ZAGREB (AFP) - Croatia's education ministry said it decided to scrap plans to introduce yoga classes for the country's schoolteachers after the powerful Catholic Church objected, saying the scheme was an attempt to introduce Hinduism.
The education ministry recently signed a deal with a private yoga association to provide optional classes to schoolteachers, starting in September 2003, at the beginning of a new school year.
But the Croatian Council of Bishops charged that the yoga program was an underhand attempt to introduce "Hinduist religious practices dressed up as exercises into Croatian schools".
The education ministry said in a statement that it did not have an intention to promote yoga among the pupils and introduce Hinduist religious practices into Croatian schools. The ministry announced that it would withdraw its agreement with the association Yoga in Everyday Life.
The bishops argued that teachers who had attend yoga classes would "obviously pass on what they had learnt to their pupils".
"It is unacceptable to introduce to the public education system elements that go against the generally accepted values and cultural traditions of Europe," they said in a statement.
More than 87 percent of Croatia's population of 4.4 million population say they are Roman Catholics.