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Akshay’s tournament aims for Guinness
After helping actor Akshay Kumar pioneer the biggest ever Martial Arts movement in Indian karate, the technical director of the tournament, Mehul Vora feels popularising karate among teens and women should be a must.
After helping actor Akshay Kumar pioneer the biggest ever Martial Arts movement in Indian karate, the technical director of the tournament, Mehul Vora feels popularising karate among teens and women should be a must. He says, “Martial arts should be learnt by everybody first as a tool of defence, and second for fitness.”
He adds that it is the need of the hour that women learn to defend themselves as women empowerment in our country is weak. “Indian women are bound by culture and society and don’t like doing martial arts. Moreover, their close ones feel they will be prone to violence or become manly, which is why martial arts aren’t encouraged among women in our society,” he says.
Trying a different approach to teaching women, the institute trains kids in cities in Maharashtra and Gujarat free of cost. Talking about the steps taken by Akshay he says, “We try to reach out to them in their growing years hoping they use it in the future.” Akshay wrote a letter to the ministry last year asking that martial arts should be made compulsory for school kids, an intitiative which
Mehul feels will go a long way.
Mehul is also eyeing the Guinness Book of World Record this year as his institute has applied for the world’s largest Karate tournament record, which currently stands at 3,600 people competing over three days. His own tournament has had 4,000 and 4,800 participants competing over four days in the last two years and he expects the numbers to exceed that this year.
“But it isn’t an easy process. A representative from Guinness has to accept your application and open the record for a challenge, which is when you compete. We hope we are able to set a new record,” he says.
