Hindus have commended Arkansas legislature for the bill preventing a state board from regulating yoga instruction.

Distinguished Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, who strongly criticized the attempts to regulate yoga in the past by various states in USA, in a statement today, thanked the Arkansas legislators for supporting this legislation and organizations/yogis/individuals who campaigned for it, as the regulation would have been an unnecessary obtrusion and burdensome on yoga in Arkansas. Zed urged the Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson to sign this bill.

Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, indicated that yoga was one of the six systems of orthodox Hindu philosophy whose traces went back to around 2000 BCE. Yoga never had any formal organization and yoga practice had been handed down from one guru to the next.

Rajan Zed further said that yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was mentioned in ancient Hindu scriptures Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita. The Bhagavad-Gita, one of the most popular Hindu scripture, was considered a comprehensive yoga-shastra (treatise on yoga). Mahabharata, also an ancient Hindu scripture, said that one unconversant with yoga could never have happiness while Yogabija Upanishad pointed out that one became liberated from bondage only through yoga. Why to regulate such a liberation powerhouse, Zed asked.

Zed noted that yoga was a mental and physical discipline by means of which the human-soul (jivatman) united with universal-soul (parmatman). Some sages had described yoga as the silencing of all mental transformations, which lead to the total realization of the Supreme Self. Some had used yoga attempting to gain liberation by removing all sensory barriers. For Patanjali, author of the basic text, the Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.

Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche and regulating it was kind of a religious infringement, Rajan Zed added.

About 21 million Americans, including many celebrities, are said to practice yoga.

Hinduism is the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about one billion adherents and moksh (liberation) is its ultimate goal. There are about three million Hindus in USA.