New Delhi: Spearheading spectacular worldwide International Yoga Day celebrations with a massive event at New Delhi’s Rajpath early Sunday morning, attended by bureaucrats, service officers, diplomats, political leaders, NCC cadets, schoolchildren and even senior citizens, Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined nearly 36,000 people in performing simple yoga asanas (exercises) for around 35 minutes.
While Mr Modi himself declared, “Who would have thought that Rajpath would become Yogpath (the way to yoga)?” the Rajpath event made it to the Guinness Book of Records on two counts.
One was for the largest yoga demonstration at a single venue, with 35,985 people joining in, while the second was for the largest number of people of various nationalities (84) performing yoga at one place.
The success of the global yoga celebrations, including the Rajpath event, is seen as a masterstroke by Prime Minister Modi to project India’s soft cultural power globally and to stamp the Indian origins of yoga firmly in the minds of people all across the world.
