NEW DELHI (AP) — If China has panda diplomacy, India has yoga.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi successfully lobbied the United Nations to designate June 21 International Yoga Day in his first year in power in 2014.

Since then, just as China under President Xi Jinping has given countries pandas for their zoos in a show of goodwill, Modi has used one of India's most popular exports to assert his nation's rising place in the world.

On Friday, the fifth annual International Yoga Day, Modi practiced various yoga "asanas" alongside an estimated 40,000 people in India's eastern state of Jharkhand as mem...