![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
In 2015 a plan to celebrate the inaugural International Day of Yoga in Vancouver generated a powerful backlash. What might have been for some a public expression of their interest in a trendy wellness activity, and for others a meaningful demonstration of an important spiritual practice, was cancelled just a week after it was announced. How did this single postural yoga class so quickly and definitively galvanise public opinion, and what can this teach us about the machinations of public discourse? In this brief but revealing controversy, most interlocutors focused on local political considerations, paying somewhat less attention to the now common critique that postural yoga is elitist and vapid, and virtually none to claims and metaphors related to spirituality that circulated widely among practitioners and promoters. This incident may remind us that religious and spiritual claims are not sui generis but always part of larger social discourses that reveal a great deal about quite this-worldly concerns, interests, and values.
Acknowledgements
I appreciate the comments I received on drafts of this contribution from Scott Dolff, Susie Fisher, Peter Scales, David Seljak, Paige Thombs, and two anonymous reviewers. I also received useful feedback from colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany, where I presented the key ideas of this contribution.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. This concept involves a firm commitment to a scientific or naturalistic perspective, combined with a broad appreciation of the region’s grandeur, uniqueness, and also its fragility. The region’s natural (and to a lesser extent, its human) dimensions are clearly approached in a reverential manner that is redolent of panentheism, theism, and ecospirituality. Further reflections on reverential naturalism will be part of a forthcoming book emerging from a project on the Cascadia bioregion. However, readers may also consult a story on the CBC Tapestry website: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/sacred-space-1-architecture-and-region-1.4474834/beautiful-british-columbia-vs-friendly-manitoba-where-you-live-may-influence-your-spirituality-1.4474925. All webpages last accessed 16 July 2019.
2. https://news.gov.bc.ca/stories/namaste-premier-announces-inaugural-international-day-of-yoga-event-in-vancouver. 2019 IDY events in India have drawn approximately 40,000 (Delhi) and 50,000 (Ranchi). See: https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/world-yoga-day-theme-yoga-for-heart-1548334-2019-06-13. About 12,000 practitioners gathered in New York City’s Times Square. See: https://www.efe.com/efe/english/life/thousands-celebrate-world-yoga-day-in-new-york-s-times-square/50000263-3657855.
3. In this essay, I focus on the Greater Vancouver Area (pop. 2.4M), although the protagonist in this story is Christy Clark, then the premier of BC (pop., 4.7M).
4. For the official declaration, see: http://undocs.org/A/RES/69/131. For the public-facing announcement, see: http://www.un.org/en/events/yogaday/.
5. For the statement by the Indian government, see: http://www.mea.gov.in/idy.html. For the PowerPoint slide featured here, and shared via Twitter by MEA spokesperson, Vikash Swarup, see: https://www.firstpost.com/photos/check-logo-international-yoga-day-finally-highlights-2219082-2.html.
7. https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2015PREM0042-000861; https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2015PREM0039-000812.
9. What if we were to change the register of this comment: Come and look at me. I like to: pray/volunteer at a soup kitchen/sing in a choir/perform a puja/go on a pilgrimage? It seems hard to imagine that any politician would use prayer, volunteer work, devotion, or pilgrimage as opportunities to malign an adversary.
10. Jacobs, famous for her powerful critique of urban planning The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), has been called ‘the mother of Vancouverism,’ https://www.straight.com/news/vancouvers-density-debate-pits-sullivanism-versus-ideas-jane-jacobs, although Arthur Erikson had promoted a certain kind of expansion and densification of Vancouver in the 1950s. Cf. http://gwerk.westbankcorp.com/birth-of-vancouverism-arthur-erickson/ and https://vancouver.skyrisecities.com/news/2017/01/vancouverism-made-vancouver-approach-planning.
11. As such, the concept of ‘visible minority’ may have lost its analytical value. See: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/visible-minorities-now-the-majority-in-5-b-c-cities-1.4375858.
12. The average cost of an ordinary detached home is roughly $1.7M; the cost of a condominium is over $700K; the average monthly rental in the city is approximately $2000 for a one-bedroom apartment. See: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-real-estate-slows-prices-high-1.4605085 and https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Vancouver.
13. By the spring of 2015, Clark’s approval rating among voters was about 30%, down from a post-election (2013) high of 45%. See: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Christy+Clark+approval+rating+continues+slide+poll/11156816/story.html.
14. See the ‘Take Yoga Back’ campaign of the Hindu American Foundation, https://www.hafsite.org/takeyogaback, an effort to remind practitioners and teachers of (in their view) the essentially Hindu roots of yoga and to challenge the ways in which western students and instructors misunderstand, misuse, and often disrespect basic Hindu concepts. See also the cultural appropriation debate that unfolded at the University of Ottawa several months after the IDY debate in Vancouver. In the Ottawa context, a long-standing free yoga class that had been offered (by a person of non-Indian descent) to students with disabilities was cancelled due to concerns that the volunteer teacher might be guilty of cultural appropriation. See: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/university-ottawa-yoga-cultural-sensitivity-1.3330441.
15. Here we hear echoes of the research of Burchardt, Griera, and Gloria (Citation2015) on the ways groups opposed to the harsh anti-veiling laws in Spain were unable to create a coherent narrative around their concerns.
16. There is an ideological irony in this framing, of course, as the brief interruption of traffic and the transformation of a normally busy bridge into a space for a personal, physical, spiritual activity would be framed by some organisers and practitioners explicitly as a critique of consumerism and other problematic ideological formations. The event was, or might have been, a protest of consumerism by a practice that is deeply enmeshed with consumer culture. As Andrea Jain notes (Citation2014), yoga has adapted to the societies that have embraced it, and so in the North American context it is not surprising to see both that yoga has become an integral feature of the widespread wellness culture and that it has become thoroughly commodified.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Paul Bramadat
Paul Bramadat is Professor and Director of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria. In addition to his monograph The Church on the World’s Turf (Oxford University Press 2000), he has co-edited multiple volumes including Religious Radicalisation and Securitisation in Canada and Beyond (University of Toronto Press 2014) with L. Dawson, and Public Health in the Age of Anxiety (University of Toronto Press 2017) with Maryse Guay, Julie Bettinger, and Réal Roy. He is currently co-editing a book on religion and bioregionalism in the Pacific Northwest region (University of British Columbia Press, forthcoming).