Yoga Negated Through Modi’s Hate Speeches

The societal harmony being flagged to mark International Yoga Day celebrations this year is negated by Modi’s numerous hate speeches against Muslims delivered just over two weeks ago while campaigning in the recently concluded 18th general elections.

The PM’s diatribes against people pursuing Islamic faith and his repeated utterances that they are “infiltrators” out to take away properties of Hindus if his political opponents acquire power, was contrary to the ideals of societal harmony. Even his repeated false assertions that certain political parties on coming to power would make Muslims entitled to reservation meant for Dalits, Scheduled tribes and Other Backward Classes, were aimed at causing societal disharmony for electoral gains.

Such Islamophobia demonstrated in his speeches shocked the nation and outraged the international community.

Vivekananda Linked Yoga With Ability to Fight Tyrants

Had Swami Vivekananda been alive, he would have found it despicable that a person occupying the post of Prime Minister and taking credit for sensitising the UN to celebrate June 21 every year as International Yoga Day, is in his actions and speeches spewing venom against people in the name of faith.

Swami Vivekananda would have recalled one of his remarks on Yoga made while speaking in the US  on the subject “Sadhanas or Preparations for Higher Life.” He said, “No breathing, no physical training of Yoga, nothing is of any use until you reach to the idea, “I am the Witness.” Say, when the tyrant hand is on your neck, “I am the Witness! I am the Witness!” Say, “I am the Spirit! Nothing external can touch me.” When evil thoughts arise, repeat that, give that sledgehammer blow on their heads, “I am the Spirit!

Tragically, the ruling leadership has dragged our country down to the level of electoral autocracy where the all- pervasive doctrine of frightfulness sustains their rule.

Swami Vivekananda’s words “the tyrant hand is on your neck” have become a reality in India during the past 10 years. We need to be empowered by Yoga to say “I am the witness” to get our freedom and democracy back. This is the revolutionary meaning of Yoga for emancipation from dictatorial methods of governance being perpetuated in India now in complete contravention of the constitutional vision of country. Mere asanas, Yogic postures, are not enough; we need to imbibe the spirit of Yoga to defy leaders who trample upon our life and liberty.

Yoga Compliments Religious Pluralism

In another speech delivered in the US on the theme “The Goal and Method of Realisation”, Vivekananda referred to the different types of Yoga — Karma, Bhakti, Raja, Jnana — and said, “These are all different roads leading to the same centre — God.”

Adding further, he upheld coexistence of all faiths by saying, “Indeed, the varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage man to lead a religious life. The more sects there are, the more opportunities there are for making successful appeals to the divine instinct in all men”.

Vivekananda’s ringing words, “…the varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good” articulated by him in the context of explaining the meaning of Yoga, assume greater significance when Modi, as Prime Minister, tramples upon the essence of Yoga by delivering toxic speeches against Muslims, stoking religious disharmony, discord and hatred. Hence, how do Modi’s pronouncements promote “…both individual well-being and societal harmony” one of the themes of this year’s International Yoga Day?

Gandhi and Yoga

Yoga is rooted in the meditative aspects of religion that are integral to the values of ethics and non-violence. In Patanjali’s eight-fold Yoga, the first fold prescribed, among others, truth, non-violence, non-possession and non-stealing. These ideals constitute the first syllable of Yoga. Mahatma Gandhi did not follow any yogic practice but made truth and non-violence the sheet anchor of India’s struggle to attain freedom from British rule.

Modi, on the other hand, has been delivering hate speeches that constitute a travesty of Yoga and its foundational ideals of truth and non-violence. He should redeem himself of the breaches of those ideals first before waxing eloquent on Yoga and societal harmony.

The writer served as Officer on Special Duty to President of India K R Narayanan. The views are personal.

Courtesy: Newsclick

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The following is an extract from Modi’s speech addressed to the United Nations General Assembly in 2014 to advocate for the adoption of an International Yoga Day:
 
“[Yoga] is an invaluable gift of our ancient tradition…It is not about exercise, but to discover the sense of oneness with yourself, the world and the nature…By changing our lifestyle and creating consciousness, it can help us deal with climate change.”
 
What exactly is going on here? The ancient tradition that is repeatedly used to root the practice of yoga is one purposively cleansed of the influence of ‘foreign [read Muslim] invaders’. The ancient tradition that is referred to unhesitatingly is a reference to the culmination of religious traditions that have now been embraced by the giant conglomerate of Hinduism. The Indian derivative of yoga is a recent phenomenon to manipulatively juxtapose an integral element of the demographically dominant religion with national identity.
 
The Yoga Sutra composed by Patanjali in circa 150 BCE states:
 
“The Lord of Yoga is a distinct form of spirit unaffected by the forces of corruption, by actions, by the fruits of action, or by the subliminal intentions. In the Lord of Yoga is the incomparable seed of omniscience…”
 
The word, ‘Yoga’ has Sanskrit roots and means ‘union’ according to one source; the Maitri Upanishad explains this union as one of breath, mind, and consciousness. Another source attributes the origins of the Sanskrit term to ‘yoke’, which first appeared in the Rig Veda to describe a chariot yoked to horses, in which a felled war hero might ascend to the sun. Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina writings have referenced the term, ‘Yoga’ since 3^rd century BCE to mean eight steps of spiritual meditation. However, both Buddhism and Jainism have already been problematically brought within the legal fold of Hinduism under codified Hindu law. The Supreme Court too has indicated concern regarding the tussle between the secular pillars of Indian democracy and yoga, which has been acknowledged to possess a religious component, in determining the validity of State-sanctioned yoga classes in schools. The ‘Take Back Yoga’ campaign spearheaded by the Hindu American Foundation has expressly linked yoga with Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutra. With Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, carving out the Bhagawad Gita as the best reflector of Indian (and not Hindu) culture, the ruling government is systematically conflating Hinduism with India, and relegating ‘othered’ religious minorities to the unfortunate destiny of second-class citizenry. True, the spread of yoga to different parts of the world has led to an inevitable diminution of the role of religion and a greater emphasis on health and spirituality sans religion. However, should that take away from the subtlety of Hindu fundamentalists revamping a religious ideal as they indulge in unapologetic assimilatory politics?
 
“Many countries which do not know our language, tradition, or culture, are now connecting to India through Yoga. The practice, which connects body, mind and soul, has played a big role in binding the world too.”
-Prime Minister Narendra Modi (1^st International Yoga Day, 2015)
 
Modi deliberately affiliates and identifies India with a singular language, tradition and culture. The erasure of diversity, both within Hinduism and across religions and languages and cultures, ought to be weaved into the larger assimilatory narrative of a spiritual, saffronised India.
 
Hindu fundamentalists have followed through by typically demanding those who think surya namaskaar should be excluded from yoga, for being offensive to their religious sentimentalities in worshipping the sun, to leave Hindustan.
 
“The physical engagement, mental discipline and sublimation of desire enshrined in yoga meld seamlessly, yet discreetly, with the more militaristic tenets of organizations like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.”
 -N.Y. Times (Jun. 19, 2015)
 
The repackaging of the gift of yoga then seems suspect, for it legitimates Hindu majoritarianism in the name of precarious references to the (necessarily homogenous) cultural and national identity of India. Savarkar’s Hindutva dedicates itself to a nation building project that evokes commitment to one India. The past three years have been fraught with instances where the ruling government has consistently privileged Hindu symbols and members of Hindu fundamentalist organizations in the hope of building a Hindu Rashtra. Office bearers today play an active role in subtly maneuvering around the hurdle of secularism, and the symbol of the cow, Om, the Gita, Sanskrit, and yoga suffice to establish a trend of intertwining religion and politics in the name of the nation.
 
The Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH) was formed in 2014 and Shripad Yasso Naik, a former member of the Hindu nationalist Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, was handed over the said portfolio. The Ministry is an official statutory body committed to recycling primarily Hindu practices and coercively selling it to a religiously diverse State as integral to the idea of India. Modi has effectively recast yoga in a new mold of secularism, strikingly similar to the Hindutva project of projecting the call for a Hindu nation as comfortably committed to secular values. 
 
One would think that the judiciary would live up to its promise of protecting the People and the Constitution that they gave to themselves. The Supreme Court has, hopefully inadvertently, sided with the narrative of the Hindu-right in declaring Om to be a mere symbol of “spiritual or mystical efficacy” (as opposed to bearing religious connotations), and Hinduism as well as Hindutva to mean a way of life of the Indian people. This has effectively extricated the religious symbolism of terms and their usages from their socio-political and intellectual histories. Identities are being crumbled, remolded and crystallized by the Politic and the Law. There is an imminent call for assimilation and with the absence of a politically viable alternative, the call is here to stay. 

(The author is a student of Jindal Global Law School)
 

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Yoga is not a culturally homogenous, all-Hindu, Vedic tradition, as is often portrayed by revivalist demagogues and those who have set up a raucous campaign to reclaim its roots. It is, in fact, a liberal, eclectic tradition that absorbed freely from Buddhist, Jain, even Sufist ascetic practices.

Roots of Yoga, a new academic work by renowned yoga scholars Mark Singleton and James Mallinson, is an intensive study of over 100 core texts on the subject. These date from 1000 BCE to the 19 century CE, from early Upanishads and Mahabharata to Jnaneswari and Hawz al-Hayat (The Spring of Life), and include rare texts in several languages, including Tamil, Avadhi, Marathi, Kashmiri, Pali, Tibetan, Arabic and Persian.

The book, five years in the making and launched last week by Abhyas Trust in Delhi, punctures some of the popular myths around yoga. To begin with, there is no evidence that yoga started as a religious tradition.

“Yoga was a sort of floating technology between various religious systems,” said Singleton. “The Dattatreyayogasastra (13CE), for instance, says that yoga can be practised by anyone irrespective of religion or caste, ascetics, Brahmins, Buddhists, Jains, tantrics and even materialists.”

Dattatreyayogasastra has some pithy things to say about religious figureheads in “ochre robes” claiming to be great yogis, while lacking practice, faith and wisdom – “men like that do not practise yoga but attain their ends through words alone, one should shun those who wear religious garb”.

What inspired the book, Singleton said, was the desire to relook at the hegemony of a handful of texts, mostly Patanajil’s Yogasutras (2CE), in the modern recap of yoga history. “There is a vast range of thinking on yoga through different texts and they don’t necessarily repeat the Yogasutras,” said Singleton. He and Mallinson are also part of an ambitious ongoing five-year research project at SOAS, a university in London, on the evolution of one of the branches of yoga – hatha yoga.
 

Another widely-held theory is that yogas are a Vedic practice, traceable back to 1500 to 1000 BCE. This is part of a common revivalist tendency to push the antiquity of knowledge traditions further back in history to give them greater importance. Some wishful thinkers in fact push it as far back as the Indus Valley Civilisation (3300-1300 BCE), pointing to the Pasupati seal that depicts a seated figure and was discovered at Mohenjo-daro. As the book points out, there are images in Mesoamerica that resemble yogic asanas more than the seal.

The book also traces what is now referred to as yoga, particularly dhyanayoga (meditation), to a much later period – 500 BCE, also the period when Buddhism began its rise to prominence. The Vedas had certain elements of mysticism, posture and breath control critical in yoga, but by no means does that make for evidence of a systematic yogic practice in Vedic era, say the authors.

It was a bunch of renunciant ascetics called Sramanas (strivers) seeking nirvana and moksha (liberation) around 500 BCE whose practices created the earliest template for yoga, though they did not call it that. “These groups, which probably developed independently of the Brahmanical Vedic traditions, but were influenced by them to varying degrees, included Buddhists, Jains and the lesser-known Ajivikas,” says the book. Ajivika was an ascetic sect that challenged the Brahminical grip on Hinduism.
 

Buddhist practices, texts and deities indeed exerted a strong influence in the shaping of yoga, taking its early practice, under other names, to Tibet and Sri Lanka. “The first major text on hatha yoga is Amritasiddhi, an 11th century tantric Buddhist work,” said Mallinson, who has researched extensively on extreme practices in yoga and written a book on the esoteric tantric practice of Khecharividya.

Research now shows that the Buddhist Yogacara school and its texts predate Yogasutra by two centuries. And the use of several asanas and mudras “bear a close similarity to ascetic practices first mentioned in the latter half of the first millennium BCE, shortly after the time of the Buddha”.
“In the second millennium, the new techniques of haṭha yoga began to be incorporated into the vedantic mainstream, and new texts were composed – such as the so-called Yoga Upaniṣads – which assimilated these technologies and presented them as part and parcel of the tradition,” said Singleton. “Previously, authorities like Shankara had rejected yoga as a spiritual path. Increasingly, hatha yoga became accepted as a practice suitable to householders rather than just renunciants.”

The vedantic appropriation of yoga reached a high point with raja yoga, popularised by Swami Vivekananda towards the end of the 19th century. It combined vedanta, yoga and western “spiritual” techniques. It is the heady mix of yoga, spiritualism and nationalism propagated by him that makes him the favourite philosopher and yogi of the Right-Wing establishment.
 

 

Yoga has, over the last couple of years, been personally pushed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Yoga Day spectacles on June 21, the drive to ensure it greater place in academia and institutions, and the aggressive stance on issues taken by babas and yogis have ensured that the tradition has now acquired a muscular nationalist profile.

Alongside, the US-based Hindu American Foundation has been protesting what it calls the cultural appropriation of yoga by the West. It accuses the Western countries of tearing the tradition from its Hindu roots. There are an equal number of Christian and Islamist organisations that see yoga as a Hindu practice. Singleton and Mallinson themselves were at the receiving end of blunt comments at the 2017 Jaipur Literature Festival: what are two white guys doing writing on yoga? They are often asked confused questions about yoga’s religious roots and antiquity.

But yoga itself has been robustly open to the idea of taking diverse cultures into its cultures throughout its history. “You often find greater details in some of the Persian texts on yoga than in Sanskrit,” said Mallinson. “In fact, the first illustrated manuscript on yoga, Bahr al-Hyat (Ocean of Life), was commissioned by Prince Salim, later Emperor Jahangir.”
 

Courtesy:Scroll.in.

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Image: Danish Ismail/Reuters

Yoga has offered the Indian state unprecedented opportunities for global, media-savvy political performance. In recent years, the nation has made international headlines by creating a national ministry for yoga.

It has promoted yoga tourism; staged mass yoga practices and Indian officials have even proposed yoga as a national solution to an astonishing range of social problems, from reducing rape to curing cancer.

AYUSH, the Indian ministry responsible for yoga, has recently gotten into the music business, releasing Yog Geet as the official song for this year’s International Day of Yoga.

But, as yoga has gone global, the cultural meanings of yoga have spiralled far and wide. While Indian politicians have suggested that yoga will tame rates of sexual assault, US lawmakers have tried to ban “yoga pants” under indecent exposure laws. Yog Geet will have to compete internationally with dozens of yoga-inspired albums in the West.

Yoga’s global popularity is useful for the Indian state, which uses it to employ soft power. But this popularity can be a double-edged sword. Identifying yoga as “Indian” may increasingly be an uphill battle.

In the ongoing battle over the question of “who owns yoga,” one of the most interesting trends has been the emerging voice of the Indian diaspora. Artists and writers of Indian ancestry are offering new and often provocative points of view on yoga’s origins, its meanings, and its cultural work in a globalizing world.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi performs yoga during World Yoga Day in Chandigarh, India, June 21, 2016. Ajay Verma/Reuter

The Indian American artist Chiraag Bhakta, who goes by the pseudonym of *Pardon My Hindi, has made visually stunning installations about yoga. These works invite viewers to reflect on the racial and economic hierarchies of globalising yoga.

His 2009 artwork #whitepeopledoingyoga formed part of a recent Smithsonian Museum exhibition on yoga and visual culture. It collects decades of magazine covers, posters, and pictures of yoga in the West. Covering a towering wall, these images loom over the viewer – asking us to contemplate how small images become part of larger patterns of cultural power.

#WhitePeopleDoingYoga

In #whitepeopledoingyoga, stereotypes of South Asia as an otherworldly place abound. Deities both exotic and available for Western use, press in on the viewer. So too do histories of Western commercialisation. Viewers of #whitepeopledoingyoga are asked to think about who has made money from the global popularity of yoga – and who has not.

Pardon My Hindi writes in his artist’s statement accompanying the piece:

In the end, I feel compelled to draw parallels with industrial colonization by the same dominant voice that is now adding another conquest to its collection. Meet the new founders of YOGA™.Yet not all of the Indian diaspora has been quite as critical of the circuits of globalisation and consumerism that have brought contemporary yoga around the world. Others have, instead, seen that relationship as a source of possibility.

This approach appears in novels like those of the writer Bapsy Jain, whose Indian heroine Lucky uses her training in yoga to find the superpowers she needs to survive a life of global crime and cutthroat capitalism in the US.

People practise yoga at a glass sightseeing platform ahead of the International Day of Yoga, on the outskirts of Beijing. Chinese Stringer Network/Reuters

Blending chick lit with murder mystery, Jain’s work presents yoga as a powerful tool for Indian women navigating stormy seas of romance and business. In such fiction, yoga is not so much a practice that opposes consumer culture. Instead, it becomes a practice that helps an individual survive the often nasty search for profit.

Other writers from the Indian diaspora have sought to use yoga-themed popular fiction as a way to promulgate particular Indian philosophies and mythologies. The writer Mohan Ashtakala, who identifies himself as a Hindu priest based in Canada, recently published an adventure novel in this vein called The Yoga Zapper (2015).

This time-travel adventure dramatises a perfect past where yogis meditated in harmony with the grand principles of the cosmos. This ideal, the author suggests, can be found both in South Asian scriptures and in Western fantasies.These works from the Indian diaspora all, in their different ways, draw attention to the role of “India” in shaping yoga. They speak out against the potential exploitation of Indian cultural capital for white Western gain.

They develop their own stories, in which yoga plays a part in a globalised commercial world. And they remind us that the wild worlds of imagination, superpower, and fantasy are part of how India has contributed to the yoga of today.

(Author is Fellow, Department of Gender, Media and Cultural Studies, School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National University)

Courtesy: The Conversation

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Demanding a thorough investigation into the matter, the letter, a copy of which is available with Sabrangindia says that while “Supporting activities abroad that strengthen public opinion in those countries about India and spread goodwill is understandable. But so far as I have known, the Government of India or its Commissions abroad or any of its other arms and institutions do not support the declared activities of political parties abroad. There have been complaints in the past of how the ruling party at the Centre has used subtle methods to promote the activities of their party's affiliates in these countries. But what we see here is a brazen effort and the public declaration that a voluntary unofficial event is being officially supported by your ministry, its mission in Malaysia and other organisations of the government of India.”
 
Yechury has requested a response to the concerns raised as also the matter to be placed on the agenda for discussions at at the next meeting of the Consultative Committee. This comes up at a time when the RSS-driven Cetral government is believed to be considering announcing that membership of the RSS and Jaamat-e-Islaami does not preclude enrolling in government jobs as public servants.

This development comes fast on the heels of news reports, dated June 10 that said that the government was seriously considering the repeal of a 1966 law,
reiterated subsequently in 1975 and 1980, requiring those joining government service to declare that they are not affiliated to either Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or Jamaat-e-Islami. Both the countries prime minister, Narendra Modi and home minister, Rajnath Singh are primary members of the RSS that was a banned organisation following the assassination in cold blood of Mahatma Gandhi. It was the Gujarat government under Keshubhai Patel first, in 2001, that had sought to legitimise RSS membership for government servants.

Several state governments under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is in fact a parliamentary wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have already reversed this central government law, be it Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh or Gujarat.
 
References:

1. Sardar’s tight leash on Sangh chief Guru Golwalkar’s pledge of good conduct fails to impress government
2. The Ideology of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is both Hate-Ridden and Supremacist – Part 1
3. CPIM General Secretary Sitaram Yechury on the RSS

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