No, You can't Separate Yoga from Sanatana Dharma

Introduction Of the more unfortunate but widespread phenomena in recent times regarding Hinduism, just two prominent ones are worth mentioning. The first is the flood of self-proclaimed experts who typically lack traditional scholarship (or at any rate, deep scholarship based on foundational texts and practice) on the fundamentals of Hindu philosophy and its various schools. The second is the consequence of the first. It appears that there is now a constant need to produce elaborate evidence for facts accepted as self-evident just thirty or forty years ago. In other words, even solid scholars in Hinduism are now forced to write defences instead of doing original, constructive or path-breaking work. Nowhere is this phenomenon more pronounced than in the realm of Yoga.

About five or six years ago, a mini-controversy erupted over the Government’s flip-flop regarding the inclusion of OM in the Ayush Ministry’s Yoga CD. For a Government led by a party committed to the civilisational roots of Sanatana Bharatavarsha, this controversy was not only avoidable but shows yet again, its failure in developing a robust intellectual discourse.

However, there’s also another, deeper side that shows how easily the controversy over Yoga was and can be whipped up. This is rooted in how Yoga is perceived across the globe.

Arguably, the overwhelming majority of people perceive the word Yoga merely as Asana—as a set of physical exercise movements and postures. The same perception holds true for Pranayama as merely a set of breathing exercises. Still others associate Yoga not only with Asana and Pranayama, but Dhyana, which they translate as “meditation.” Even worse, Yoga is a “lifestyle.”

Such perceptions would perhaps be forgivable ignorance in the land that first germinated them: America. However, the same perceptions have attained the status of settled truths in the land of Yoga’s birth: Bharatavarsha. How many in the “educated” class of India would associate Yoga as a Darshana, as one of the six schools of Hindu philosophical thought? How many in this class are even aware of something called Darshana.

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