This post is an example of the wild fantasies indulged by the followers of hindutva where India is forever on the precipice of taking over the world intellectually and to an extent territorially. In this future liberalism will be consigned to the garbage can and ethno nationalism and fascism centered on Hinduism will reign supreme.
The popularity of yoga is hilariously touted as a precursor of things to come. The prime minister has created an "international" yoga day. They assume this will be followed by international adoption of ayurveda, cow "science", cow worship, renaming of several mathematical and scientific discoveries after Indian gurus who supposedly discovered everything originally in the veda.
The don't seem to be aware that modern yoga practised in the west is a modern invention by an Indian fitness instructor who was attempting to capture a portion of the American fitness market jumpstarted by eugen sandow. Most of the so called asanas have been incorporated into yoga from modern gymnastics.
> Goldberg is the author of The Goddess Pose: The Audacious Life of Indra Devi, the Woman Who Helped Bring Yoga to the West. Her book traces the modern Western practice of yoga to a Russian woman named Indra Devi, who was born in 1899 with the birth name Eugenia Peterson.
People outside the westernized population don't know what "Vedism" and "Brahmanism" and all these other "deconstructed" monstrosities are, so the question itself is a bit loaded. In anycase, to answer your real question - no, its not a point of contention that Yoga (and Vipassana etc.) are the accumulation of the work of many gurus from radically different traditions of India.
Since you're hopelessly caught within the webs of orientalist spiders, suffice it here to say - what you see of India is not India; it is but a description of what you see in terms of what you already know. Your description is neither India, and nor is it a reasonably accurate model of it.
This will be my last response since I'm finding it increasingly hard to believe you're arguing in good faith.
> Should I wait for some reasoning to back that up or do I have to ask? If I ask will I get an answer?
The Yogic practices originated in the Indian subcontinent, so yes the people who identify themselves with the same civilization and culture as the person(s) who originated these practices do have a larger claim as to how these practices are presented, taught and understood. It would seem that your claim that such a notion is "ridiculous" is on much more shakier ground than mine. I don't see you presenting any reasoning as to why you believe this is "ridiculous". You certainly feel so, but there's nothing special or important about your feelings on the matter.
> People who practice it versus people who don't, like the average Indian.
Not sure what relevance this has to the matter, but ok thanks for the clarification.
> Many people who are not Indian practise yoga - why does the average Indian have more claim to it than these people? Would Patanjali think they do?
See above.
> Again, no answer, just ad hominem.
No ad hominem, just an observation. I keep saying that there are people who sometimes dislike the co-opting and whitewashing/rebranding of Yoga (see the linked article). You keep insisting that it's not a problem and that I should just not care. It's again hard to attribute good intent here. BTW on the topic of ad hominem, you're the one who seemed close to accusing me of rabid "nationalism", perhaps not those exact words but you and I both know exactly what you mean.
> Why do they care more than Patanjali?
Why not?
> Poe's Law comes to mind.
Randomly throwing the names of rhetorical devices or "laws" in a conversation does not make your argument any stronger FYI.
What they are demonstrating is that this is a generic non-statement. It's like saying martial arts and lifting build discipline. Sure, and so do a 1000 other things, including Yoga. It's a vague non-statement.
All of these interpretations border on the occult. At the end of the day, yoga is like meditation - it needs to be clearly defined. Decoupled from all the mysticism, it's just a bunch of exercises.
India definitely had some cool fitness systems, but they are mostly lost, like their martial arts.
Until there is a clear "do y, get x", this is all overly-obfuscated to build mystique.
I.e. "lift weights 3x8 3x a week, be able to lift 1-5% more weights in 2 weeks". Very clear, very defined. None of that here with yoga.
What we call Yoga in the west is mostly appropriation. The rest is misunderstanding because the concept does not fit in thinking western minds.
The best we get is what tae bo is to professional boxing.
Source: conversations and experiences with someone who had the fortune to study both in New Delhi yoga university and with a Yoga lineage in the Himalayas.
The official university still didn’t touch, or know, of essential elements of the practices. Whether intentionally hidden or forgotten, they are completely unheard of in the West.
In the west we have Yoga laptops for heavens sake.
I'm not sure I detect either ignorance or 'malicious thought' in the parent post. It is clearly true that much of modern Yoga practise in the west >is< influenced by other cultures (the Swedish / British keep fit programmes of the 1920s for example). It can also be true that Yoga has deep cultural roots that extend far into the distant past. The parent does not 'reduce' Yoga to certain body poses - you are both effectively agreeing with each other that it is a malleable system that has modernised (significantly) over the past 100 years or so. I would love to know what a C19th Hatha Yoga practitioner from those illustrations would make of the explosion of different styles that have evolved today. I would hope that they and, say, Tim Senesei or Adrianne Mishler might be able to have an interesting (and respectful) conversation.
It is quite unfortunate that OP is getting upvoted. He has hijacked the discussion by completely redefining yoga. Yoga might have meant all those spiritual aspects you've outlined, but as practised here in the USA and even in India, none of those aspects are even remotely brought to bear. I have been taught yoga formally in India both as a kid ( in most CBSE middle schools, you are auto-enrolled in 1 hour of yoga per week ) and as an adult. Swami Vivekananda was mentioned not even in passing.
> To understand Yoga in its essence I would advice you to read Swami Vivekananda's complete works.
Yeah and likewise to understand Computer Scienmce in its essence I would advice you to read D.E. Knuth's complete works and not profess to know any CS until you memorize each and every algorithm in TAOCP! You see how ridiculous that sounds ? That's the whole problem. Yoga a few centuries ago might have meant what you said, but as practised today, in the here and now, simply means acrobatic gym sessions with contortions paid for by your montly paycheck. Its unfortunate, but that's what it is.
Bringing in Kipling into this discussion is hugely ironic considering how much of a royal prick he was in his attitude towards Indians ( Kipling's transparently racist portrayals of Indian characters in Kim and Gunga Din, among others )
The Times article is about genuine medical risks posed by spinal twists and headstands, which are, unfortunately becoming more and more commonplace as sedentary officegoers frequent yoga studios to add some yoga to their fitness regimen. None of those people are remotely interested in karmayoga or nyanayoga - they just want to learn the asanas.
Asanas minus Yoga is not yoga.
But that's the reality of today. Learning shirasasana without learning its spiritual yogic root is akin to calling yourself a programmer and not knowing what a red-black tree is. But guess what, most programmers today don't know what a red-black tree is. That's sad, but its also a reality and we have to deal with reality as it exists, not based on Kipling's delusional rants. There are hundreds of actual people with actual broken ribs who desperately want to learn matsyasana and don't give a flying f--- who gautama buddha or ramakrishna paramahamsa or swami vivekananda was. That's just the way it is.
I’m not totally sure I follow, are you saying most in (non-English, elite) India know that yoga isn’t really a Vedic practice and accept a syncretic history? Admittedly it’s hard to get a feel for that as a westerner when you see someone like Baba Ramdev hanging out with Modi and making anti-Muslim statements.
Mainly I was originally saying I agree with you, that we need to be careful of who writes and rewrites history, because it typically is done by those in power and is often done without acknowledging the actual nuances of things. Yoga is certainly not Swedish gymnastics, but it’s also not some old Vedic thing with sole claim as Hindu.
The Onion nailed the West's current interest in yoga twenty years ago[0], and it's only gotten worse. It's amazing how much money you can make as long as you divorce religion and spirituality from a practice optimized over a thousand years by religious and spiritual experts. Sort of like having an amazing search light but not the slightest idea where to point it or what we are searching for would look like.
I really object to that. Alex3917 is one of the most well-informed commenters on here. That he takes unpopular and unconventional positions is cause for admiration, not rude ridicule.
As for the point about yoga, it hardly seems odd to suggest that a system that's been around for thousands of years might retain some connection to its origins.
> The Yogic practices originated in the Indian subcontinent, so yes the people who identify themselves with the same civilization and culture as the person(s) who originated these practices do have a larger claim as to how these practices are presented, taught and understood.
Why did Patanjali not mention that Indians have more claim over his techniques than humanity? Why do those who, on average, do not engage with his ideas think they have more claim on them? Are you going to claim there is an innate link between ideas, ancestry and where one is born? Ridiculous.
> I don't see you presenting any reasoning as to why you believe this is "ridiculous"
Because I assumed that relating the ownership of an idea to its geography when it is explicitly taught to be applied to any human, and moreover, that ownership to those who were born later on the same land but probably aren't using the idea, to be obviously ridiculous but I didn't take into account that you'd be a nationalist.
> See above.
You didn't answer above.
> No ad hominem, just an observation.
Ad hominem is a fallacy of relevance where the one committing the fallacy avoids addressing the substantial point with observations about their opponent in the debate.
> You keep insisting that it's not a problem and that I should just not care. It's again hard to attribute good intent here.
Again, ad hominem. What is the bad intent? What would be bad faith? You're yet to provide a reason why this plagiarism - that you didn't bring up but waded in to - is a problem other than someone taking offence over something that isn't theirs and that they probably don't do.
> > Why do they care more than Patanjali?
> Why not?
See above.
> > Poe's Law comes to mind.
> Randomly throwing the names of rhetorical devices or "laws" in a conversation does not make your argument any stronger FYI.
It wasn't part of my argument, it was an observation, though not ad hominem as I didn't avoid the point.
Yoga was introduced to the west by Indian yogi's. It would seem to be the exact opposite of "appropriation": it was actively pushed upon the west in multiple "waves" punctuated by periods of backlash against it.
"creating a system to train the body in preparation for anti-colonial resistance."
It was actually completely the opposite, the modern yoga practices were actually inspired by colonial rulers as it was time when in Europe it has become very popular and fashionable to exercise. Maharaja Krisharaja Wadiyar IV has hired Tirumalai Krishnamacharya (who btw died in 1989, just 32 years ago) to come up with somethign similar to Swedish gymnastics and Sokol movements in Slavic countries, just based on Indian traditions. It had nothing to do with colonial resistance, it was just a fashionable thing coming from the West, like later jeans or McDonalds or Starbucks (or cross-fit training for that matter)...
That's a shift in goalposts from the original post's claim of "common modern Yoga poses" - Yoga practise in the west is only a small portion of modern Yoga in general. There's a difference between saying "common modern English borrows a lot from Hindi grammar" and "modern English spoken in India borrows a lot from Hindi grammar" - and there's as much difference between your statement and the statement the original comment made.
Since Hacker News readers tend to be (but are certainly not exclusively) living in Western countries, I think it's reasonable to assume from context that the original poster was likely referring to the yoga that's common in the West.
The popularity of yoga is hilariously touted as a precursor of things to come. The prime minister has created an "international" yoga day. They assume this will be followed by international adoption of ayurveda, cow "science", cow worship, renaming of several mathematical and scientific discoveries after Indian gurus who supposedly discovered everything originally in the veda.
The don't seem to be aware that modern yoga practised in the west is a modern invention by an Indian fitness instructor who was attempting to capture a portion of the American fitness market jumpstarted by eugen sandow. Most of the so called asanas have been incorporated into yoga from modern gymnastics.
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