Anand Mahindra promotes 'Namaste' to curb spread of coronavirus

Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra feels that it’s time to introduce Namaste (a greeting gesture with both hands joined palm to palm) globally in happier circumstances and not as a result of a pandemic.

The business tycoon, who has an active presence on Twitter, pitched for the respectful gesture’s global dominance of while sharing a graph that read, “India’s traditional greeting ‘Namaste’ should be preferred to the handshake, since it prevented the spread of germs from person to person.”

The tweet comes in the backdrop of the deadly novel coronavirus outbreak in China which has rocked the world and claimed 1,900 lives to date.

Would have preferred that the “Namaste’ be adopted globally in happier cirumstances (not as the result of a pandemic!) but oh well…This clearly proves that our ancient Indian ancestors had real common sense when creating our customs! ? pic.twitter.com/s3UDI2ng2G

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) February 16, 2020

Amid one of the deadliest public health scares, various precautions are being taken by the governments to curb the virus to spread further and the business honcho’s tweet adds to that.

“Would have preferred that the ‘Namaste’ be adopted globally in happier cirumstances (not as the result of a pandemic!) but oh well… This clearly proves that our ancient Indian ancestors had real common sense when creating our customs!” his tweet read.

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The graphical representation he tweeted displayed that 124 million bacterial colony (CFU) was transferred in a handshake. It claimed 55 million and 7 million CFU spread through a high 5 and fist pump respectively. It also claimed that ‘zero’ germs were transferred while greeting someone with Namaste.

The Indian billionaire earlier shared a video on his 7.4 million-followers strong Twitter page expressing concern over the health scar. “Unbelievable images. For once, I hope it is a fake video. Eerily reminiscent of the ‘95 movie ‘Outbreak’ starring Dustin Hoffman about a deadly pandemic. A case of ‘life imitating Art?’ We need to treat this as an emergency ourselves since it’ll spillway beyond China’s borders,” he tweeted on January 25.

Unbelievable images. For once, I hope it IS a fake video.Eerily reminiscent of the ‘95 movie ‘Outbreak’ starring Dustin Hoffman about a deadly pandemic. A case of ‘life imitating Art?’ We need to treat this as an emergency ourselves since it’ll spill way beyond China’s borders https://t.co/S1hR5mi5Ns

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) January 25, 2020