This video does not show young Modi practicing Yoga. - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
November 25, 2020
A post with an old black & white video of a man practising Yoga is being widely shared across social media platforms with the claim that the video shows young Narendra Modi practising Yoga. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Old video of young Modi practising Yoga.
Fact: The video actually shows B.K.S. Iyengar, founder of the style of Yoga called ‘Iyengar Yoga’ practising Yoga in his young age. A documentary about Iyengar by a Telugu devotional channel featured similar visuals.  Many videos of Iyengar practising Yoga at this age are available on the internet. This video has nothing to do with Modi. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Reverse image search of the video led us to a documentary about famous Yoga teacher B.K.S. Iyengar, founder of the style of Yoga called ‘Iyengar Yoga’ by a Telugu devotional channel which carried visuals similar to the one in the post. In this documentary, these visuals are displayed at the timestamp 2:09 and the voice-over introducing Iyengar, which implies these visuals are of Iyengar practising Yoga.
Taking a cue from the video, further YouTube search with relevant keywords led us to a lengthier version of the video in the post. The description of the video reads ‘Krishnamacharya & B.K.S. Iyengar in 1938 with Yoga Sutras, Part 1of 6’.
Further search led us to a news article which stated that a 1938 film featuring T Krishnamacharya and BKS Iyengar was part of an exhibition on yogic art titled “Yoga: The Art of Transformation” held at Washington DC in 2013. Taking a cue from the article, YouTube search with relevant keywords led us to the video related to the exhibition, at a timestamp of 0:48 we can see visuals similar to one in the post. Also, there are many videos and images on internet similar to the visuals of the video in the post attributing them to BKS Iyengar. With all these, we can conclude that the video in the post does not show Modi practising Yoga.
To sum it up, the video shows famous Yoga teacher BKS Iyengar practising Yoga, not Narendra Modi.