Perspective: Yoga Politics and Posturing

By Medha Bhaskar, Co-founder and Senior Yoga Teacher at Amrutha Bindu Yoga, a Bangalore based yoga studio. She is also the Vice-President of the Karnataka Yoga Council.

In the week leading up to the International Yoga Day (“IYD”) (June 21st, 2024), I saw a series of posts on Instagram by Yoga Medicine, a prominent American Yoga School declaring that they will not participate with IYD because it is a day created by the “current Indian Government led by BJP and it is a part of a soft power agenda that poses as Hindu nationalism”. They went on to say that they do acknowledge and appreciate the 21st of June as a global day of festivals, celebrations and social media hashtags recognizing the many gifts of yoga practice as a united, global community. Furthermore, they proposed an alternative - to celebrate yoga on the 21st of June (IYD) but simply call it something else: “Yoga Appreciation Day”.

This piqued my interest and I wanted to understand their stance a little more. The post contends that the IYD is a re-appropriation of yoga by Hindu nationalists who aim to control the narrative around yoga by minimizing the contribution of other minority religious groups to the development of yoga. This post seems to be inspired by a course that they run: Yoga and Politics, and the lead teacher, Firdose Moonda, posits that yoga is about liberation of the soul: against oppressors, against mental ailments and stress.

By now, my lawyer-turned-yoga-teacher brain was all in. On a fundamental level, this stance seems to have the quintessential ad hominem fallacy, a logical fallacy of attacking the character or trait of a person instead of actually addressing the substance or subject matter of their argument. This fallacy is usually a fantastic deflection, and can detract the conversation from its original purpose. In this case, IYD is diminished to PM Narendra Modi and his politics, while by-passing the idea behind his proposal: holistic well-being and oneness with self, world and nature. In his speech at the  UN General Assembly on 11th December 2014, he states simply that yoga is an invaluable gift from the ancient tradition of India, but nowhere does he promote his nationalist agenda, or diminish the contributions of anybody towards the development of yoga. 

But, the problem that Yoga Medicine has is not the celebration of yoga; the problem is calling it “IYD” because PM Modi proposed it. This stance fails to acknowledge that the proposal was endorsed by an overwhelming 175 (out of 193) UN member states, the leading global body. For the last 10 years, IYD has brought millions of people together (more than 12 crore people in India in 2022 alone) and has created a worldwide movement that cuts across all barriers, to foster positivity and holistic health. While most of the world thinks about how to adopt or recommit to the practice of yoga on this day, it seems foolhardy and simplistic to make IYD all about the perception of one person and his politics in order to be “woke”. 

Coming back to the post, it talks about the re-appropriation of yoga. In linguistic theory, “reappropriation” is the process by which a group reclaims words or artifacts that were previously used in a way disparaging of that group. Given the pluralistic way of life in India, the framework of reappropriation doesn’t operate very much due to the ubiquitous nature of yoga practice. The moment we broaden the lens, we see that this framework becomes relevant. Over the last 5 years, there has been a huge movement on social media to “reclaim” yoga from the perverse influence of charlatan forces that either reduce yoga to physical acrobatics or relegate it to a convenient ideology to further their own means. Ironically, Firdose Moonda also expresses her discomfort in learning about yoga in a predominantly “white” environment where she thinks she is learning about her culture from foreigners, who don’t have the cultural context to the practice. 

Even in this matter, stating that Yoga comes from ancient India is simply factual - it doesn’t carry the sinister agenda of saffronizing the practice. Rather, it aims to contextualize Yoga and resonate with the ideology through which it derives its power and identity - the ideology of personal evolution and self actualisation. It is this refinement and freedom that attracted people from all over the world (even in ancient India) and resulted in the popularization of the practice.  

As founder of a Yoga school who is actively involved with yoga practice and teaching for over 10 years in contemporary India, I believe that yoga is universally accepted by people of all communities, social stratas or ideologies. In India, our history and identity is shaped by so many influences that syncretism is a natural way of life. Whichever side of the political spectrum we find ourselves on, we perceive yoga as a dimension of a personal dialogue of growth; not something that belongs to a particular religion or community. In large part, post the adoption of IYD in 2014, Yoga has become accessible in schools, colleges and communities. Further, Yoga is now considered a viable healing modality for many lifestyle disorders. In the light of these phenomenal developments, assigning a sinister agenda to IYD simply because of the proposer’s politics is a bias and a distortion.

To conclude, I ask why reinvent the wheel? In 2014, the world led by India decided to allocate a day to celebrate yoga. IYD found great support for the last 10 years, many people gravitated towards the practice. As a yoga teacher, I was thrilled for it! Whether you call it “International Yoga Day” or “Yoga Appreciation Day”, the purpose is to uplift yourself and help more people find that upliftment. Personalizing this debate to the proponent of IYD simply detracts us from that purpose.