CVoter Snap Poll: Majority feel PM Modi successfully projecting soft power

New Delhi: A big majority of respondents in an exclusive CVoter survey to mark the state visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the United States are of the opinion that PM Modi has been very successful in projecting Indias culture and heritage at the global level.

This includes a substantial majority of those who support and vote for opposition parties.

In the snap poll conducted on June 21 with a sample size of 2,563, one of the questions was: PM Modi will lead International Yoga Day celebrations at the UN headquarters. Do you think the PM has been successful in projecting India's culture and heritage at the global level?

As many as 71 per cent of the respondents in the CVoter snap poll answered in the affirmative with less than a quarter of them disagreeing. A total of 58.3 per cent of those who support and vote for opposition parties agreed with the contention.

This year, a new entry was probably made into the Guinness World Records on June 21 when Modi led the Yoga Day celebrations at the UN headquarters where citizens of more than 135 countries performed yoga with him. Apart from senior UN officials and Indian celebrities like singer Falguni Shah, Hollywood superstar Richard Gere also performed yoga with Prime Minister Modi.

Soon after he was elected the Prime Minister in 2014, Narendra Modi led an initiative to popularise yoga as a gift of India to the world. With an overwhelming majority, the United Nations passed a resolution to celebrate June 21 as the International Day of Yoga every year. Since then, even countries like Saudi Arabia have adopted yoga with trained teachers imparting instructions.

In almost all his overseas tours, Modi has not only interacted with the diaspora, but also promoted Indian arts, culture and heritage in a very big way.