Slavery, International Day of Yoga, & Political Activism

How Complicated Is The World?

If you’re a true yogi, say some of my fellow liberal and progressive colleagues, you should be actively engaged in social justice efforts.

I am not so sure that’s right.

Today is Juneteenth, the day commemorating the emancipation of US slaves in 1865, and just so happens to be on the Friday before the fifth annual International Day of Yoga this Sunday.

In the midst of the current American uprising and unprecedented numbers taking to the streets to protest police brutality and racial injustice, Donald Trump is being criticized for what some might call his typically narcissistic and tone-deaf comments that:

“nobody had heard about Juneteenth, until I made it very famous..”

Insert face-palm emoji here…

We should expect another weekend of rallies and protests, as a new generation of Americans grapple with inequality and the ongoing legacy of racist oppression.

Three Postures

Meanwhile, some yogis and wellness influencers with big platforms have gone straight down the rabbit-hole into Qanon-style Covid-19 conspiracy theories that originate on the far right —some repeating bizarre claims that George Soros is funding Antifa, and that the protests, and even George Floyd’s tragic death are part of an elaborate false-flag operation by the left.

Grotesque.

These folks have an almost fetishized relationship to the idea of being “sovereign” —a term that somehow manages all-at-once to have resonances with nationalism, monarchy, libertarianism, and self-empowered privileged spiritual actualization.

Others in yoga-land want nothing to do with politics, and believe Yoga should be apolitical, inclusive, and about deeply personal growth that ultimately transcends all illusory models of separation.

As I mentioned, a third group feels that in its very essence Yoga implies allegiance to, and social activism around, progressive principles.

Sometimes this is backed up by gesturing to the word “yoga” being defined as unity, and so therefore how could it not imply progressive values?

Yes, I see what you did there. But, seriously?

Another argument is that via practicing Yoga one goes through an internal process of discovering self-awareness, compassion and certain ultimate truths that inevitably lead to these values and a call to take action.

This is actually a very philosophically complicated concept I want to dive into elsewhere, because I used to unquestioningly embrace the idea that the experiential interior landscape revealed by contemplative practices inevitably led to revelations of ultimate spiritual truth with progressive political implications.

It remains inconvenient to this argument to consider that amongst the Nazi SS, especially Himmler, yoga texts and practices were believed to be a perfect complement to establishing the Third Reich and dominance of the supposedly racially-superior Aryans.

Slavery, Muslims, Yoga & Modi

Meanwhile, the International Day of Yoga has its own conflicted backdrop.

Today, India leads the world in an extremely unflattering and tragic statistic. Depending on definitions, between 8 and 18 million people live under slavery in India. They form the largest group amongst roughly 40 to 46 million slaves worldwide, with North Korea, Eritrea and Burundi having the highest per capita, but China and Pakistan second and third behind India with the largest numbers.

Meanwhile, under Modi’s leadership toward a Hindu Nationalist reconstruction of India, increased marginalization and violence against the 172 million minority Muslims has turned up the heat on the long-standing pressure-cooker of ethnic and religious tension.

The actions of brutal nationalist mobs who target and even lynch Muslims and accused meat-eaters in India has echoes of Taliban-style vigilantism —made worse by claims that police often turn a blind-eye.

Some critics point to the International Day of Yoga as a thinly veiled separatist celebration of Hindu national identity.

But What Is A “True Yogi?”

In Los Angeles, the fascinating topic of yoga and politics comes up every few years, and I am usually invited to be part of taking a stand for what the true meaning of Yoga is and how it supports a progressive political stance with which I usually agree.

Much to my friends and colleagues frustration though, I usually end up saying that I think we can make a case for why we feel Yoga and political awareness/action are a good fit without appealing to the supposed true meaning of Yoga in an ad hoc way.

What Yoga REALLY means; it’s purpose, beliefs, ethics etc is very contested territory.

To start with Yoga as a phenomenon in the West is already controversial in terms of the topic of cultural appropriation and the history of British colonial rule (1858 to 1947) of India, and its associated Orientalism.

Nonetheless, Yoga originates in a culture already saddled with the roughly 3000 year old caste system, forms of monarchical power, and notions of ethnic superiority based on religious claims about how the society is oppressively structured sociopolitically being a reflection of each individual’s spiritual karma.

As it turns out, oppressive ideas about how to structure societies do not discriminate, they are a tragic legacy on every continent, and in most cultures, going back into the mists of time.

There are iterations of Yoga that come out of counter-culture rebellion and religious dissent in india, as well as iterations that reinforce orthodoxy and mainstream adherence.

Even philosophically or religiously, each of these ever-branching iterations also has their own markedly different metaphysical beliefs, and ideas about how to interact with the world and with the society.

The story of Krishna and Arjuna from the Bhagavad Gita often taught reverentially in so many Western teacher trainings, is essentially an injunction to do your caste-defined duty in keeping with your divinely-ordained karma, while knowing that the world of injustice, warfare, and even killing your own family is ultimately an illusion — but your role in that illusion should not be questioned or resisted.

Sadly, some of the (I agree, maddening and usually privileged) New Age posturing around a supposed radical discontinuity between spirituality and political awareness, education, and action, can find a foothold in this transcendentalist text.

Then of course there is the exporting of yoga to the West that gains momentum in the 1930s via a way of packaging one approach to practicing and thinking about yoga, that is in some ways a response to colonialism — and even an opportunistic capitalist turn-about on the industrious part of those behind The Hatha Yoga Revival.

This becomes a Western liberal counter-culture phenomenon in the late 60s, (perhaps where we form the association between Yoga and protest) but then really grows in popularity from the 1980s and goes through its own further commodification and packaging as a largely upper middle class and above, White people pursuit.

Right now in India, Yoga is often associated — via the populist, verging on fascist, propaganda of their leadership’s appeals, with religious supremacy.

As with several other countries on the planet right now, in Modi, India has their own version of Trump in power —a blustering right wing authoritarian reactionary force. It is a dark time for progressives, minorities, and intellectuals there.

On Trump’s recent visit, he was treated like a hero. Though there was some protest, and some very bloody ethnic conflict, he and the Indian leader addressed a crowd of 100 thousand at a rally titled “Namaste Trump.”

In fact, the notion of what a real, true, proud yogi is has its most vocal, culturally-referenced, and dangerous impact on the planet today in India; and it is far from progressive.

The huge display around International Yoga Day is seen by many Indian Muslims as actually being weaponized for this right wing populist Hindu nationalist ascendancy.

We Can Make Better Arguments

All of this is why I think making a case for why might we feel the modern Western yoga community can and even should align with contemporary, Western, progressive politics is valid — but appealing to some essential quality within Yoga itself that inevitably, historically, philosophically, or religiously cements that alignment is perhaps superficial and somewhat self-deceptive and distorted.

The love-and-light new age spiritual bypass, politics-is-an-illusion angle is of course just maddening and clueless. So too, relativist arguments that Yoga can mean anything to anyone, and therefore who are we to say?

Likewise appeals to some cosmically pre-ordained unfoldment that people with the right psychic download abilities can intuit as all part of the divine perfection have always left me cold in their emptiness.

My point is that we do better to form arguments stronger than: “a real yogi” would see it x way.

Because that concept of what a real yogi is, is already loaded down with so many implied values and (sub) cultural assumptions. They happen to be values I agree with, I just think owning those is part of a nuanced and intellectually honest perspective on these sorts of questions.

In the past I have brought these issues up to colleagues about sentences that start with “Yoga is” — and then go on to assert in an essentialist way that x, or y political affiliation (which I typically am sympathetic toward) is a culturally-rooted, righteous, historically-correct inevitability, by pointing out that Hindu nationalists can create the same sentence, perhaps with more identity-based authority.

Perhaps even an American pro-life, anti-gay, puritanical religious and politically conservative person who might have more in common with certain orthodox attitudes in the Yoga tradition could make their own argument about what “Yoga is..” that we would find despicable.

This has tended to either get a glazed-over look, or a retort that I am missing the point, or distorting their argument.

I am hoping that thinking this through above helps clarify?

For me it comes down to this simple suggestion:

If we are right now going to create a sentence that links Yoga to a certain philosophical, political, or psychological concept, then add some qualifiers and context-creators to the first part that starts with “Yoga is” — and your argument will have more, historical context, intellectual honesty and persuasive power.

As it turns out, there may not be any ancient, romantic, esoteric source or reference point for the vision of equality and freedom our hearts long to create —we may in fact be the ones for whom we’ve been waiting.

There may be no spiritual text or authority that validates the values and principles at the heart of humanity’s desire to evolve personally and collectively toward whatever waits for us on the other side of the turmoil we are currently experiencing.

Awareness practices may provide us with tools that support focus, compassion, resilience, and honesty —but they do not contain any silver bullet or blueprint that solves the perennial puzzle of how to live together; especially in a today’s ever-changing world.

If you enjoyed this article, and/or Red Pill Overlap and RedPill 2: Awakening in the Time of Covid-19, you will likely enjoy the Conspirituality Podcast I created with Matthew Remski and Derek Beres.