On the Occasion of International Yoga Day, Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli claimed that Yoga originated in Nepal and not in India. He said that Yoga was practiced in his country long before the existence of India as a nation.
“Much before the existence of India as a nation, yoga was practiced in Nepal. When yoga was discovered, India had not been constituted. There was no country like India then; there were just several fringe states. So, yoga originated in Nepal or around Uttarakhand. Yoga did not originate in India,” Oli said.
“Nepal could not take the practice of yoga across the globe due to which there was no international recognition, but India had made the practice famous internationally”, Oli said.
Oli stated, “We never gave credit to our sages who discovered yoga. We’ve always talked about professors and their contributions. But we could not put our claim [on yoga] rightly. We could not take it across the globe. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made yoga famous by proposing to celebrate International Yoga Day on the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Then it got international recognition.”
