This book is the fruit of a decade-long collaboration between a scholar of Indian politics (Kalé) and an Indologist (Novetzke). The aim of the work is to show how yoga, as a “mode of seeing the world in order to act upon and control it” has in its essence a political significance which tends to be overlooked in scholarly studies of ancient Indian texts, politics and history. The authors’ assumption is that yoga as a political concept is by no means secondary or aberrant to its other two main dimensions – that of psychophysical discipline and that of the spiritual path. In this regard they describe yoga, rather than as the usual idea of “union”, as a transitive practice, in which the “yoke” and the “yoked” are connected but not equated: one seeks the subordination of the other. The one who yokes and the yoked also share the same “field of power”, suggesting that yoga mediates power relations in a shared field (the authors call it the “intramural” quality of yoga), which can be cultural, social, religious, and political.
After an introduction seeking to clarify the assumptions and objectives of their research, a documentary survey unfolds chronologically over the book’s four chapters. Starting with Chapter 1 (“Yoga as war and peace in the Ṛg Veda and the Mahābhārata”), the meaning of “yoga” as “war”, and its metaphorical developments as “mastering something” (the harnessing of verses, truth, rite, etc.) are traced in the Ṛg Veda, together with the appearance of compound yoga-kṣema with its multifaceted proposed meanings ranging from “peace” to “settlement”. The discussion is extended then to the Mahābhārata and the Bhagavad Gītā, identifying the spaces where – intertwining with the other two spheres of meaning (the philosophical and the psychophysical) – yoga is intended as political theory and practice, especially in relation to karma-yoga and, again, yoga-kṣema. This last term, considered essential for the understanding of yoga in the political sphere, is discussed in chapter 2, dedicated to the analysis of yoga as political strategy in the Arthaśāstra. Here it is shown how yoga names modes of political, informational and military strategy and is especially linked to the maṇḍala theory. Also proposed is an interpretation of yoga in the text as a knowledge practice befitting the exercise of power (rather than a philosophical position) and of yoga-kṣema as the principal aim of politics in the sense of “peaceful governance maintained through martial force”.
The first two chapters form the first part of the book, focusing on the analysis of ancient and classical Sanskrit sources. The second part examines how previous conceptualizations of yoga as political thought and practice surface as a resource for political activists and princely rulers in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Chapter 3 tracks the use of the concept of yoga in the writings of key figures of Indian resistance to colonial rule, namely Lala Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Ghose, B.G. Tilak, M.K. Gandhi and B.R. Ambedkar. The chapter deals in particular with Indian nationalist formulations of karma-yoga (the yoga of action) as they found it in the Bhagavad Gītā (noting how the oversight on the part of the British authority of the Gītā ’s political aspects allowed most of them to read this text while in prison). The approach to Tilak’s thought seems to me exemplary in relation to this book’s perspective: the authors highlight Tilak’s linking of karma-yoga to its Vedic meaning of yoga as discipline of war, his linking of metaphysical to political liberation, his efforts to solve the contradiction between the Gītā ’s injunction to renounce the fruit of action and the Arthaśāstra ’s insistence on its enjoyment. Also interesting is the exploration of Gandhi’s “yoking of violence” political tool and Ambedkar’s eventual rejection of the Bhagavad Gītā’s concept of karma-yoga.
Chapter 4 (“Yoga as sovereignty in Princely India”) looks at the Raja of Aundh’s popularization of Surya Namaskar (a sequence of movements in postural yoga) as a mode of politics, seeing here a merging of the two yogas’ valences of political thought and psychophysical practice. The authors survey the yoga terminology in the Raja’s publications in English, Marathi and other Indian languages, and the implications of his 1928 short film on Surya Namaskar, highlighting how the Raja, charting the origin of his own “lineage” of yoga in the Maratha elites (and not in haṭayoga texts, for example), places the Surya Namaskar in a set of political, martial and ritual interlinked practices. They also argue that the Principality’s programme of modernization through self-governance was rooted in the interconnection of yoga as self-control and yoga as political autonomy, i.e. self-government. This liberal Hindu secular effort extended through different domains: educational, political (the “Aundh experiment” of forming a democratic state inside colonial India), economic and carceral, this last one featuring the foundation of an open prison (Swatantrapur) that still exists today. A meaningful reference to Michel Focault’s concept of biopower seems left as an open question: whether the Raja’s programme of modernization through self-governance constitutes a biopower technology of liberation (rather than a means of state control) or whether it represents a continuation of Foucault’s argument internalizing that very control.
The book’s two parts are connected through a brief “Interlude” demonstrating lines of continuity of yoga as political thought and practice through the so called “Tantric Age” (600–1200 ce) and the Mughal era (e.g. it considers the particular development of certain parts of Mahābhārata in the translation commissioned by Akbar). It serves principally as an invitation to explore the subject further.
Knowingly shifting to a more usual perspective, that positions modern psychophysical yoga within the political context, a concluding chapter addresses the persistent institutionalization of psychophysical and philosophical yoga by the postcolonial Indian state inside the structures of educational and health bureaucracies. The chapter aims to contextualize in more detail the further entanglement of yoga and the state, in a nationalistic frame, since 2014, which led to achievements such as the inauguration of International Yoga Day, seen as a mode of soft power on the global stage.
The broad purpose of this book and the novelty of its approach lies in considering how yoga itself might name political thought and practice; the chapters convincingly argue that yoga as politics and religion, philosophy and psychophysical practices, existed not in contradistinction but in synthesis with one another. Combining their expertise, the authors tackle this task in depth; they show a full awareness, in their discussions and especially in their notes and bibliography, of different interpretive viewpoints and of the state-of-the-art with respect to the topics they address. They take care to clarify their positions and assumptions in relation to ideological and political questions as well. For those interested in this new perspective, the book seems an indispensable starting point to many areas of investigation, in particular, applying this approach to the field of medieval and pre-modern Indian studies (here cursorily addressed), and extending it to connections with the Islamic world. This could help verify and consolidate its validity and potentially open unexpected views.
