Flexible India Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions

Drawing on her own experience and her readings of political spectacles, yoga murder mysteries, court cases, art installations, and digital media, 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 to think of themselves as welcoming and tolerant while still, in many cases, supporting practices that make minority populations increasingly vulnerable. However, as Black shows, yoga can also be imagined in ways that offer new tools for critiquing hierarchical structures of power and race, Hindu nationalism, cultural appropriation, and self-help capitalism.