“Instead of dividing, Yoga unites. Instead of further animosity, Yoga assimilates. Instead of increasing suffering, Yoga heals,” Modi said on Twitter.

Other gatherings took place across New Delhi with 10,000 enthusiasts registered as well as more than 5,000 events across from the country including in Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Patna.

In the capital several hundred braved unhealthy pollution levels and hot and humid weather to lay out their mats in the Lodi Gardens park amid the Mughal tombs.

“Yoga basically comes from India, and now it’s celebrated all over the world. So now the world knows the power of yoga,” participant Sidharth Singh, 23, told AFP.

The largest was in Mysore in the south with more than 60,000 aficionados strutting their stuff, organisers said.

There was also floating yoga on board the Japanese naval ship JS Ise and on the Indian Navy’s INS Sahyadri, both taking part in military exercises in the Pacific, the Indian Navy said.

Below the surface, photos released by the Indian military showed a submarine crew joining in, while the Air Force tweeted photos of skydiving parachute instructors in yoga poses as they tumbled to Earth.

– On top of the world –
Artist Sudarsan Pattnaik meanwhile created a special sand sculpture with the message “Yoga for Peace and Harmony” on a beach in the eastern city of Puri.

In Tokyo, around 80 people — mainly in their 60s and 70s — took part in a special yoga session in the Zojoji Temple, the two-storey red shrine in the shadow of Tokyo Tower.

Some 300 yogis stretched out on colourful mats for a dawn practice in a park in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, with the glittering Shwedagon Pagoda as a backdrop.

Interest in yoga has surged in Myanmar over the past decade, as the country’s growing middle class catches up on global trends once kept out under isolated military rule.

Easy if you know how: People around the world are celebrating International Yoga Day, though not everyone will manage this pose
“Now yoga is popular around the country,” yoga teacher Khin Mg Swe, 69, who organised the event, told AFP.

Other events were scheduled around the world later, including in Kilkenny in Ireland, in Milan, Italy and in Times Square in New York.

Other cities however held their yoga day earlier than June 21 — the longest day in the Northern Hemisphere — including in Paris, Seoul and in Durban, South Africa last weekend.

Modi is keen on portraying his physical prowess, last week posting on Twitter his morning yoga routine involving plodding around a tree and flexing over a boulder.

He has also spearheaded an initiative to reclaim the discipline as a historic part of Indian culture since his Hindu nationalist government came to power in 2014.

Yoga has boomed in recent decades, with millions — perhaps up to 300 million — practising it regularly, although in the West it is often more of a gymnastic than a spiritual activity.

But this doesn’t bother the spiritual head of the biggest ashram or retreat in Rishikesh, the Indian city on the banks of the holy Ganges river considered the world yoga capital.

“At least people are doing it. One day you walk the path, the next day you find the truth also,” Swami Chidanand Saraswati told AFP.

“As the Sun is for all, the Moon is for all, rivers are for all, in the same way yoga is for all,” he said. “Not to worry!”