita, Shiva Samhita and Sandra Satkarma. The oldest book being documented may be the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, according to Dr Gupta.

'Asana' is only one of the eight limbs of yoga outlined by the sage Patanjali around 2,000 years ago.

"Till now, TKDL has cost around Rs 7 crore. Around Rs 3 crore more will be required to create the yoga databank, which will be available to patent offices by the end of 2009," Dr Gupta said.

He added: "Copyrights over yoga postures and trademark on yoga tools have becoming rampant in the West. Till now, we have traced 130 yoga-related patents granted in the US."

According to CSIR DG, Prof Samir Brahmchari, on an average, it takes five to seven years to oppose a patent granted internationally and costs Rs 1-3 crore.

Experts say yoga has become a $225 billion market in the West, leading to foreign quack yoga instructors claiming patents over `asanas' at random. Nearly 16.5 million Americans practice yoga and spend about $3 billion a year on yoga classes.