Shameem Black, "Flexible India: Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions" (Columbia UP, 2023)

About this episode

Dr. Shameem Black discusses her book 'Flexible India' which explores the cultural and political tensions surrounding yoga in India and its global implications.

Yoga has offered the Indian state unprecedented opportunities for global, media-savvy political performance. Under Modi, it has promoted yoga tourism and staged mass yoga sessions, and Indian officials have proposed yoga as a national solution to a range of social problems, from reducing rape to curing cancer. But as yoga has gone global, its cultural meanings have spiraled far and wide. In Flexible India: Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions (Columbia University Press, 2024), Dr. Shameem Black travels into unexpected realms of popular culture in English from India, its diaspora, and the West to explore and critique yoga as an exercise in cultural power. Drawing on her own experience and her readings of political spectacles, yoga murder mysteries, court cases, art installations, and digital media, Dr. Black shows how yoga’s imaginative power supports diverse political and cultural ends. Although many cultural practices in today’s India exemplify “culture wars” between liberal and conservative agendas, Flexible India argues that visions of yoga offer a “culture peace” that conceals, without resolving, such tensions. This flexibility allows states, corporations, and individuals…

People in this episode

Guest: Shameem Black

Topics covered

• yoga
• cultural power
• political performance
• India
• cultural tensions
• media
• social issues

Keywords

• yoga
• cultural tensions
• politics
• India
• Modi
• media
• social issues
• cultural power
• yoga tourism

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Columbia University Press

Places: India, West, Modi

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