Congress sulks over PM Narendra Modi’s ‘Yoga Plank’; says don't saffronise it

NEW DELHI: Congress big shots understandably gave a miss to the official International Yoga Day celebrations on Sunday, realising well that the Modi regime has deftly lapped up a plank that has wide appeal at home and internationally.

Not only did the BJP-led government took the initiative in celebrating the yoga day across the country and abroad but it also scored a political point by getting the UN to declare June 21 as the International Yoga Day.

So the Congress had to make it clear that it was not opposed to yoga but only to the manner in which, it claims, the Modi regime is "politically exploiting the ancient Indian practice with an attempt to saffronise it"

The party pointed out that many of the party’s former PMs, including Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and P V Narasimha Rao, had been keen yoga practitioners. It also released a famous photograph of Nehru doing ‘sheersasan’. But party leaders realise that the Modi regime has convincingly hijacked the political patent for yoga. The fact that the Congress-led UPA regime had failed to pitch for a yoga day in its 10 years of rule makes the party’s tactical error glaring.

Not even a Nehru or Indira — who practised yoga and her instructor Dhirendra Brahmachari had then acquired the kind of political clout that could make Ramdev envy — could now help the party challenge the Modi regime’s claim over yoga.