Final Up to date:November 07, 2025, 08:00 IST
Rahul Gandhi’s televised pushups throughout the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ have been meant to indicate a brand new model of “fitness politics” nevertheless it opened a Pandora’s Field of performative health
PM Narendra Modi made yoga a soft-power software, a world photo-op that rebranded Indian tradition as each historic and aspirational. (Picture: PTI/File)
A lot forward of the election season, it started as a sideshow: a little bit of gym-floor bravado for the cameras. Now, it has virtually emerged as a marketing campaign technique.
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi’s televised pushups throughout the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ have been meant to show his stamina, spirit, and a brand new model of “fitness politics”. As a substitute, it opened a Pandora’s Field of performative health, the place biceps meet ballots and abs meet ambition and aspiration.
The audience right here is younger voters, first-timers, and Gen Z. As a result of in India 2025, nothing, not even a politician’s plank, is apolitical.
Early this week, Trinamool Congress normal secretary and MP Abhishek Banerjee joined the pushup bandwagon, dropping down at a public occasion in West Bengal and flexing for the cameras. The gang roared, the video went viral throughout social media platforms, and all of a sudden everybody forgot what the occasion was really about.
Someplace between the primary rep and the ultimate smirk, politics turned efficiency artwork. The pushup, as soon as a check of energy, became a metaphor for energy projection and a trick to recalibrate political campaigns.
FROM YOGA DIPLOMACY TO GYM DEMOCRACY
For context, all of it started with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Many would agree that lengthy earlier than Rahul Gandhi hit the ground, Modi had already turned health into overseas coverage.
Modi’s 2014 pitch to the United Nations to mark June 21 as Worldwide Yoga Day was not nearly stretching; it was strategic diplomacy wrapped in surya namaskars. He made yoga a soft-power software, a world photo-op that rebranded Indian tradition as each historic and aspirational.
Inside India, his ‘Fitness Challenge’ movies urged bureaucrats and ministers to comply with swimsuit. Quickly, the likes of Union minister Kiren Rijiju have been posting exercise clips from the gymnasium, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya was tweeting about his “early morning discipline”, and Tripura’s former chief minister Biplab Deb was demonstrating stretches between speeches, every turning wellness right into a marketing campaign prop.
Some laughed, others lunged. However the picture of the “fit, focused and disciplined leader” caught. The message was refined however sturdy: a pacesetter who can maintain a pose may maintain energy.
FLEXING THE NARRATIVE
Gandhi’s pushups, nonetheless, have been much less rise up and extra rebranding. A counter-image, rugged, energetic, disciplined, who is supposed to scrub off the “armchair prince” tag, emerged. The BJP mocked him, however the message resonated with a era raised on health reels and “transformation journeys”.
Banerjee’s current viral video of doing pushups was a continuation of this gym-floor marketing campaign. His was not only a exercise, it was an intelligently crafted slogan.
Bengal’s younger dada proved he too might match the optics of vigour and youth. In right this moment’s politics, each pushup is a press assertion, each reel a rally, and each sweat drop a soundbite.
And the Gen Z crowd? They adore it. They adore it. That is politics they’ll see as kinetic, clickable, and viral. Manifestos might not pattern, however a pacesetter doing fifty pushups absolutely will.
PUSH, PULL AND POST
Politics has all the time been about public posturing, creating notion, and constructing a story. The distinction between the previous and current is the medium. Now it’s completed in HD. The pushup is the brand new political handshake, temporary, muscular, and deeply photogenic. It indicators vitality, accessibility, and youth, the holy trinity cherished by India’s stressed younger voters.
However there lies the irony. The tougher they push on stage, the extra they pull behind the scenes. It’s extra about pulling political rivals away or pulling alliances and pulling narratives.
First Printed:
November 07, 2025, 08:00 IST
Information politics Pushups, Energy & The Nice Indian Flex-Off: How Politicians Are Sweating For Gen Z’s Consideration
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