Cognress Slams Modi For Turning Yoga Into ‘PR Exercise’

20, June New Delhi

Congress Saturday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling BJP of turning yoga into an ‘aggressive public relations exercise and a divisive and propagandist issue’.

Declaring its support for the UN initiative of declaring June 21 as the International Yoga Day, the Congress said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP have again proven their misconceived capacity and vicious ability of turning anything and everything- even the most benign and pious- into an aggressive, divisive and propagandist issue.

”This time around, it is our ancient Indian heritage of Yoga, which is being made into a propaganda and ‘Public Relation’ exercise, which aims at projecting the Prime Minister and his party as the ‘inventors of Yoga’,” party chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said here in a statement, as the country braced up for the mega event.

He pointed out that the country’s leaders and Prime Ministers, including Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai and PV Narasimha Rao, as also millions of Indians were and have been committed practitioners of Yoga from ancient times. ”In as much as the benefits of Yoga as a daily guide to mental and physical well-being are concerned, we, as any other Indian, unequivocally support its voluntary practice and propagation,” he said.

However, brazen and shameless attempts at usurping Yoga and in the process making a universally-accepted Indian wellness sutra into a coercive and divisive issue, deserves thorough condemnation.

Much before Modi tried to usurp it and project himself as its torch bearer, Yoga had spread across the world, owing to its intrinsic goodness and it has crores of people cutting across religion, class and gender practicing it, Surjewala said