Dear Nagaraj,
It's a good question. Please let me try and explain.
I'm an anthropologist, primarily, who is interested in the politics of imagination and the commodification of desire. I am using a dialogic utopian method to explore what the world could be for various groups. With that in mind, my remit is to suspend judgement and disbelief, and try to privilege the emic perspective.
I focus on the global wellness industry, of which yoga and ayurveda are a part. More specifically, I analyse the marketing rhetoric of the global yoga industry. I do this to understand many things, however, one thing in particular that I am increasingly interested in is the tacit links, via the Sanskrit episteme, between the ethno-nationalism of the Indian state and the desires of global yoga practitioners, which are overwhelmingly to apply yoga, as a technology, to help re-enchant disenchanted worlds. It is through the cultural capital of yoga and prestige of Sanskrit that hindutva ideology is normalised and legitimised.
There are many ways in which global yoga practitioners come to unwittingly support the banal nationalism of hindutva. Two principal ways are through the
soft hindutva of various yoga gurus, and the fantasies of people like David Frawley, Stephen Knapp and PN Oak. This hindutva-inspired world view permeates to deep layers of global yoga. Furthermore, the logic of the guru-disciple relationship relies on the cultivation of affect. People are taught how to feel, and not to think critically. This further creates opportunities for hindutva logic to be infused into the guru's rhetoric, normalised, and consumed by the global yoga practitioner.
Of course, all nations are metaphysical entities, and exist within social imaginary landscapes. Are you suggesting that we should ignore the fantasies of hindutvavādins as mere pie in the sky machinations, and not take them seriously? Or should we, instead, see them as earnest post-colonial, counter-hegemonic assertions against the privilege of Eurocentric perspectives? While it seems unlikely that as Praveen Togadia and others assert, that the world will become Hindu/Vedic by 2030-ish, and that Sanskrit will replace English, these post-colonial assertions mean something to the people saying them, especially when they are found not only in the echo chambers of Hindu supremacists, but also within the global imagination of yoga practitioners.
Therefore, how do these seemingly disparate worlds intersect? This is particularly pertinent given that a seeming majority of global yoga practitioners consider the legitimate yogic disposition to be apolitical, which is another way in which the theo-politics of hindutva gains popularity, simply because people do not want to think about yoga AND politics, or that yoga might be involved in larger political operations.
My fieldwork amongst global yoga practitioners leads me to assert that there are many who eagerly await a Vedic-inspired utopian ramrajya, but do not, however, really understand the implications, as what we are more or less discussing is the aspiration to create a global Vedic caliphate, which is what Ramdev asserts is the only answer to stopping ISIS. These aren't fringe fantasies, as the
key note speakers who attended this conference attest.
Therefore, in a nutshell, this is why I give credence to such fantasies.
Best,
Patrick