At 6 a.m., the yoga event began and welcomed participants from all over the city, including instructors and students from different schools in the Kingdom, Saudis and other nationals, representatives from the Indian Embassy, and Indian individuals who reside in the Kingdom.

Ritu Yadav hosted the programme and was led by certified instructors from the International Yoga Club in Riyadh.
The ambassador reported that 600 persons attended today’s festivities at Al-Madi Park.

Alongside the yoga sessions, dance academies presented celebration dances with a yoga theme.

The event’s chief guest was Svyasa University chancellor and Padma Shri recipient Guruji Dr. H.R. Nagendra.

The occasion was also attended by Dr. Manjunath Sharma, vice chancellor and director of research at the same institution.

The International Day of Yoga was established by the UN on December 11, 2014, and has been observed ever since.

“Yoga is a traditional Indian physical, mental, and spiritual discipline. It is currently practised in many different ways all across the world and is becoming more and more well-known, according to Khan.

The embassy event’s goal was to raise awareness of yoga and to celebrate it as a holistic activity beneficial to one’s health and wellbeing.

According to Khan, “the philosophy underlying the age-old Indian practise of yoga has influenced various aspects of how society in India functions, whether it be with regard to fields like health and medicine or education and the arts.”

The ambassador described yoga as a practise that focuses on bringing the mind, body, and soul into harmony in order to promote improved mental, spiritual, and physical wellbeing.

“Yoga is already well-liked in the Gulf region, particularly in Saudi Arabia,” he declared.

Yoga has been accepted as a sport in Saudi Arabia as part of a holistic health initiative under Vision 2023. In June 2021, a memorandum of agreement between India and Saudi Arabia for yoga collaboration was also inked.

We would like to express our gratitude to the Saudi authorities for their exceptional assistance in helping us plan this event, in particular the Royal Commission for Riyadh City, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Al-Madi Park administration, and the Saudi Yoga Committee.

The United Nations in 2014 declared June 21 the International Day of Yoga, adopting a measure proposed by Modi.

“Let us use the power of yoga, not only to be healthy, happy, but also to be kind to ourselves and to each other,” Modi told a gathering of yoga devotees seated on yellow mats on the north lawn of U.N. headquarters by New York’s East River.

“Let us use the power of yoga to build bridges of friendship, a peaceful world, and a cleaner, greener and sustainable future,” he said.

Modi is in the United States for talks with President Joe Biden that the White House sees as bolstering “one of the defining partnerships of our age.”

Modi has been to the United States five times since becoming prime minister in 2014, but the trip will be his first with the full diplomatic status of a state visit, despite concerns over what is seen as a deteriorating human rights situation under his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Modi is to head from New York to Washington for a private dinner with Biden on Wednesday evening, followed by talks at the White House and a state dinner on Thursday.

Before taking to the stage to speak on Wednesday, Modi paid his respects before a bust of Indian independence hero Mahatma Gandhi in the U.N. grounds.

Gandhi, who was born in 1869, played a key role in India’s fight for independence. He was assassinated by a Hindu radical on Jan. 30, 1948, just a few months after he led India to freedom from British rule through a nonviolent struggle.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres delivered a video message to the yoga event, saying he wanted to “recognize Prime Minister Modi for all he has done to promote understanding of yoga and its many 

New Delhi (AP) — India’s 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’ Secretariat in New York, millions of Indians will take note.

Yoga, an ancient discipline first practiced by Hindu sages, is now one of India’s most successful cultural exports after Bollywood. And it’s become a piece of India’s diplomacy. Surinder Goel, a 61-year-old yoga instructor in the capital, New Delhi, practices daily. He says the activity is “India’s contribution to the world.”

“Our prime minister has done a great job in spreading yoga to the world,” Goel said. “Today, even the Muslim countries learn and follow it, only because of the PM.”

Goel says yoga should be a daily practice worldwide, no matter how busy a person is, citing the prime minister’s devotion to the practice.

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

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.

Modi has also been living la vida yoga, flexing his own hardcore devotion to the practice.

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.

In 2019, after the final day of national polling, he retreated to a Himalayan mountain cave to meditate and seek isolation — with a camera crew that relayed live visuals to the entire nation.

A year later, Modi went the extra mile, tweeting videos showing an animated version of him doing yoga poses.

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.

With over 1.42 billion people, which recently surpassed China as the most populous, 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.

Modi’s 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’s Bharatiya Janata Party have sought to make it mandatory in schools.

This has angered some of the prime minister’s critics. In particular, some Muslims — India’s largest minority, which has faced rising violence under Modi by Hindu nationalists — say they should not be forced to perform sun salutations or chant Hindu hymns.

Government ministers tried to address these concerns by guaranteeing that sun salutations would be optional, though some dissenters are not assured.

Srivalli Cherla has noticed yoga becoming more politicized in recent years.

The 30-year-old yoga instructor based in India’s 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.

“Whenever I am having a bad day, I come back home and roll out my yoga mat. It’s a form of mental discipline too; you learn not to give in to certain thoughts, so it challenges you mentally,” she says.

Cherla said she had signed up for a program to receive a yoga instructor certification recognized by the Indian government’s Ayush Ministry, which promotes Ayurveda traditional medicine. But she quit just 10 days into training.

“The teacher passed a comment that essentially called it a Hindu — and not secular — practice, which left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve never seen it as religious. It’s part of India’s culture, but this comment made me realize what they were teaching didn’t align with my own beliefs or experience of yoga,” she says.

In New Delhi, yogi Goel agrees that yoga is for everyone, regardless of religion.

“We should not connect yoga with religion or politics. Yoga is meant to benefit the common people, not ministers,” Goel says.

And he believes yoga has the power to do more than just diplomacy.

“Yoga can change the person, the country and the world,” he says.