Well Nagaraj, how do you define these terms and what one ought to do with them? You've asked a lot of questions of me, I gave you earnest responses, I asked you to respond, and then you tell me it's all for nothing because you don't like my response(s). So, it seems there are some interesting suspensions of judgement happening here...or perhaps not.You could continue this conversation by explaining how you understand the point you make matters. I believe I asked you if it matters. Meaning, what's your opinion? I believe I qualified my reasons why I think it maybe doesn't matter all the time. I recall also saying that my response was written quickly and might not be fully formed or articulated as cogently as it might otherwise be.I don't have to believe or personally accept as valid any truth claims someone makes. I'm quite happy to listen to someone's 'truth'...I don't have to accept it myself as 'true'...as we might just be talking about opinions in the end. I'm abundantly aware of my privilege and the colonial origins of anthropology. This history haunts every word I write. I'd like to think I'm also quite aware of my own biases. For instance, I really appreciate evidenced-based science over logical fallacies, correlation and anecdotes... call me a scientist...call me someone who privileges one knowledge system over other colonized systems of knowing and being. I can still try and understand why non sequiturs and the like are important points of validation for other people and how they are used to justify normative practices within a social network. I don't have to agree with them or believe them to write about them.CASE IN POINT:Are you telling me that I should accept as 'true' when I meet someone like a high school principal during fieldwork in India, who tells me emphatically that Australia is full of convicts, Australia has no culture, my parents are sons and daughters of whores, I'm responsible for the genocide of Indigenous Australians, and holds me personally responsible for the murder of 1 lakh of Indian students in Melbourne, that I should do what, exactly? Get in an argument with this person, who has never left the state they were born in, let alone been to Australia? Shout them down? Call them many names? Or should I instead, sit there, while drinking tea in their house gritting my teeth, listen...to understand this individuals subjective opinions about their lived experience in the world, and how they relate to the global picture? And later possibly include their narrative in the story I write about whatever it is I'm writing about?What exactly would you suggest I do, other than listen and try to understand this person's worldview, other than suspend my judgment, that is...and NOT get in a verbal altercation with someone because I might fundamentally disagree with their politics or worldview in general?I'd sincerely like to know what you think you might / would do if you came to Australia and interviewed a bunch of racist, bogan or upper class Australians who think Australia is exclusively a white, Christian, heterosexual country, and that the ~400k Indians that now call it home should 'get out of our country...because it's full', and during your conversation, they use a bunch of racist, sexist, patriarchal, misogynistic and homophobic slurs towards you, your family, your friends, your country - as if they are ever acceptable - would you perhaps suspend your judgement, not react to their obvious attempts to provoke you, not respond to their bigoted, essentialised rhetoric, and later, when writing up your field notes, try and find a way to still privilege their perspective in your own writing, and give it a voice, regardless of whether you agree with it, or not?All the best,Patrick McCartney, PhDJSPS Fellow - Kyoto UniversityVisiting Fellow - Australian National University
Skype - psdmccartneyPhone + Whatsapp: +61 414 954 748Twitter - @psdmccartneybodhapūrvam calema ;-)On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 4:26 PM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi@gmail.com> wrote:Thanks Patrick-ji, for your detailed response(s).What an interesting way of defining 'suspension of judgement', 'privileging the emic perspective' !No point to continue the conversationsuspending judgement means not having an argument with someone who has taken the time to answer my questions; while privileging their perspective means including it in my narrative.--On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 9:34 AM, patrick mccartney <psdmccartney@gmail.com> wrote:Dear Nagaraj,Sorry, but I've been dealing with getting married 2x in two different states over the past two weeks to respond.Let me respond to your questions. Sorry if it is a bit over the place. I've written in a bit of a rush.'within the multi-trillion dollar wellness industry', what is the ratio of the 'the global consumption of yoga-inflected lifestyles' ?++The global wellness industry is valued at about USD 4 trillion and global yoga is worth about USD 500billion. This link explains the value of tourism to India.Is your current research project focused, among other things, on the 'socio, political, economic aspirations of the Indian state through AYUSH and MEA' ?++ yes. I am explicitly interested in the marketing of yoga, wellness and mindfulness by AYUSH and MEA and the economic, social and political impacts.Why are you interested in those aspirations? What is so intriguing about a state having such aspirations?++ because they are interesting. I'm intrigued by how different narratives are woven together to create 'history', legitimacy and authority, particularly when it comes to consumption of yoga within a global framework - there are many reconstituted narratives that are used by the Indian state and global yoga/wellness to sell commodified spiritual tourism to India, which reifies and essentialises many things to create a romantic, idealised, sanitized image of yoga and India. How these narratives intersect fascinates me. How they are involved in promoting a soft hindutva and banal consumption through the global yoga industry are interesting. So, you could say i'm mostly interested in how the Indian state 'weaponises' yoga in the pursuit of increasing its soft power potential.There are many criticisms levelled at consumers of global yoga: white washing and cultural appropriation being the most egregious, but if you look at the rhetoric of global yoga and the Indian state, they essentialise an image of yoga that will possibly re-enchant worlds using the same 19th century tropes. So, it's a bit hard to just go after consumers of yoga, who are enticed by the many things, but also the official rhetoric of the India state about magical, mystical, sacred, amulya bharat. For instance, the MEA says the following:+++A Brief History and Development of Yoga:
The practice of Yoga is believed to have started with the very dawn of civilization. The science of yoga has its origin thousands of years ago, long before the first religions or belief systems were born. In the yogic lore, Shiva is seen as the first yogi or Adiyogi, and the first Guru or Adi Guru.
Several Thousand years ago, on the banks of the lake Kantisarovar in the Himalayas, Adiyogi poured his profound knowledge into the legendary Saptarishis or "seven sages”. The sages carried this powerful yogic science to different parts of the world, including Asia, the Middle East, Northern Africa and South America. Interestingly, modern scholars have noted and marvelled at the close parallels found between ancient cultures across the globe. However, it was in India that the yogic system found its fullest expression. Agastya, the Saptarishi who travelled across the Indian subcontinent, crafted this culture around a core yogic way of life.+++Do you think 'Vedic Thai Yoga Massage' that claims to be 5000 years old, and which also claims this date for the Bhāgavatam, and which explicitly states that Dhanvantari is a Vedic god' is part of 'the construction of narratives to also suit socio, political, economic aspirations of the Indian state through AYUSH and MEA' ?++yes. I argue that they built upon the official rhetoric of the state, which is doing the opposite of decolonising yoga.Are you feeling bad that ' there are many people within yogaland who do not have any appreciation for historicity, and would prefer for a sense of magic and wonder to reenchant their lives.'? In a recent mail, you said, " , my remit is to suspend judgement and disbelief, and try to privilege the emic perspective." I said, "Do you think Indology centred around /rooted in historical critical method and privileging emic perspectives that are neither historical nor critical can go hand in hand? " Here is a sample of that mismatch.++ I have no feeling, either way, towards what people do or not do within yogaland. If people do want to live in a magic-fuelled world of neo-orientalist imaginings, that's up to them.It's a good question you raise - but I don't think what you say above matters, does it? - are you really trying to say that we should not use the historical/critical method? What would you prefer or offer as an alternative? As you know, history is complicated. So is what we as individuals and groups do with it to create meaning and legitimacy. I'm quite happy to listen to what someone believes to be 'true', I'm also happy to accept in a subjective relativist way that it's 'true' for them. But that doesn't mean we should not fact check and try and understand larger, deeper, forces at play, and contextualise things. There are many, many non sequiturs that I've endured, patiently, through fieldwork, which are beliefs and opinions - suspending judgement means not having an argument with someone who has taken the time to answer my questions; while privileging their perspective means including it in my narrative. I'm honestly not sure how else to go about overriding the mismatch you speak of, other than this.----------------------------------------- Who are the target market of this Vedic Thai Yoga massage ? Why or how do they have a respect or attraction for the label 'Vedic' ? Indians, particularly Hindus, more particularly traditionally oriented educated Hindus may have a pull for the 'Vedic' label. Why at all does that label matter for any customers other than of that category? Why does that label create magic and wonder?++ people who want massages and who want to feel connected to some ancient, unbroken lineage.Like I've already said, and I don't think it matters whether it's an emic or etic perspective, 'vedic' just like Dominik asserts '5000' is more about a feeling than anything else, its an appeal to tradition, emotion, authority and purity.But, it does matter. Obviously, because people are attracted to it. Why not, instead, just call it Thai (yoga) massage, or Thai massage? Because they are trying to create distinction and carve up a piece of crowded market place. But I also think that Vedic is a more preferred term by global yoga consumers as a euphemism, which helps many to digest the indelible Hindu elements of the worlds they create and consume. But there are many errors, for instance, with the 5000 yr date for the Bhāgavatam, just one example. Another is mentioning that many purānic gods are vedic. There is very little appreciation for the historical development from the Vedic period today, it's just seen as a flatland without many, if any, contours. Perhaps the time scale and depth and breadth are just too much for most people. One certainly won't learn much, if at all, about these complexities in a yoga teacher-training course. Certainly not anything about the politics of yoga. Instead, one will be told many things, such as the way in which the hieratic and structural inequalities of caste is essentialised as simply true. These types of statements are too often consumed uncritically. For instance, I was once told by a non-Hindu, American yoga teacher who was visiting an ashram: "the reason there are shudras is so we can do yoga, someone has to do the cleaning, otherwise when will we get to do our yoga". There is so much going on in this one statement. The uncritical support for caste oppression astounds me... One thing is also for certain is that yoga-teacher trainees will most likely be told that the pashupatinath seal is undisputed proof of yoga's claims to antiquity. That is a stretch...as I'm guessing there were many people sitting cross-legged on the floor 3500years ago. This same claim is made by a few gurus as well, that because there are figures found in South America, that this proves that these yogis mentioned above travelled there and gave 'yoga' to the cultures of South America. Are you suggesting, then, that we should just not bother with the historical critical method and accept these truth claims as true, because of someone's misinformed opinion? This sort of epistemic relativism, combined with the disintellectualisation+cultivation of affect that underlies the logic of the guru-disciple relationship, plus the normalising group-think inherent in many social networks creates an unsustainably toxic situation, in my humble opinion, that leads people to accept many things as 'true' simply because the guru says it is. All the best,Patrick McCartney, PhDJSPS Fellow - Kyoto UniversityVisiting Fellow - Australian National UniversityNagaraj PaturiHyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, MaharashtraBoS, Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth, Veliyanad, KeralaFormer Senior Professor of Cultural StudiesFLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of Liberal Education,(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )