{"id":35270,"date":"2023-06-20T08:00:10","date_gmt":"2023-06-20T08:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=35270"},"modified":"2023-06-20T08:00:24","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T08:00:24","slug":"indian-pm-bend-leaders-into-shape-at-international-yoga-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2023\/06\/20\/indian-pm-bend-leaders-into-shape-at-international-yoga-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian PM bend leaders into shape at International Yoga Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

India\u2019s prime minister has a reputation of casting himself as an ascetic. So when Narendra Modi leads foreign dignitaries and bureaucrats in a session for International Yoga Day on Wednesday at the United Nations\u2019 Secretariat in New York, millions of Indians will take note.\u00a0
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Yoga, an ancient discipline first practiced by Hindu sages, is now one of India\u2019s most successful cultural exports after Bollywood. And it\u2019s become a piece of India\u2019s diplomacy<\/strong>. Surinder Goel, a 61-year-old yoga instructor in the capital, New Delhi, practices daily. He says the activity is \u201cIndia\u2019s contribution to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur prime minister has done a great job in spreading yoga to the world,\u201d Goel said. \u201cToday, even the Muslim countries learn and follow it, only because of the PM.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goel says yoga should be a daily practice worldwide, no matter how busy a person is, citing the prime minister\u2019s devotion to the practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine years ago, the Hindu nationalist leader successfully lobbied the U.N.<\/strong> to designate June 21 as International Yoga Day. Since then, Modi has harnessed yoga as a cultural soft power to stretch his nation\u2019s diplomatic reach and flex his country\u2019s rising place in the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modi has promoted yoga so much that even foreign diplomats have been seen stretching themselves in gardens and their embassy offices. Government bureaucrats and officers have taken to social media to show themselves folding in different poses and sometimes tiredly grabbing their backs after mass outdoor yoga sessions. The Indian military has done downward dog with trained K-9 units, boat pose atop an aircraft carrier and mountain pose in the high-altitude Himalayas in bone-chilling temperatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modi has also been living la vida yoga, flexing his own hardcore devotion to the practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018 he posted a two-minute video on Twitter that showed him doing a range of yoga poses in a garden, including stretching and leaning backward on a rock in a spread-armed savasana that birthed many memes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2019, after the final day of national polling, he retreated to a Himalayan mountain cave to meditate and seek isolation \u2014 with a camera crew that relayed live visuals to the entire nation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A year later, Modi went the extra mile, tweeting videos showing an animated version of him doing yoga poses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, Modi is guiding leaders from around the world in the practice of yoga to promote its benefits as part of his three-day visit to the U.S.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With over 1.42 billion people, which recently\u00a0surpassed China as the most populous<\/strong>, India has become fragmented largely along religious lines. Despite its religious roots, Modi has used yoga to try and boost his image in the diverse nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modi\u2019s ministers, following their leader in practicing yoga, have sometimes marked it with religious connotations by doing sun salutations and chanting Sanskrit verses considered holy in Hinduism. Government employees and students have been asked to practice the same, and some state administrations ruled by Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata Party have sought to make it mandatory in schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has angered some of the prime minister\u2019s critics. In particular, some Muslims \u2014 India\u2019s largest minority, which has faced rising violence under Modi by Hindu nationalists \u2014 say they should not be forced to perform sun salutations or chant Hindu hymns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Government ministers tried to address these concerns by guaranteeing that sun salutations would be optional, though some dissenters are not assured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Srivalli Cherla has noticed yoga becoming more politicized in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 30-year-old yoga instructor based in India\u2019s remote Ladakh region originally took to yoga for physical exercise in 2017. After months of consistent practice, she noticed subtle changes in her body and mental health, and realized yoga was helping her release anger she was holding on to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhenever I am having a bad day, I come back home and roll out my yoga mat. It\u2019s a form of mental discipline too; you learn not to give in to certain thoughts, so it challenges you mentally,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cherla said she had signed up for a program to receive a yoga instructor certification recognized by the Indian government\u2019s Ayush Ministry, which promotes Ayurveda traditional medicine. But she quit just 10 days into training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe teacher passed a comment that essentially called it a Hindu \u2014 and not secular \u2014 practice, which left a bad taste in my mouth. I\u2019ve never seen it as religious. It\u2019s part of India\u2019s culture, but this comment made me realize what they were teaching didn\u2019t align with my own beliefs or experience of yoga,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In New Delhi, yogi Goel agrees that yoga is for everyone, regardless of religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe should not connect yoga with religion or politics. Yoga is meant to benefit the common people, not ministers,\u201d Goel says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he believes yoga has the power to do more than just diplomacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYoga can change the person, the country and the world,\u201dhe says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

India\u2019s prime minister has a reputation of casting himself as an ascetic. So when Narendra Modi leads foreign dignitaries and bureaucrats in a session for International Yoga Day on Wednesday at the United Nations\u2019 Secretariat in New York, millions of Indians will take note.\u00a0 Yoga, an ancient discipline first practiced by Hindu sages, is now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":35272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11363,2459,8659,11583,4024,3513,12257,10347,12246,5663,13076,6190,6060,12310,11638,2264,12634,8341,5440,8342,10544,10954,10560,10303,5913,5572,9683,6864,11289,5865,11309,12187,6479,12085,990,7968,11973,2627,5424,3174,6431,10379,6978,8810,5349,6047,5374,6790,5350,7999,12941,8033,3954,36,6974,10265],"class_list":["post-35270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-aircraft","tag-ancient","tag-camera","tag-capital","tag-common","tag-culture","tag-delhi","tag-diplomacy","tag-diplomatic","tag-diplomats","tag-discipline","tag-dog","tag-embassy","tag-exercise","tag-forced","tag-government","tag-health","tag-hindu","tag-india","tag-indian","tag-indians","tag-international","tag-la","tag-medicine","tag-mental-health","tag-military","tag-millions","tag-ministers","tag-modi","tag-muslim","tag-muslims","tag-n","tag-narendra-modi","tag-nations","tag-new-york","tag-nine","tag-one","tag-pm","tag-politics","tag-prime-minister","tag-release","tag-religion","tag-rock","tag-schools","tag-social-media","tag-students","tag-sun","tag-teacher","tag-twitter","tag-united-nations","tag-vida","tag-video","tag-will","tag-world","tag-worldwide","tag-yoga"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}