Prime Minister Narendra Modi led 50,000 people on Thursday morning to mark the fourth international day of yoga here and said that the ancient Indian knowledge system fosters amity, which can form the basis of national unity and universal peace in these fractious times.
Modi addressed the participants in Hindi and, uncharacteristically, in English as well, as he reached out to yoga enthusiasts across the world, and for 40 minutes led the way to perform 20 yogic and three pranayama, or breathing, exercises in the backdrop of Dehradun’s iconic Forest Research Institute building.
“Dehradun to Dublin, Shanghai to Chicago, Jakarta to Johannesburg, Himalayan highlands or sunburnt deserts, Yoga is enriching millions of lives across the world,” the PM told the participants, comprising predominantly school students and youths. The PM and participants performed yoga on mostly saffron yoga mats, with a sprinkling of blue coloured mats as well, on a green carpet.
Dehradun was picked as the venue for the fourth edition of the event, also the last before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The PM as well as Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat spoke of the spiritual importance of Uttarakhand, which they said was home to the ‘char dham’ – Hindu religion’s preeminent pilgrimage centres.
Rawat pointed out that it was thanks to the PM’s efforts that the state now had an all-weather road for visiting the four pilgrimage centres, or char dham, and that he prays to the deities of Kedarnath and Badrinath to bless the PM’s vision of shaping a ‘new India’.
Modi said river Ganga originated in Uttarakhand, and it was also the birthplace of yoga and Ayurveda. He said yoga contributed to national unity, and has become one of the most powerful unifying forces in the world. The PM said India needed to learn to respect its cultural heritage, and his espousal of yoga in the last three years has inspired many individuals to take it up and several institutions devoted to the study and propagation of yoga have come up.
But beyond yoga, the event was as much about the PM’s charisma and connect with the common people, which seems to have remained undiminished at least in this part of the country, and the paeans that Rawat, AYUSH minister Sripad Yesso Naik and event hostess Manisha Dube sang in the praise of his leadership.
Dube described Modi as a “national saint” as she implored the participants to greet his arrival with prolonged bursts of clapping, which was duly honoured. After the exercises, Modi milled around with the participants, many of whom chanted his name in unison. These participants had queued up to be at the event since three in the morning, most of whom said they were there to be part of the momentous occasion since Modi was to lead the exercises.
“Modi is an amazing motivator. Hundreds of retired defence personnel like me, who have made Dehradun their home, have participated in the causes that he has espoused, like the clean India campaign,” Major (retired) V N Saxena said. He and hundreds of others had undergone a 15-day training session. Satish Rawat, a private sector employee, said his family was a "devotee" of the deities of char dham, but also of Modi. "He is our nation's last hope, and he will transform India," Rawat, in his forties, said.
Dube, who kept the participants enthused as they waited for the PM’s arrival at the venue, described Modi as a poet and a writer. She said that while Modi may not be a painter, but was putting his brush on the canvas of India to take the country to a brighter future. She credited Modi for the success of Mangalyaan, India’s Mars mission, as also for taking yoga to the world. Dube said the new found respect that India has found in the world was because of the PM’s leadership.
During the course of the event, jointly organised by the union AYUSH ministry and Uttarakhand government, all the speakers, including the PM, concluded their speeches with ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’. The cry of ‘Jai Hind’ was heard only once, and that too when Dube signed off after the PM’s departure at the end of the event. The security at the event asked all women who were wearing black dupattas to leave it outside the venue, lest these are waved as a mark of protest.
In his speech, the PM also said yoga has shown the way from “illness to wellness”, that it has become the biggest mass movement across the globe. "Yoga is beautiful because it is ancient yet modern, it is constant yet evolving," he said.
Elsewhere in the country, union ministers and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders attended yoga events in several cities. Interestingly, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, an ally of the BJP, didn’t organise or participate in any yoga event. In Amaravati, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu performed yoga. “He led the way with some deft yoga moves showcasing his fitness and agility,” said a statement from his office.