Yoga is not religious

 

Yoga is Hindu, but it is not religious. When Hindus go deep into the issues raised by the San Diego court verdict ("yoga is not Hindu"), they are bound to encounter some problems with their own tradition.

In my opinion, Christians who allege that Hindus mix up yoga with the worship of another supreme being than the jealous god Yahweh, have a point. And Hindus who think that yoga implies the worship of a Hindu god likewise have a point,-- the same point. But those are modern Hindus who talk a lot about yoga but are unlikely to practise it. Contemporay Hinduism is a lot more God-centred than the ancient originators of yoga, such as Patanjali, or even the late-medieval pioneers of Hatha Yoga. Ancient Yoga was certainly “Hindu” in any normal use of the term, but it was not theistic.

On Rajiv Malhotra’s discussion list, where the verdict is debated, one Hindu recently quoted Arya Samaj fouder Swami Dayananda Saraswati with approval as asserting that Yoga is “restraining all activities (vritti-s) of mind (chitta) from all evil and unrighteous affairs and fixing the same in God alone, for the bliss and beatitude is Yoga and disobedience of God's injunction and indulgence in evil thoughts and deeds is Viyoga, i.e., remaining away from God”. I am not sure about the exactness of this “quote”, but it gives the gist of Dayanada’s thinking, and it certainly renders the thinking of this particular Hindu and many millions of contemporary Hindus.

In reality, yoga is not about evil at all. It restrains good motions of the mind (i.e. thoughts) as much as evil ones. Hinduism is quite conscious of good and evil, but unlike Christianity, it subordinates this concern (on which the Christian core doctrines of hereditary sin and salvation are based) to the concern for Liberation. Patañjali defines yoga as “restraining the movements of the mind”, full stop. Dayananda’s additional considerations of good and evil, and especially his bringing in “God”, are typical of modern devotional Hinduism or bhakti. This very successful movement, which eclipsed the non-theistic trends in Hinduism (Advaita Vedanta, Sankhya, Mimansa, Buddhism), is the historical antagonist of Hatha Yoga. It teaches that Liberation does not mean “isolation” (of consciousness from its objects, Patañjali’s goal), does not mean identity with the Absolute, but aspires no higher than watching God face to face, much like Sufi and Christian mysticism. It also rejects the emphasis yoga puts on techniques. If God’s grace is there to help you, what use are techniques? By contrast, yoga means reaching the goal, Liberation, by means of techniques.

The trouble already started with the Bhagavad Gita. I have it on good Hindu authority, but I have also seen it for myself, that the Gita is a work of “synthesis”. Then already, Hindus were enamoured of synthesis. Thus, this is where we first find the notion of an equality between three disciplines: karma yoga, “the discipline of action” (then meaning Vedic sacrifice, now moralistically interpreted as good works), jñana yoga, “the discipline of knowledge” (meaning Upanishadic knowledge of the Self, i.e. yoga proper), and bhakti yoga, “the discipline of devotion”. In fact, when Yajñavalkya introduces the notion of the Self, he pits its knowledge against the Vedic rituals. The ancient Vedas and esp. the Brahmanas (the technical manuals of ritual) are centred on karmakanda, “the (ritual) action half”, while the Upanishads are centred on jñanakanda, “the knowledge half”. While yogis would simply choose the latter, the Gita proposes a synthesis, viz. the third pole, bhakti.

The book discusses a number of then-popular Hindu philosophies, but interjects in every chapter one sentence that does not follow from these philosophies at all, namely that all this shall be given to you if you are but devoted to Me, Krishna. You can read Patañjali’s Yoga Sutra, but you will not find Krishna there. You can read the Buddha’s teachings on meditation, but Krishna is not there. Yoga can perfectly exist without Krishna.

Modern bhakti Hindus project their own bhakti beliefs on the whole of Hindu history. They deny the reality of change (both progress and degeneration) in Hindu history. In fact, it is they who realize the Westerners’ fond image of Hinduism as frozen in time, unchangeable. So, they rewrite the theory of yoga as dealing with God. In fact, the more God, the less yoga, and the more yoga, the less God.

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Hindus and Jews, India and Israel

One of the most sensational papers at the American Academy of Religion conference in Montreal was Shana Sippy's on Hindu-Jewish religious rapprochement as a corollary of Indian-Israeli military cooperation. A promising alliance whose time has come, bypassing the power of its jaundiced critics in academe.



After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Narasimha Rao (r.1991-96) lost no time in establishing diplomatic relations with Israel (1992) and, more importantly, replacing the USSR with Israel as India's chief arms supplier. Between India and Israel, weapons have long replaced diamonds as the most important trade good.

Dr. Shana Sippy presented a commercial film shown by the Israeli arms dealers at trade fairs. Daringly crystal-clear. Indian girls were dancing in between upstanding missiles and singing: "I need protection, I need strength" etc. Then a stereotypical Israeli guy hops onto the stage, with a broad smile, gracefully receiving the compliments of the Indian girls: "Safety and protection, security and perfection" etc. The Israelis reportedly congratulate themselves at having "won the Kargil war for India" by sending India weapons tailored to the specific challenges of the Paki occupation of peak terrain.

Then she focused on joint Hindu-Jewish initiatives in the USA and internationally. She acknowledged the strength of this alliance, though clearly begrudging the Hindu community the benefits of any alliance. She tried to muster reasons why Jews should refrain from this alliance: these are not just Hindus but the "Hindu Right"; these are the people who have issued a history textbook praising Hitler (a canard, thoroughly analysed and refuted in the first chapter of my book *Return of the Swastika*); Hindus are idolaters; at least Jews should have demanded that Hindus guarantee the religious rights of the many thousands of Jews who visit India annually (are these rights threatened?!); as a minority, Jews should side with the minorities in India, etc. Her understanding was that the Jews purposely ignore a lot of troubling facts or take them in stride because this alliance is politically so useful to them. On the Hindu side, meanwhile, she saw (quite correctly) an absolute ignorance of specific Jewish agendas.

The joint Hindu-Jewish declaration, earlier this year in Jerusalemn, between Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the chief Ashkenazi Rabbi and some more worthies on both sides, was a natural target of her criticism. She lambasted some of the points the two sides had agreed on, obviously at the Hindu side's insistence:
* the much-maligned swastika is innocent (banal);
* the Aryan Invasion Theory is bunk (totally misplaced, and strange that the Jewish side bothered to agree, but perhaps a way of saying that the much-maligned term "Aryan" is innocent too);
* Hinduism is monotheistic too (questionable, an imposition by a particular faction within the Hindu spectrum);
* Hindu murtipuja is not "idolatry" per Halakhic definition;
* the opposition to the Christian mission, which according to SS is no longer an issue for the Jews (nearly true in Israel in so far as Christian denominations have agreed to stop conversion attempts among Jews, but unchangingly a concern elsewhere when intermarriage mostly means conversion to Christianity or Islam);
* the obviously anti-Islamic rejection of "terrorism".

An orthodox Jewish member of the audience remarked that the meeting would have been impossible without a preliminary agreement between the Rabbi and the Israeli Government. The Israelis are not uptight about separating religion and politics, so this is quite likely. Shana Sippy alleged that the Jerusalem meeting had been sponsored by Rajiv Malhotra, whom she mislabelled as a Hindutva man. After all those years of Hindutva-watching, most supposed experts haven't even noticed the sharp divisions in the spectrum of Hindu activism.

On the whole, though, I was quite impressed with Shana Sippy's presentation. No silly pieties, not too much holy/hollow indignation at Hindutva schemes, not as soporific as so much theological and sociological talks at such conferences, her finger really on the pulse of the Yahudi-Hindu-bhai-bhai scene, and most of all, a truly important and consequential topic.

I refrained from volunteering my own experiences with this alliance, e.g. when in 1993 a Mr. Tiwari of the Washington DC chapter of the VHP took me along on a vsit to the office of the American-Israeli Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the spider in the web of the fabled Jewish Lobby. We got an impressive demonstration in some of the AIPAC feats in influencing US Congress decisions. The idea was that Hindu activists would get some training there in the noble art of lobbying. (Not that I've seen them put their new skills to any use since then.)

During the discussion, I learned that this annual panel on "Hinduisms and Judaisms" was from the beginning mistrusted by the AAR, initially because it looked like a joint Hindu-Jewish platform against Christianity, now because it looks like a gang-up against Islam. There is no substance to this, every speaker went out of his way to placate Islam, absolve it of any role in terrorism, and to lambast "Islamophobia" both in India and in the West. Perhaps on Christianity some Jews have taken a firm stand, but certainly no one on the "Hindu" side. In the three years I have attended these sessions, I have never heard a Hindu-bron speaker or an Indologist take as his own any known pro-Hindu (i.c. anti-mission) positions. In this session too, Hindu assertiveness was only present as the whipping-boy.


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