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Description
My paper will look at the teachings of Yogi Haider, a contemporary yoga teacher in Pakistan. Drawing from his online publications on YouTube and Facebook in Urdu and English, I will first analyze some of the ways he incorporates his yoga teachings into the Pakistani Panjabi context (e.g., his use of public spaces, specific dates, cultural references, and different languages). Secondly, I will study how he engages with current discourses in the contemporary global yoga scene (e.g., the instrumentalization of yoga by Hindu nationalist ideologies), thereby placing Pakistan on today’s yoga map. This paper will show that the case of Yogi Haider is innovative for yoga studies. Indeed, yoga in Pakistan is currently understudied, yet it reveals compelling insights as it intersects with several political and religious issues in contemporary South Asia.
