50 shades of yoga
The Story of Yoga pushes the view that postural yoga was introduced by the British Raj and that it had no real origins in India
Iswung between yawning and frothing at the mouth as I read this book. As a yoga practitioner who has also been an instructor for two decades, I was thoroughly riled up. resisted the urge to drop it and plodded on to find out if the author, Alistair Shearer, had something to offer me, a yoga lover, or if he was exclusively addressing his “scholar friends” determined, as he is, to slash through the dense overgrowth of Indian “mythhistory” with the “Occam’s razor” of intellectual vigour. This point is echoed often by Shearer, who offers that the eastern, specifically Indian, flaw of chronological vagueness is sufficient reason to not take the claims of Indian yogis seriously.
Most reviews appear to have missed the book’s main agenda, which is to do a Wendy Doniger. This lack of integrity has been displayed by seasoned international reviewers and by the book’s publishers too. For those who do not know what “Doing a Wendy Doniger” means in yoga parlance, it is to stack up the scholarship, impressive authorship and intellectual stature, all neatly pinned into place with the disarming label of being an Indophile. In this is then used to validate the controversial viewpoint that postural yoga, as practised around the world today, has no real origins in India. An import from muscular Christianity, it was apparently introduced by the British Raj in an effort to reclaim the strength of its effete people through its YMCA branches across the sprawling subcontinent.
The Story of Yoga: From Ancient India to the Modern West 357pp, ~799
Alistair Shearer Penguin
Shearer states this was adapted by the Mysore Palace yoga, today branded as Ashtanga Yoga, which, in turn, became a worldwide phenomenon.
Ashtanga Yoga is not really what all Indian yoga schools espouse so to present it as the forerunner of all yoga from India is flawed. This form has created a stir in India only in recent times due to the Indian habit of getting excited about things that get the Western stamp of approval. However, its positioning in this ‘detective’ story definitely pulls that theory down. Plus, it was promoted by a small brahminical set, which was not representative of physical culture in India, but presumably got into the larger scene only due to the attention of the western rulers of the time.
Intriguingly, in a later chapter, Shearer warns westerners that when they borrow something created for Indian bodies, they have to exercise caution. Then, when he refers to the British influence on yoga, he says the western women, who influenced the spread of yoga, were impressed by Indian women, whose bodies were flexible, no doubt due to yoga. It is all very confusing, this chicken-and-egg bit.
If postural yoga came from “muscular Christianity” it is a wonder that, as Shearer himself points out later, the orthodox church is so resistant to it. Also, strangely, despite the seeming virility and masculinity of its birthing, the yoga world was, and continues to be, dominated by women. It doesn’t add up.
More in the line of this troubling “evidence”, there are several chapters that meander into the mystical underpinnings of yoga. These include discussions of Patanjali’s Yoga
Sutras, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and Hatha Yoga
Pradipika, which, for some reason, Shearer does not seem to favour at all going by the adjectives he uses, eg, a “mongrel” compilation. Esoteric ideas are mulled over and offered up as further proof that Indians were more interested in mind yoga than body yoga.
There are also other “proofs’’: British chronicles describing the puny physical stature of Indians which, if you did not get it, ratifies the idea that they could not have come up with such a virile science. References also abound as to how whatever physical yoga was present till then was only about decrepit yogis lolling about on beds of nails or circus yoga (either would require strength, puny stature notwithstanding).
Towards the end of the book a full chapter titled, obviously enough, “Fifty shades of saffron”, is devoted to detailed jottings on how the Indian right wing has become strident in reclaiming yoga by providing political patronage, fixing International Yoga Day, and registering exclusive patents over 1500 asanas. There is some snickering about the quality of yoga on display on the first world yoga day, Ramdev is panned as the “asana wallah” of the current prime minister (actually, Dr HR Nagendra, the widely respected founder of SVYASA yoga university is the PM’S yoga consultant), and about how the thrusting of yoga into institutes is being resisted by communities that fear accompanying Sanskritisation. Dr David Frawley, who promotes the idea of the antiquity of yoga, is rubbished (Shearer says he is “loathed” in the western scientific community). Yet, elsewhere, Shearer references the idea of how Ayurveda promotes the concept of yoga for specific personality types, something that Dr Frawley has written about extensively.
While Doniger ruffled feathers with her comments, Shearer appears to have escaped such attention. Reviews have raved about his “brilliant and honest” writing that examines the history of yoga, “warts and all”. Ironically, a tweet by Shashi Tharoor finds a reference inside the book: “It’s taking the West a few millenia to learn what our ancients taught us millennia ago, but hey, you’re welcome.” I doubt Tharoor has read this book.
I noted with increasing irritation that, in the first 20 pages, Shearer says, over a dozen times, that body-yoga as it is practised in the west does not have any basis in Indian yoga, which was more spiritual and mystical. He believes postural yoga, which has been embraced internationally, was an import from the Christian world. He argues that most of this appropriation by Indians was due to difficulty in interpreting esoteric passages. This, he notes with great aplomb, was aided by academic lethargy: “Most academics are unwilling to go out on a limb of speculation as they have reputations to preserve and livelihoods to earn.” Aw, all you brilliant academics who rhapsodised about this book, have you made up your minds yet?
Where this agenda is not at the forefront, Shearer delivers what he promises, a story of yoga. The book is rich in anecdotal data, some of which the reader may not find elsewhere. After reading it, I ordered a few yoga titles I did not have. I offer that to show how much information this book stacks up. In the chapter titled “Contemporary cautions,” I found that Shearer and I were on the same page at last. He writes with exquisite sensitivity about the teacher-student relationship. The current crisis embroiling the yoga community is a result of the misuse and misunderstanding of this relationship. Though he does not offer outright solutions, his discussion of this topic is nuanced.
If the entire book had been written with this level of engagement, it would have been a superlative work. The Story of Yoga is an intelligent book but is it a wise one? The answer to that question, dear readers, lies in the difference between having an opinion and being opinionated.
Shameem Akthar is a journalist, yoga instructor, and artist. She lives in Mumbai