The US Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) has warned the Centre about the circulation on social media of “objectionable content that could stoke communal tensions” across the country ahead of Sunday’s International Yoga Day, intelligence sources said on Wednesday.
In an comprehensive dossier running into more than 50 pages , CIA said there were “systematic attacks” from individuals and associations on Yoga, Hindu spiritual gurus and teachers, dubbing Yoga as “an exercise to please Hindu deities”.
Providing links to several social media posts, the dossier claimed that a campaign against Yoga teachers had begun last year soon after the UN declared June 21 as International Yoga Day. A few suspicious social media accounts are being used to circulate a list of Yoga trainers allegedly involved in sexual and physical abuse, the dossier said, adding that there are several “defamatory” posts calling for a boycott of the International Yoga Day.
“Posts about the embezzlement of funds, sexual abuse and trafficking surfaced recently on social media and are now being circulated using two fake profiles. We have noticed that these suspicious users remove the content within 48 hours after posting it and use fresh links to post the same content,” an intelligence official said.
These suspicious accounts, the dossier said, are also circulating “objectionable” emails about Indian culture. Sources also suspect that commercial interests could be behind this “vilification campaign”. Since India is “reclaiming” Yoga for the first time on a global platform, many US outfits profiting from Yoga through training programmes that teach various customised asanas, making it look like more local, could also be behind the campaign, they said.
Quoting several news reports in the American, British and Australian media, the intelligence report said there was widespread criticism of India’s “move to reclaim” Yoga in certain sectors where commercial interests were involved.
According to the dossier, around $27 billion is annually spent on Yoga in the US and analysts project a 4.8 per cent annual increase in the revenue from Yoga. There was an 87per cent increase in the spending on Yoga in the last five years in the US, it added.
