Yoga as political thought and practice

Traditionally, the focus has been on two spheres of yoga practices, commonly identified as the psychophysical and the philosophical. These two spheres of yoga have been made famous over millennia, more so by charismatic individuals like Vivekananda and Iyengar, who, doing the last century, brought these kinds of yoga globally renown. But yoga is more than just these two spheres; it has an enduring third sphere of political thought and practice, which extends beyond the two regimes of psychophysical practice and a school of philosophy.  

Combining textual reading and archival work, Sunila Kale and Christian Novetzke have teamed together to chart the political conceptualization of yoga, the third sphere, which controls one’s antagonists as well as the conditions that antagonize. The third sphere of yoga emerged as a political thought and practice through history, long drawn into it during the late classical, medieval, and early modern periods. Scholars suggest that during much of these periods, many of those were adept at psychophysical yoga were also warriors. These yogis wielded power in the worlds of war, intelligence, and diplomacy, including Akbar, who had a special fascination for it.  

Yoga and politics have remained inseparable over the long duration of time in history. It is undoubtedly a point of pride for the country, a monumental sculpture at the Indira Gandhi International Airport depicting each position of the Surya Namaskar is a visual presentation of this political soft power.  

The location of the sculpture is apt because the yoga position has long existed within the world of politics and power. It emerged as the quintessential form of postural yoga, a kind of subdued resistance to colonial rule popularized by the Raja of Aundh, Bhawanrao Shriniwasrao Pant Pratinidhi, during the early 1920. The Yoga of Power examines various aspects of yoga to suggest its role in both psychophysical practice and political strategy.  

It is a brilliant piece of scholarship on the enduring tradition of thought and practice, where yoga, religion, and politics intersect. It defines yoga as a means, method, and technique shared between a subject and an object which is expressed as a dialectic of power. However, yoga has remained secular in both dualist and nondualist philosophical and theological schools of thought. It is shared by Hindus seeking the true self, by Buddhists seeking no-self, by Muslims seeking allah, or by atheists seeking to chill. As a result, the psychophysical application to the mind-body problem crosses the barrier of religions and remains widely relevant as a practice.        

Both professors at the University of Washington, Kale and Novetzke provide a rare masterful insight connecting mythological yoga with modern political thought. Although the concept of yoga as political thought was sublimated, its ubiquitous proliferation on yoga mats has remained dominant. Mahatma Gandhi used yoga to rupture the boundaries between public and private and sought to redefine the language of politics through his attire. The Father of the Nation used yoga as an intramural political force, to shed new light on political thought and history. 

The Yoga of Power scans a period from 1400 BCE to notice how yoga as a political thought endured through history, and how it has been appropriated now with the rising swell of nationalism. Yoga is now referred to as a product of India’s premodern education system and is cited as a mode of ‘internationalization’ by way of a subject that has global recognition. It is predominantly conceived as a mode of public health, which echoes the Raja of Aundh’s understanding of the Surya Namaskar as medicine for public health.  

Its chequered history notwithstanding, yoga is a preeminent technology of the self for which the State has crafted institutional mechanisms for its support and promotion. Yoga as philosophy comes to share space with yoga as politics. The implication of history should guide the aspiring yogi to engage the psychophysical practice in its sociopolitical context. The book presents yoga as a political thought and practice that intersects with yoga as philosophy and psychophysical practice. The Yoga of Power has shed new light on the political history of thought, which can guide the reader to view yoga differently. 

The Yoga of Power
by Sunila Kale and Christian Lee Novetzke
Columbia University Press, New York
Extent: 256, Price: $35.

First published in the Outlook on June 28, 2025.

Why breath should be not taken for granted?

At the start of 2020, a small team of scientists tried and failed to convince public health organizations that COVID-19 was spread through the air we breathe. Until then, scientists thought that respiratory diseases spread through droplets, and that these droplets had a limited range. Coughed up, these droplets fell quickly to the ground, to use the disgusting terminology of the 1990s which health officials use while speaking about tuberculosis. In reality, however, breath has been a medium of transmission of most invisible things.

Such new insights into the living atmosphere come courtesy Carl Zimmer, through his book Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life we Breathe. The text follows the research where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air and pursues groundbreaking experiments by Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh. It warns the world about airborne infections and chronicles the dark side of aerobiology designed to spread anthrax, smallpox, and an array of other pathogens. Rather than to be taken for granted, the importance of the natural process of human breath is once again established. 

Protecting the most vital of all life processes calls for a well-thought-out strategy. Breath is in itself of immense value -- one breath in and one breath out is the manifestation of life. A breath alone brings a newborn to life; the body turns pink as the first breath gets in. And the last breath accounts for life. The power that ripples through the whole universe comes in the form of breath.

It is an intuitive act of inhaling and exhaling, which is repeated 25,000 times a day. This natural act, often taken for granted, is counted as a necessary biological activity. It is precious nonetheless, but it is more than just an exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. ‘Breath,’ says Prem Rawat, ‘is the greatest mystery, out of nowhere it comes to nowhere it goes.’ In his book, Breath: Wake Up to Life, Rawat writes that breath is the beginning of life, the sustaining of life, and when it ceases, it is also the end of life.

The invaluable gift

Breath is an invaluable gift, but only if it is taken that way. Traditional practices related to breathing value breath and even try to prolong and preserve it. Sage Patanjali has his pranayama practices that add value to age-old breathing practices that have gained popularity among the health conscious. Buddha counted breath as an essential link between the human body and consciousness. The breathing process has many hidden features that are gaining wide acceptance. That breath fuels all life forms and extinguishes it too, is a lived reality. The natural act of breathing, now counted as a biological privilege, is a precious gift given in abundance.

Breathing must be correctively done because nine out of ten people don’t breathe correctly -- aggravating a laundry list of chronic diseases, according to James Nestor. It is surprising that hospitals only deal with breathing emergencies related to specific maladies of the lungs. It is only in recent years that breathing as a branch of medical emergencies has been acknowledged.

The correct way to breathe

The way to correct breathing is an individual responsibility, but to consider that it is a pretty simple act that is well understood could be a fallacy. Only by following a tough breathing regime could four hours of daily snoring be just ten minutes. For this incredible change to happen, one has to go through an awful experience of forcefully breathing through the mouth for the first ten days and revert to nasal breathing for another ten days with lips sealed with a piece of tape. The longer one breathes through the nose, the nasal cavities get clearer and bigger, writes Nestor in his new book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art.

Inhaling-exhaling techniques are around for several millennia. Over the years, however, these techniques are being rediscovered and scientifically validated. “The fruits of this once-fringe, often forgotten research are now redefining the potential of the human body,” explains Nestor. Limited but cutting-edge research in pulmology, psychology, biochemistry, and physiology has already demonstrated that many modern maladies – asthma, anxiety, psoriasis – could either be reduced or reversed simply by changing the way we inhale and exhale. 

Stories on the magical aspects of breathing abound in the world of yoga practitioners, as popularity of yoga in the past two decades has brought a large number of huffing and puffing exponents in public spaces. Whether or not they are breathing better remains to be ascertained. From alternate nostril breathing to breathing coordination, and from resonant breathing to Buteyko breathing -- all techniques of breathing impact human health and longevity.

Nestor raises hopes of revolutionizing the health sector by generating a renewed interest in breathing techniques to act as a preventive medicine that helps in retaining balance in the body such that milder problems don’t end up being serious health issues. However, modern medicine has yet to take serious note of this wisdom generated by Buddhist monks over two millennia ago. If face is the index of mind, breath is the indicator of human well-being.

Breath
by Prem Rawat
St. Martin’s Press, New York
Extent: 180, Price: US$ 30.

Air-borne: The Hidden History of Life We Breathe
by Carl Zimmer
Dutton Press, USA
Extent: 492, Price: US$ 17.60.

Breath: The New Science of Lost Art
by James Nestor
Penguin, New Delhi
Extent: 304, Price: Rs. 433.

First published in The Hindu on June 19, 2025.

A lip-licking indulgence

Ice cream is a growing indulgence that few would choose to go without. Be with sugar or without, high fat or low, soft serve or kulfi, ice cream will always stand as the world favorite treat. It adorns restaurant menus and home freezers across the world in multiple forms. Once considered an indulgence befitting only the elite, this sweet treat has evolved into one of the most popular mass-market food products ever developed. In Ice Cream: A Global History, journalist Laura B. Weiss takes us on a fascinating journey through the ages to tell the lively story of how this delicious dessert became a global sensation.

Featuring emperors, kings, inventors, and entrepreneurs, Ice Cream makes for a surprising and delightful read. Unlike other places, India boasts a venerable indigenous ice cream culture. Mughal emperors enjoyed flavored ice brought down from nearby mountains. Later, confectioners developed kulfi, a milk-based dish. It isn’t churned like ice-creams, but the mixture is cooked before frozen in small metal cones. Sprinkled with photographs, illustrations and recipes, this is a tasty history of everyone’s favorite childhood treat.

It is a short book that has scooped almost everything about ice cream. Where it was first invented, how it travelled across the world, and evolved into many variants. How ice cream as we know it came about, and how it went from being a dish for the elite to one that today has a ubiquitous appeal? With technological advances beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, and with the widespread emergence of street vendors, regular folks could scrouge up few coins for a ice cream scoop. Laura B. Weiss touches on various aspects of ice cream, from different ways of using ice, and to making ice cream; the important people who helped make ice cream what it is today, and how ice cream features in popular culture. Different graphic representations of ice cream, including a painting by Picaso, adds rich cultural scoop to ice cream’s history. 

I learnt a good deal of stuff that I hadn't known before, and since it's an easy read, I found Ice Cream: A Global History pleasant reading. US has the largest ice cream market, followed by Italy. The Italians, the originator of modern ice cream, were ill equipped to spearhead the drive to commercialize ice creams. Their refrigeration technique lagged, and Italian gelato – which means ‘frozen’ in Italian – was hand-made. The quality of even the best American ice cream – its taste, texture and richness – couldn’t match the gelato.

Whatever be the type of scoop, it is the art and science of licking an ice cream through a cone testifies to its enormous popularity the world over. It was way back in 1904 that the cone came into being, as we know it today. A sensation in its time, it was at the St. Louis fair in 1904 that attracted thousands of visitors who could walk with an ice cream scoop in a cone. It takes about fifty licks to polish off a single scoop of ice cream nestling in a cone, but just a few bites to gobble down its cakey container. It has been a winning combination since then. 

The book makes interesting revelations. It lets us know the ice cream creation of banana split, and the great dessert innovation called the Sundae. But it is emphatically not a global history as it confines to US, Europe, Middle East, Asia and East Asia. The greatest surprise was the complete lack of any mention of Africa. Wonder why this continent with some of the highest temperatures in the world has been left out? How has the African flavors, the Kenyan classic dessert called coupe Mount Kenya and South Africa's iconic Tapi Tapi Ice Cream, remained unknown? Africa did know its ice cream as well as others across the globe. 

Ice Cream: A Global History 
by Laura B. Weiss
Pan Macmillan, New Delhi. 
Extent: 176, Price: Rs. 474.

First published in New Indian Express on June 15, 2025.