Yoga in Modern India

Yoga is an authentic Indian cultural construct. Discuss in relation to Joseph Alters ethnography of modern Yoga in India.

The Indian construct of yoga has long served as a hallmark of Indian culture. This icon of the Indian culture has always been considered uniquely Indian, and has in the past been regarded as a timeless tradition and unchanging in form. However, in Yoga in Modern India, Joseph Alter challenges this view. Alter offers insight into both ancient and modern yoga texts, and challenges the view of an unchanging yoga through its emergence into popular culture and its change in form and significance. In this, yoga ceases to be only a construct of the East due to its changing form and western influence with an emphasis on health value, science, and medicine.

Yoga has surpassed its roots of transcendence and magical powers alone, and now has a basis in studies of biology, physiology, and medicine (Alter 2004). In this, yoga is now far beyond the stereotypical analysis that yoga in India has maintained its spirituality, while yoga in the West is based entirely on materialism.

In order to address this black-and-white thinking, Yoga in Modern India focuses attention on “how Yoga has been made to make sense over the course of the past century” (Alter 2004: xiv). In this, Alter does not argue that yoga is an authentic Indian cultural construct. Instead, Alter offers insight into the creation of yoga’s knowledge in the twentieth-century texts and late twentieth-century practice in India (Alter 2004). Yoga can then be understood as a transnational construct that emerged out of multiple influences, such as colonialism and Hindu nationalism.

Further to this, the multiple influences on the practice of yoga also intersect, such ...

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...r, in spite of the attempted nationalism of Hindu groups, yoga defies definition as Hindu alone through its philosophy of practice (Alter 2004: 142-177). In this, yoga does not belong to any one nationality.

In conclusion, Yoga in Modern India serves to demonstrate that the practice of yoga is more than just Eastern or Western, but is instead truly transnational. Alter exemplifies that yoga is a constantly altering practice, and is both historically and politically constructed. Ultimately, yoga is more than an authentically Indian cultural construct. Yoga’s history, understanding of the body, utilization of science and medicine, and politics surpasses borders and instead encompasses the knowledge, practice, and belief of its many global followers and contributors.

Works Cited

Alter, Joseph. 2004. Yoga in Modern India. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.