Please open your mind.
Thank you, A fellow hatha yoga practitioner.
Of course the modern practice of asana in the west isn’t inherently racist, and you don’t need to only be doing postures that were written down in old books. But wearing an Aum shirt and never understanding the deeper cultural contexts of what it is you’re wearing and practicing is racist. I’ve had conversations with people that have practiced yoga for years and literally have asked me “what’s asana?” and had never heard of pranayama. Were they racist? No, probably not, but it does speak volumes to how yoga is sold in the USA.
Non sequitur - this has never been a point of contention in India. I know this is typical of the press in the English-speaking world (and thus the peoples of these places as a whole), but its hilarious to see "Hindutva" being projected as a "Hinduism is supreme, and everything else must be suppressed" (and now all the propaganda with Nazis/Hitler ... my oh my). Criticisms of "Hindutva" from these sources are so insipid and stupid that they are not even worth acknowledging.
(Note - I'd place a large portion of the Indian elite within the English speaking world.)
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.
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.
Sigh. Ambedkar's works are full of protestant rhetoric and very little "facts", and the tragedy of politicization of "caste" today is that saying something obvious like this out in India will almost instantly lead you to jail along with a non-returnable fine of $500-1000 (or worse).
Ambedkar in AoC, says that while "endogamy" is the only real tenet of "varna system", and while widely prevalent the world over, was unique in India because it was religiously sanctioned by the "vedic religion". Yet, after 200 years of Sanskrit study, those who swear by this theory can't produce a single verse that supports this - all you get are Indology's "free-hand" translations which change temporally to support Europe's social theory de jour. Ambedkar himself in this work calls the "varna system" a useless system of endogamy, which produced racial mongrels, and was against the appreciable goal of eugenics.
The stories just don't add up. Despite "caste system" being a "core" part of "vedic religion", it was somehow widely prevalent in Muslims and Christians (whose zealous violence in India is well documented). Despite the pyramidal "rigid" structure, "Brahmins" were often poor, and not only were there "Shudra" kings in Bharata, but many great men like AryaBhata were Shudras themselves. Indeed, when the British took over Madras, they found that most village schools were filled mostly with non-Brahmins [1]. The British even found that the schooling in Indian villages were much better than those in Britain themselves [1}.
Modern works on this monstrous "caste system" show how hollow this field of study is - in fact, as many like Nicholas Dirks (U Berkeley) and S Balagangadhara (U Ghent) have shown, there is no such meaningful entity. There are communities and tribes like the world over, but there is no "ministry of caste deviations", nor was there ever such a thing manned by "Brahmin priests" denying people "salvation from hell". Such a "ministry of caste" was only formed during British times, because their form of jurisprudence could not comprehend the "evil pagan" Indian society, and they still insisted that all transactions pass through them (while they sucked India dry).
It's a story sold by colonized idiots to their masters, in order to receive more funding and power. Indeed, since these powerful lobbies have secured nearly 50-90% of all positions in education, bureaucracy and soon private corporations, it's routine in India today to protest for "backwardness" status for one's community.
It's a repeat of the discrimination of the Jewry in Europe - instead of explicit laws you just squeeze them out of the system. No wonder too, since Indology through its glorious history simultaneously demonized both the Jews while they appropriated India's literature, and the Brahmins, while they helped the Empire secure its roots.
It's not surprising that those who speak about "caste" and "evils of Indian culture" are often the same people who will not touch the economic destruction, and consequent loss of status of the manufacturing/artisan communities of India, and often see the British as "angels descending onto India, with Christianity and God's language - English"
I'd echo parent's comments - do read Ambedkar's work for yourself. The man is known for making insane theories - like "Shudras are Buddhists survivors of Hindu violence (who somehow had Hindu practices}" - and this rabble-rousing pamphlet is no different. Little wonder that he was supported by the British, much as they did the Dravidian movt. and the Muslim league on the eve of "Independence".
[1.] The Beautiful Tree - Dharampal.
https://archive.org/details/DharampalCollectedWritingsIn5Vol...
(The original British surveys on Indian education from the 18th century are on archive.org somewhere; you should be able to source it}
Well, I surely will never be able to have the same context as those that grew up in South Asia, like a bunch of my family, but I certainly hope I’m not hopeless! I’m open to any suggested reading you may have that I’m missing.
Edit: I wanted to add that I’m very much aware that many of these divisions were made by the British, and even the Mughals before them, as a way to divide and dominate.
I’m assuming you mean James Mallinson. I met him briefly in Jaipur and had been wondering who the white guy with dreadlocks was that I kept seeing around (here in the US it’s considered racist by people of color to wear dreads if you’re not black). To make a long story short, he doesn’t practice yoga, is largely a rich guy that likes the “sadhu lifestyle” (he’s a Baron in the UK), and studies ancient texts in the way a typical white academic would. But I will say for all my skepticism going into it, I read his “Roots of Yoga” and it was great.
It’s clear that the practice of yoga is syncretic and means many different things to many different people. We definitely should criticize all the white girls in the west that are using Yoga as a brand for their calisthenics, teaching without knowing anything about pranayama or dhyana. Their style of practice is so far from any Hatha practice I’ve done you can’t even consider it the same thing. Most of those standing postures they do I’ve never encountered from my Hatha teachers. What these white western women are doing is for the most part awful and pretty racist.
However, we should be equally skeptical of Hindutva making claims about what Yoga is while ignoring the long, syncretic history and how it grew and exchanged practices with Buddhists, Sufis, Jains, and all sorts of other sects and groups through thousands of years.