How India is trying to use yoga diplomacy in Palestine to disguise its close ties with Israel

Yoga has become a prominent feature of India’s cultural diplomacy abroad, with the government, from 2014 onwards promoting it more forcefully as a key instrument of soft power.

“Yoga is truly universal. Friends, when we do yoga, we feel physically fit, mentally calm and emotionally contained,” India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in 2014.

“But this is not just about doing exercises on a mat, yoga is a way of life. A holistic approach to health and wellbeing, a way to mindfulness in thought and action. A way to live in harmony with self, with others and with nature,” he added.

Much of this yoga diplomacy has been concentrated in the West.

Led by India’s Ministry of Ayush (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy), the Indian government has used yoga as a means of marketing India as a place of peace, harmony and safety.

This has been especially egregious given that India has grown increasingly authoritarian and intolerant towards minorities under Modi’s administration.

“Modi has mobilised yoga to obfuscate the increasing violence, inflexibility, and intolerance of difference under his administration,” Anusha Lakshmi wrote in 2020.

And it is in Palestine that India’s use of yoga has been arguably most problematic.

Exhibit A: March 9, 2025

In the midst of the genocide in Gaza, the Indian mission...

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