Masculine yoga top, feminine yoga bottom

Yoga is yoking and purification. One famous yoga teacher, T.K.V. Desikachar, once said that yoga is 90% waste removal. But some things are ugly about the people and gurus who practice yoga. If you want to keep your rose-tinted glasses on, do not read further. Because from now on I will focus on drawing apart the golden show-off curtains which hide some ugly stuff behind them.

Take the name I mentioned – T.K.V. Desikaschar. His son, who continued his father’s yoga legacy and whose waste obviously was not removed – was accused of psychopathic misuse of power and sexual harassment in 2012. He was cleared of all the charges (by European women) but he is not alone. Sexual harassment, even rape is common in India. To sexually harass female spiritual travelers in yoga sanctuaries is not uncommon. But many women choose not to speak about it in the public. During their stay in India they get to hear that the police is so corrupt that to press charges against a famous yoga guru is useless as he can easily buy silence. Yes, of course it is complicated as India stinks of corruption.

I have never tried to purify my spirit with slimy yoga gurus in ashrams in India. This just does not suit my philosophy about yoga which should not be associated with one nation, religions and one, assertedly holy language (Sanskrit). I feel rather happy with what I have managed to pick up from masters outside India. But the stories I have heard from devastated women who went to find themselves and came back more lost than ever are sad and have made me wonder why. Here are some reasons.

Rape is one of the most common crimes against women in India according to the people who know the statistics but only 5-6% of cases are reported. In Dehli in 2015 there were on average 6 reported rapes and 15 molestations of women each day. If only 6% gets reported there were in fact 250 rapes and 550 molestations a day. Horrible numbers!

Cases where women have traveled back to Europe from their yoga retreats and spoken about experiencing sexual harassment, have increased. Lately, an article shared by Ulrica Norberg, one of my yoga teachers who is among the best in Scandinavia, caught my eye. It was about an American woman who was raped by a famous yoga teacher in a famous yoga studio in India in 2013 but had extreme difficulties convincing the authorities and Yoga Alliance to take action. In 2017 (4 years later!!!) she finally succeeded. Many would have given up.

I am supporting a project called “Invisible Girl” which wants to stop gendercide in India. Women still have a lower ranking regardless of the caste they belong to. If you are a female Dalit – the untouchable, the “oppressed” in Sanskrit – you are less than the particle of dirt. Yoga gurus in India can make fun of you, most of you treat you like you do not exist. As a Dalit which represents almost 20% of the total population in India (which is locked out of yoga rooms) you may be entitled to clean the toilets in an ashram but not to learn yoga from a guru.

Women have kept themselves hiding in the shadows and let male yoga gurus show off in the limelight. But discriminating female yoga gurus happens even outside India. Type “yoga guru” in google search and you will not see women on the front seat. And even when they come to the spotlight, many good female yogis still prefer to attach themselves to male gurus. It is like buying an unnecessary insurance to protect against the lack of self-confidence and societal prejudice which has a preconceived idea that you are not good enough if you have not learnt from a male yoga master.

But in India, the cradle of yoga, discriminating women, lessening their worth and making their life miserable, continues. Please take in some figures – five million to seven million sex-selective abortions are carried out in India every year. And it is getting worse – in 2001, India’s census recorded a child sex ratio of around 93 girls to every 100 boys. By 2016, according to the World Economic Forum, the ratio was closer to 89.

There are many Hindu deities which according to old legends and religious texts have raped women. Hindu gods are of course not alone, other religions have similar stories – Zeus (Greek) and Odin (Scandinavian) were also famous for seducing women. But you do not chant Zeus or Odin’s name during your yoga practice. In many different yoga forms, mantras are used. Most of the mantras contain the name(s) of (a) Hindu god(s). Or their nicknames and they have many. What if you chant earnestly an alternative name of a god who entertained himself by raping women? Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma, etc, etc – they all did. What an unnecessary mantra. Given personally to you by your male yoga guru, namaste!

Back to “the future”. BBC in April 11, 2016: “A Hindu religious leader who said last year that allowing women into a shrine devoted to Lord Shani will increase rapes has drawn criticism. /../ He said: “The women are worshipping Shani in the temple. By doing so, Shani’s eyes would fall on women and this would result in increase of rape incidents.” The quote sounds like big nonsense but in the country with extremely half-hearted attempts to liberate women, this is serious stuff.

As soon as yoga is mixed with religion, it discriminates, like any faith does, women. When this happens in India, multiply the discrimination by 1000. But India is not alone. There are many countries in the world which, due to the location on the ruins of previously almighty civilizations, boast of a cultural inheritance that the nation living there in the modern era can only exploit, not to cultivate. And exploit they do, based on the existing value (or caste) systems, traditions (kill girls, rape women) and beliefs (women are subject to men).

Yoga is claimed to be over 4000 years old physical and spiritual practice but little is known about how it was practiced a couple of thousands of years ago. There is no doubt however that the yoga we practice today is not how yoga was practiced in the past. In India yoga has for centuries been a practice for the privileged elite, the Brahmins, Khsatriyas and Vayshnas. Like education and clean water, yoga was not available for the masses. It still isn’t.

During the 19^th century yoga was popularized in the Western world. Today many women practice it in Europe, Scandinavia, Americas. Remember the cradle of yoga, India and Indian women when you practice yoga. Do not pick up the yoga path mixed with Indian religions and superstitions. As a woman, do not make yourself a partner in crime which is directed against you as the weaker sex. Do not rape yoga.

Kairi

Read the previous blog post – Why women still continue to be the weaker sex

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