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Political Yoga – Sunila Kalé and Christian Lee Novetzke
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Political Yoga – Sunila Kalé and Christian Lee Novetzke

Exploring uses of yogic power for worldly goals
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How closely connected are yoga and politics? Many people today try to keep them apart, but an ancient tradition sees yoga as politics. Although its theories might be distinct from yogic philosophies and mind-body disciplines, they’re nonetheless part of a broader understanding of what yoga means.

Christian Lee Novetzke and Sunila Kalé

A new book called The Yoga of Power, by Sunila Kalé and Christian Lee Novetzke, unpacks the implications. Initially inspired by events such as a U.S. court case about whether yoga in schools was religious and the Hindu nationalist promotion of “yoga day”, their work studies texts from the Ṛg Veda onwards, showing how yoga describes the exertion of control. Together, we discuss (among other topics):

  • The use of yoga-kṣema to refer to people’s welfare

  • What links good governance to personal self-discipline

  • How yogic ideas inspired anti-colonial political resistance

  • Why texts tell haṭha yogis to find well-governed lands

  • Whether sun salutations are yogic or martial arts

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