On Monday night, when President Ram Nath Kovind presented the Padma awards at a civil investiture ceremony in the Darbar Hall of Rashtrapati Bhavan, the loudest applause was reserved for Swami Sivananda, the 125-year-old yoga guru who walked barefoot to receive the Padma Shri -- after prostrating before Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and President Kovind.
Born on 8 August 1896 in Sylhet district (now in Bangladesh) of undivided India, Swami Sivananda lost his mother and father at the age of six. Due to abject poverty, his beggar parents could feed him mainly boiled rice water during his childhood days.
Yoga has been an intrinsic part of Indian ethos for over 5,000 years. While India is champing at the bit ahead of International Yoga Day that falls on Jun 21, Swati Snigdha Suar lists out the ten most famous yoga gurus of the country:
The General Assembly hall, where world leaders come together every year for the high-level UN session, was packed with UN diplomats, officials, yoga gurus and practitioners, children and people from various backgrounds as India's Permanent Mission to the UN organised the commemoration of the 5th International Day of Yoga Thursday.
In an age of patents and intellectual property rights, it would be improper to deny that yoga comes from the Hindu tradition, says Sankrant Sanu.
Why must Indians adjust their time-tested system because of what the West needs, asks Sanjeev Nayyar.
The Padma Bhushan was conferred on 17 personalities including N Chandrasekharan, chairman of Tata Sons, Krishna and Suchita Ella of Bharat Biotech, Cyrus Poonawalla, Satya Nadella, chairman of Microsoft, Sunder Pichai, chairman of Google.
