New Delhi : Millennia after the great rishi Patanjali wrote the ”yoga sutras”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the largest yoga class at Rajpath with 35,985 persons from 84 nationalities to make the first record for the Guinness book.
The announcement was made at the United Nations by Marco Frigatti, senior vice president of Guinness World Record at the UN headquarters in New York. He said: “ It was an astounding achievement (and a) very rare one”.
Modi who brings to the office of the prime minister the rare combination of communication skills and showmanship led the Rajpath class with a personal display of yoga skills. He had laid the foundations of this display of India”s soft yogic power and his hard-boiled political skills when he visited the United Nations last year in September and got all the 193 nations to accept India”s suggestion that June 21st be celebrated as the International Yoga Day. The date coincides with the death anniversary of Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, the founder of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh whose ideology guides Modi.
As he said: “Who would have thought that Rajpath would become Yoga Path? This is a heritage of the world and humanity… A big dream starts with a small exercise of yoga ” Modi took another step forward in deconstructing the Nehru-era symbolisms, virtually equating the Yoga day with the Republic Day that is celebrated at the same venue. So, if Nehru gave the R-Day, Modi has given the Y-Day.
It was an elaborately planned exercise with ministers fanning out to far off places like New York, San Francisco, and shows being held in London, Paris as well state capitals in the country. At the seat of the RSS, Nitin Gadkari who represents the Nagpur parliamentary constituency was there for this show.
For a day at least the Lalit Modi scam that has been chasing the Modi Sarkar took a back seat and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who is at the centre of this storm, celebrated the event in New York. Addressing the delegates on the occasion, she said it was “an idea whose time has come” and thanked the 192 UN member states who made International Yoga Day possible. She added: “The word ”yoga” means to unite, to join… we hope this will help bring the world together.” Giant digital screens beamed the event live from Rajpath, where security arrangements rivalled Republic Day celebrations. Similar yoga events took place simultaneously across India in parks, churches, homes, on military ships, an army base in the desert and even mid-air on some flights. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, a critic of PM Modi, was also spotted at Rajpath performing yoga. “Yoga is a good thing. Everyone should do it,” he told reporters.
