Speaker
Description
Ida Pajunen
MA SOAS University of London - Traditions of Yoga & Meditation
MPhil University of Cambridge - Gender Studies
This paper begins with the paradox of women in yoga: how did yoga come to be practiced by women, when prior to the twentieth century physical yoga was primarily a practice for high caste men? The answer suggested in this paper is nationalism.
This paper argues that women, nation and yoga are interdependent, co-constructed ideas. These ideas were shaped in meaning during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yoga, which has always been a generic term, became a practice of health at the same time women became signifiers of nation. Given the need for a healthy nation, women were brought into the practice of yoga to effectively strengthen the nation and produce the next generation of healthy nationalists.
This paper is situated in early twentieth century India and examines the first published materials on yoga which teach āsana (posture) and prāṇāyāma (breath control). These materials focus on health. Examined are Sita Devī’s 1934 manual Easy Postures for Woman, the first authored by a woman from India and previously not engaged with in scholarship; the magazine “Yoga Mīmāṃsā” from 1924–1925; and the 1929 manual Sūrya Namaskārs. This paper examines these sources through the lens of gender and post-colonial theory. It explores the ways in which the demographic of yoga practitioners changed and what that meant for the greater social and national debates. This paper also addresses the current use of yoga in Hindutva politics.
In support, this paper draws upon two extant bodies of historical scholarship: yogic studies and historical analysis of colonial South Asia. It highlights themes of tradition, mother, asceticism, beauty, caste, race and eugenics.
