State Spectacles of Yoga: Invisible India and India Everywhere. Issue 1 (2nd January 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Black, Shameem
• Is Part Of: South Asia. Volume 46:Issue 1(2023)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 17
• Publication Date: 2023-01-02
• Subjects: Yoga -- Incredible India -- India -- International Day of Yoga -- nation branding -- tourism; South Asia -- Periodicals; South Asia -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 954.005
• DOI: 10.1080/00856401.2023.2135847
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0085-6401

Abstract

Abstract: This essay investigates competing visibilities within a cultural practice that India has promoted as a privileged image of national identity: yoga. These competing perceptions, in which yoga can be seen as at once iconically and yet not uniquely Indian, pose a challenge for the Indian state in its management of yoga's symbolic value. Analysing rhetoric from India's nation-branding pursuits in the context of Western popular culture, I argue that the state manipulates visual regimes of yoga in ways that turn this spectre of Indian invisibility into a testament to Indian ubiquity. Invisibility as a problem is thus transformed into invisibility as a privilege, revealing how the potential fluidity across two different regimes of identity and power can render state fantasies more resilient.