When Yoga Goes Wrong

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

This was the first thought I had when I read Swami Ramdev’s words about going “Indian”.

“Be Indian,” he exhorted his followers on a recent morning. “Speak Indian languages. Wear Indian clothes. Drink Indian drinks.”

While I’m all for expressing ones culture, it’s the ideologues and pseudo-politicians espousing this type of message who have essentially bought a home in the same sand-space most ostriches bury their faces in when they smell danger coming.

Because “all things foreign… like Coca-Cola and hamburgers” do not “pollute the Indian spirit and weaken it”. After all, if you take away all the Indian food and drinks and clothes, you still have an Indian. Just like you’d still have an Arab or an American. It’s our values and not our consumables or even our superficial celebrations which make us who we are. In fact, I would argue that our interactions make us more who we are than what we eat and what we drink.

The problem with interacting with Coca-Cola is that it’s an entity. It’s not going to communicate with you, share your cultural phenomenon, laugh at your jokes. But that is an entire other blog.

But it’s men like these, hot-headed and full of under-developed and in some cases dangerous ideas (making corruption a crime punishable by death, for example), which are the real risks to countries which are growing too big for their britches, countries like India who have staggering capacities for growth but even more staggering problems with corruption and poverty. The people of such countries are aware of their own problems yet feel powerless to stop them, and so when someone who has managed to do anything talks, people listen, even if that something was bringing yoga back to the people whose ancestors invented it in a populist and passionate manner.

Men like Ramdev don’t wish to fix the problems of the people. If anything from his recent interview with the New York Times was revealed, it’s that Ramdev is smart enough to see that his yoga-pushing will not let him ride on the popular wave forever, he must do something bigger and more attention grabbing to stay “loved” by the people. And in India, that always means politics. Politics, from here to Sri Lanka, is the only way on earth to fulfill a messiah complex as big as man’s ego.

I should probably note that this is only the second time I've even heard of Ramdev, but given that the first time was about the fact that his website claims yoga will increase CD4 cell counts, the cells which are infected and destroyed when a person is infected with HIV, well, I have to say, there was no love lost on my part. I love yoga, but it's no cure for HIV.