India's new relationship with Sri Lanka through Yoga

Abstract

The word "Yoga" has its origins in the ancient Sanskrit language and means "to attach, join, harness, yoke". Yoga achieves the spiritual development of a human being. Yoga first appeared in ancient text such as the sacred Hindu epic the Bagavad Gita, written between the fifth and second centuries BC. Yoga became known around the world in the end of 19th century. Today yoga becomes a global phenomenon. The relationship between India and Sri Lanka is more than 2,500 years old. Both countries have similar culture, tradition. Today powerful states mostly use Soft Power to spread the power towards the developing countries. Soft Power is the ability to attract to shape the preferences of others through appeal and attraction. Methods of Soft Power are specially culture and political values. Especially in today, Modi's government spread Indian culture and tradition around the world. In 2014, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken yoga as an emblem of India's flourishing in the world. According to that fact in here can be taken as how India re-built their relationship with Sri Lanka by using Yoga as the tool of culture. Therefore, this study has been conducted in order to identify the trends of India's new route in Sri Lanka through Yoga. The main objectives of the study are, identify the yoga and lifestyle in India and focus about the relationship with India and Sri Lanka. Finally, the study focuses on the possibility of India to spreading their power in Sri Lanka, using yoga. The methodology that has followed for the study is qualitative in nature while only based on secondary sources of data like books, journal articles, reports, institutional and official documents and applied qualitative descriptive analysis. This research findings how India make their relationship strong with Sri Lanka using Soft Power (culture) should be analyzed in detail