Yoga May Help Modi Win Hindu Votes and Make India a Hindu Rashtra
In the current world full of greed and selfishness, Yoga is an utterly useless practice and therefore it will be difficult to find any person around you who is eligible to perform Yoga.
By Rakesh Raman
The Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi said today that the world has embraced Yoga and glimpses of this can be seen in the manner in which International Day of Yoga has been marked every year.
Infact, Modi added, Yoga Day has become one of the biggest mass movements in the quest for good health and well-being.
Modi has been promoting Hindu exercise Yoga ever since he became the PM of India in 2014.
Now, he has gone a step further to become a Yoga instructor. A digital simulation of PM Modi has been released to train people on Shalabhasana which is a back-bending Yoga asana.
Modi has urged Yoga enthusiasts to make a resolution that every year they would fix a target to adding a certain number of Yoga practitioners (in fact, Hindu voters). He called upon people to make Yoga a mass movement. While Yoga in its current form is a useless exercise, Modi is trying to attract Hindu voters by promoting Yoga among them.
But why is Modi so eager to promote Yoga? Yoga is largely a Hindu-only exercise, as it was first practiced in ancient India by Hindu Sanyasis (or ascetics) as part of their lifelong practice of self-denial.
However, the Hindu politicians (including Modi) in India – in their attempt to spread Hinduism or the poison of religion across the world – are trying to deceptively position Yoga as a universal human need.
As nearly 80% of the 1.3 billion people of India are Hindus, it becomes a virtual compulsion for all political parties to woo Hindu voters. Politicians, therefore, play all types of tricks to bind Hindus with a common thread. Yoga is one of them.
The Modi-led BJP, which is an overtly Hindu party, has gone to an extreme to make India a Hindu Rashtra (a nation only for people who belong to the Hindu religion). Therefore, Yoga is one of the powerful weapons for BJP to unite the Hindu voters for political gains.
धर्म क्या है? What is religion?
भाईयो और बहनों। क्या कभी कुत्ता कुत्ते को काटता है? नहीं। क्या कभी साँप साँप को डसता है? नहीं। क्या कभी शेर दूसरे शेर पर हमला करके उसे मारता है? नहीं। लेकिन आज पूरी दुनिया में आदमी आदमी को मार रहा है।और इस मार–काट का सबसे बड़ा कारण है धर्म और धर्म में लोगों का अन्धविश्वास।क्यों करते हैं आप धर्म पर विश्वास जो आपको दूसरे आदमी का दुश्मन बना रहा है? सिर्फ मानवता ही एक धर्म है जो हरेक इंसान को दूसरे इंसान से जोड़ता है।आइए सिर्फ मानवता को ही अपना धर्म बनाएं।
Humanity is the biggest and the purest religion. Any organized religion that believes in any identifiable God keeps people away from people by promoting religion-based groups. And organized religion has always been the cause of the most heinous crimes and killings in the world. Can we adopt only humanity as our religion?
Yoga being a passive exercise makes you lazy and lethargic, although modern Yogis try to falsely convince themselves that they are getting healthier. Hindu Sanyasis in ancient India never performed Yoga as a physical exercise. They adopted it as a mind-control method, which was part of a series of actions toward self-discipline and selflessness.
In fact, self-denial is a prerequisite to perform Yoga. In the current world full of greed and selfishness, Yoga is an utterly useless practice and therefore it will be difficult to find any person around you who is eligible to perform Yoga.
But Modi and his friends – with their eyes on Hindu votes – are trying to create a country-wide Hindu group tied with the falsehood of Yoga. Similarly, they want to draw the attention of Hindus who are spread across the world by saying Yoga has a universal appeal.
It is only a hogwash. Let’s stay away from Yoga being preached by the Hindu politicians and fraudsters related to them.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.
Photo courtesy: Press Information Bureau
