Showing posts with label yogi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yogi. Show all posts
Thursday, 25 April 2024
Wednesday, 10 August 2022
War or peace, truth suffers
Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn
UKRAINE has published a list of some 620 academics, journalists, military veterans and politicians who it says are Russian propagandists. Three such worthies in the list are Indian, and they seem baffled by the accusation.
As ‘agents’ go, there’s probably nobody to beat Pakistan, followed by India in sheer turnover. Someone praising an Indian batsman in Pakistan could fall into the category of an Indian agent as is known to have happened with cricket enthusiasts in India cheering for a Pakistani bowler. An Indian or Pakistani critical of authoritarian rule in their countries could be portrayed as enemy agents.
UKRAINE has published a list of some 620 academics, journalists, military veterans and politicians who it says are Russian propagandists. Three such worthies in the list are Indian, and they seem baffled by the accusation.
As ‘agents’ go, there’s probably nobody to beat Pakistan, followed by India in sheer turnover. Someone praising an Indian batsman in Pakistan could fall into the category of an Indian agent as is known to have happened with cricket enthusiasts in India cheering for a Pakistani bowler. An Indian or Pakistani critical of authoritarian rule in their countries could be portrayed as enemy agents.
Rahul Gandhi has made the grade more frequently than many others. Opponents of nuclear weapons on both sides are easily saddled with the opprobrium of helping the enemy. Occasionally, campaigners for peace between the two become targets of slander. Others run the risk of annoying both sides.
The Pakistani establishment deemed Faiz Ahmed Faiz as too close to India. And now his daughters have run into trouble with the Indian visa regime.
Let’s suppose Russia were to publish a list of Ukrainian ‘agents’ in India. Quite a few, surely, including top-ranking former diplomats, would be running for cover having declared the imminent fall of Vladimir Putin either by assassination or a bloody coup.
The maxim that truth becomes a casualty in war is thus only half true. Peacetime is no longer a safe sanctuary for the ill-fated truth against being exchanged for something more expedient. Countries are creepily spying on their own unlike the old days when foreign agents were planted abroad to pry on each other.
A very determined American lover of democracy exposed the subversion of the constitution in his country whereby ordinary citizens were spied on in a Big Brotherly way. He is now parked in a Moscow hotel, some distance from those seeking to hunt him down as an enemy of the state. Such heroes are not uncommon across the world. Julian Assange and Mordechai Vanunu belong to this club.
Ukraine’s unusual move has an Indian parallel. It reminds one of framed pictures of intellectuals critical of the ultra right-wing government in Uttar Pradesh hung in public squares in Lucknow. The high court ordered the photos removed to protect the life and limb of those framed, as also their privacy.
Ukraine’s countermeasures have a history. During the war with Nazi Germany, Britain, currently advising Kyiv, had a department of propaganda, which was called that. It toggled also as the information department in its other avatars.
The ministries of information in our patch have remained a euphemism for the state’s propaganda overdrive targeting its own people mainly, come peace or war. In Ukraine, the Centre for Countering Disinformation was established in 2021 under Volodymyr Zelensky and headed by former lawyer Polina Lysenko.
According to UnHerd — the journal that carried absorbing responses from some of the alleged Russian propagandists — the disinformation department sits within the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. Its stated aim is to detect and counter “propaganda” and “destructive disinformation” and to prevent the “manipulation of public opinion”.
The July 14 list on its website names those “promoting Russian propaganda”. Several high-profile Western intellectuals and politicians were listed. Republican Senator Rand Paul, former Democrat Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, military and geopolitical analyst Edward N. Luttwak, political scientist John Mearsheimer and renowned journalist Glenn Greenwald were named. “The list does not explain what the consequences are for anyone mentioned,” the UnHerd story notes.
Next to each name the report lists the “pro-Russian” opinions the individual promotes. For example, “Luttwak’s breach was to suggest that ‘referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions’”; Mearsheimer’s folly was to say that “Nato has been in Ukraine since 2014” and that “Nato provoked Putin”. UnHerd contacted and published the comments by Luttwak, Mearsheimer and Greenwald.
From Feb 24, the very start of the war, said Luttwak, he had “relentlessly argued that not just the US, UK, Norway and others should send weapons to Ukraine, but also the reluctant trio of France, Germany and Italy”.
“What happened is this. I said that there is a victory party and the victory party is not realistic … Their idea is if Russia can be squarely defeated then Putin will fall. But this is also the moment when nuclear escalation becomes a feasibility. It is a fantasy to believe Russia can be squarely defeated. In Kyiv they have interpreted this stance as meaning I am pro-Russia.”
Mearsheimer was equally annoyed at being labelled a Russian plant. “When I was a young boy, my mother taught me that when others can’t beat your arguments with facts and logic, they smear you. That is what is going on here.
“I argue that it is clear from the available evidence that Russia invaded Ukraine because the United States and its European allies were determined to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border, which Moscow saw as an existential threat. Ukrainians of all persuasions reject my argument and instead blame Vladimir Putin, who is said to have been bent on conquering Ukraine and making it part of a greater Russia,” he told UnHerd.
“But there is no evidence in the public record to support that claim, which creates real problems for both Kyiv and the West. So how do they deal with me? The answer of course is to label me a Russian propagandist, which I am not.”
Greenwald saw a clear glimpse of McCarthyism in the Ukrainian list.
“War proponents in the West and other functionaries of Western security state agencies have used the same tactics for decades to demonise anyone questioning the foreign policy of the US and Nato. Chief among them, going back to the start of the Cold War, is accusing every dissident of spreading ‘Russian propaganda’ or otherwise serving the Kremlin. That’s all this is from the Ukrainians: just standard McCarthyite idiocy.”
The Pakistani establishment deemed Faiz Ahmed Faiz as too close to India. And now his daughters have run into trouble with the Indian visa regime.
Let’s suppose Russia were to publish a list of Ukrainian ‘agents’ in India. Quite a few, surely, including top-ranking former diplomats, would be running for cover having declared the imminent fall of Vladimir Putin either by assassination or a bloody coup.
The maxim that truth becomes a casualty in war is thus only half true. Peacetime is no longer a safe sanctuary for the ill-fated truth against being exchanged for something more expedient. Countries are creepily spying on their own unlike the old days when foreign agents were planted abroad to pry on each other.
A very determined American lover of democracy exposed the subversion of the constitution in his country whereby ordinary citizens were spied on in a Big Brotherly way. He is now parked in a Moscow hotel, some distance from those seeking to hunt him down as an enemy of the state. Such heroes are not uncommon across the world. Julian Assange and Mordechai Vanunu belong to this club.
Ukraine’s unusual move has an Indian parallel. It reminds one of framed pictures of intellectuals critical of the ultra right-wing government in Uttar Pradesh hung in public squares in Lucknow. The high court ordered the photos removed to protect the life and limb of those framed, as also their privacy.
Ukraine’s countermeasures have a history. During the war with Nazi Germany, Britain, currently advising Kyiv, had a department of propaganda, which was called that. It toggled also as the information department in its other avatars.
The ministries of information in our patch have remained a euphemism for the state’s propaganda overdrive targeting its own people mainly, come peace or war. In Ukraine, the Centre for Countering Disinformation was established in 2021 under Volodymyr Zelensky and headed by former lawyer Polina Lysenko.
According to UnHerd — the journal that carried absorbing responses from some of the alleged Russian propagandists — the disinformation department sits within the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. Its stated aim is to detect and counter “propaganda” and “destructive disinformation” and to prevent the “manipulation of public opinion”.
The July 14 list on its website names those “promoting Russian propaganda”. Several high-profile Western intellectuals and politicians were listed. Republican Senator Rand Paul, former Democrat Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, military and geopolitical analyst Edward N. Luttwak, political scientist John Mearsheimer and renowned journalist Glenn Greenwald were named. “The list does not explain what the consequences are for anyone mentioned,” the UnHerd story notes.
Next to each name the report lists the “pro-Russian” opinions the individual promotes. For example, “Luttwak’s breach was to suggest that ‘referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions’”; Mearsheimer’s folly was to say that “Nato has been in Ukraine since 2014” and that “Nato provoked Putin”. UnHerd contacted and published the comments by Luttwak, Mearsheimer and Greenwald.
From Feb 24, the very start of the war, said Luttwak, he had “relentlessly argued that not just the US, UK, Norway and others should send weapons to Ukraine, but also the reluctant trio of France, Germany and Italy”.
“What happened is this. I said that there is a victory party and the victory party is not realistic … Their idea is if Russia can be squarely defeated then Putin will fall. But this is also the moment when nuclear escalation becomes a feasibility. It is a fantasy to believe Russia can be squarely defeated. In Kyiv they have interpreted this stance as meaning I am pro-Russia.”
Mearsheimer was equally annoyed at being labelled a Russian plant. “When I was a young boy, my mother taught me that when others can’t beat your arguments with facts and logic, they smear you. That is what is going on here.
“I argue that it is clear from the available evidence that Russia invaded Ukraine because the United States and its European allies were determined to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border, which Moscow saw as an existential threat. Ukrainians of all persuasions reject my argument and instead blame Vladimir Putin, who is said to have been bent on conquering Ukraine and making it part of a greater Russia,” he told UnHerd.
“But there is no evidence in the public record to support that claim, which creates real problems for both Kyiv and the West. So how do they deal with me? The answer of course is to label me a Russian propagandist, which I am not.”
Greenwald saw a clear glimpse of McCarthyism in the Ukrainian list.
“War proponents in the West and other functionaries of Western security state agencies have used the same tactics for decades to demonise anyone questioning the foreign policy of the US and Nato. Chief among them, going back to the start of the Cold War, is accusing every dissident of spreading ‘Russian propaganda’ or otherwise serving the Kremlin. That’s all this is from the Ukrainians: just standard McCarthyite idiocy.”
Sunday, 31 July 2022
Tuesday, 8 March 2022
Despite all the punditry, the BJP's "likely" to win UP
Yogendra Yadav in The Print
I thought of Philip da as I watched the exit polls for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly election. The forecast of another term for the Bharatiya Janata Party was distressing, but it did not surprise me. The margin of the BJP’s victory projected by some – 300 plus seats and double digit lead in vote share – was and still is shocking. But I was not surprised by the broad direction and the operational conclusion of most of the exit polls. An article by Philip Oldenburg three decades ago had prepared me for such shocks.
This is not how my friends see it. Most of my friends, fellow travellers and comrades have been expecting nothing short of a rout for the BJP. For the last two months they have shared stories about how the BJP was wiped out in Western UP, seat-by-seat analysis of the decimation of the BJP in Poorvanchal and videos of how Akhilesh Yadav is drawing big crowds all over the state. I understand their sense of shock over the exit polls now. If a mediocre government with a cardboard of a leader manages to win popular approval, and that too within a year of one of the worst public health disasters followed by a powerful anti-government farmers’ movement, it should surprise anyone.
I was cured of this surprise over the last six weeks, as I travelled through Uttar Pradesh. I had heard about popular discontent against the Yogi Adityanath government. I had expected anger against its poor record on development, welfare and law-and-order. I thought people would never forget the hardship faced by migrant workers during the lockdown or at least the callousness they suffered during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. We had documented how the BJP reneged on its entire manifesto promises to the farmers of UP. I had seen the power of the farmers’ movement in the Western UP.
Yet, on the ground, I did not find an anti-incumbency mood in the state. Not because everyone was happy. I encountered a vast range of deep disappointments, complaints against the officials and political leaders and intense anxieties about their life and livelihood. But this did not translate into popular anger against the BJP government. There was a “commonsense” shared by ordinary voters, everyone except Yadavs, Jatavs and Muslims.
Capturing the ‘commonsense’
This commonsense would come out in a typical conversation in rural UP. You ask the people about their conditions, and you hear a litany of complaints (which the unsuspecting journalist mistakes for intense anti-incumbency): ‘Things are really bad. Our family income has fallen over the last two years. There is no work for the educated youth. So many of us lost the jobs we had. Children could not study during the pandemic. Many old people in our village died without any medical support. We could not sell our crops for the official (MSP) price.’ Any mention of stray cattle invites a tirade: Naak me dam kar diya hai (bane of our existence). And mehngai (price rise)? Don’t even start talking about it.
Now you expect them to blame it all on the rulers. But a question about the performance of the Adityanath government gets a surprisingly positive response: “Achhi sarkar hai, theek kaam kiya hai (It’s a decent government, has done good work).” Before you can ask, they recount two benefits. Everyone got additional foodgrain, over and above the standard quota, plus cooking oil and chana. And almost everyone, including many Samajwadi Party (SP) voters, mentions improved law and order. “Hamari behen betiyan surakshit hain (our women are safe)” is a standard refrain.
But what about all the problems they just recounted? You ask this question and they get into rationalising on the BJP’s behalf. ‘What can the government do about these things? Coronavirus was global, so was inflation. Things would have been worse but for Modiji. Is he responsible for not feeding cows once they get old?’ While every small achievement of the BJP, real or imagined, was known to every voter, the SP could not make some of the biggest pain points into election issues. I hardly met any voter who would know some of the main poll planks of Akhilesh Yadav’s party.
It would be a mistake to place this commonsense in the standard register of pro- or anti-incumbency. This is not about a routine assessment of the work done by a government. The voters seem to have made up their mind before they start reasoning. They are not judges, but advocates. They know which side of the argument they stand, who stands with them. The BJP has set up an emotional bond with a vast segment of the voters. They are willing to suspend disbelief, condone misgovernance, undergo material suffering and still stay with their ‘own’ side. They do not mention Ayodhya or Kashi temple on their own, but the Hindu-Muslim divide is very much a subtext of this shared commonsense.
What about caste? Needless to say, this commonsense does not fully cut across all castes and communities. Yet the caste arithmetic does not work to the SP’s advantage. No doubt, the Yadavs were fully mobilised behind the SP, “110 per cent” as they say in Hindi. The Muslims had virtually no choice except the SP, notwithstanding the attractive rhetoric of Asaduddin Owaisi. The SP played smart by giving fewer tickets to Yadavs and Muslims. The Muslim voters in turn played wise by keeping a low profile, though Yadav support for SP was visible and aggressive. The Yadavs and Muslims refused to share the pro-incumbent commonsense. They would pick holes in every pro-government rationalisation. Their polarisation no doubt helped the SP, but that was never going to be enough.
Illusory SP wave?
I discovered that my friends had seriously over-estimated support for the SP among non-Yadav, non-Muslim voters. The famed disaffection of the Brahmins from the Thakur rule of CM Adityanath did not translate into anything on the ground. The so-called ‘upper’ castes continue to be the strongest caste vote bank for the BJP. There was some erosion among the farming communities like Jats, Kurmis and Mauryas, but much less than my friends imagined. With a few exceptions – Nishads at certain places, for example — the lower Other Backward Classes (OBCs) stayed solidly with the BJP. Every SP supporter counted on the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)’s disaffected voters going to the SP. I found little evidence of that, except among a few Pasis. If anything, the former BSP voters and the ex-Congress supporters turned more towards the BJP than the SP.
So, was this impression of a wave in favour of Akhilesh Yadav and his party completely illusory? Not quite. There was, undoubtedly, a surge for the SP everywhere. The massive crowds for Akhilesh’s public meetings were for real. Exit polls suggest that the SP will better its best ever performance of 29 per cent in terms of votes. It needed to improve its 2017 performance by around 15 percentage points and bring the BJP down by at least 5 points to win this election. That was always a Herculean ask. While everyone noted, rightly, that the SP was gaining, not many asked the real question: how much and wide were its gains?
In a bipolar election, the threshold of victory goes up. The SP’s best was not going to be good enough. Also, the SP’s gains were not automatically the BJP’s losses. Exit polls confirm that a shift from multi-cornered contests to a two-horse race meant that while the SP has gained, the BJP has managed to retain or better its vote share. While those who shifted away from the BJP were visible and voluble, those who stayed with or shifted towards the BJP remained silent. The India Today-Axis My India exit poll reports a massive advantage to the BJP among women voters. Most observers, including this writer, missed this major factor.
Talk to voters
While I continue to believe and hope that the race is closer than predicted by the exit polls, I have one piece of advice for my friends. If the BJP wins this election, please don’t jump to conclusions about poll rigging. Not that the BJP is above such manipulation or that the Election Commission is in any position to withstand it. But in this instance, it is not about EVM rigging; it is about rigging the screen of our TV and smartphones. It is not booth capturing, but mindscape capturing, an effective capture of the moral and political commonsense.
This brings me to Philip Oldenburg, or Philip da as I call him, one of the most insightful though less celebrated scholars of Indian politics. In 1988 he wrote an article why most ‘political pundits’ and political activists failed to anticipate the Congress wave in the 1984 Lok Sabha election. His argument is very simple: a triad of political leaders, journalists and local informants keep speaking to one another about election trends and manufacture a consensus about the likely electoral outcome. The problem is that none of them deigns to speak to ordinary voters. This is what pollsters do and that is why they tend to get it right.
As I travelled through Uttar Pradesh across the last few weeks, this lesson came back to me again and again. I wish my friends would stop speaking to one another, stop listening to media noise and simply go out to speak to ordinary citizens. Our political challenge is to connect to and intervene into the shared moral and political commonsense of the voters. It is not too late to learn this lesson. We are still two years from 2024.
I thought of Philip da as I watched the exit polls for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly election. The forecast of another term for the Bharatiya Janata Party was distressing, but it did not surprise me. The margin of the BJP’s victory projected by some – 300 plus seats and double digit lead in vote share – was and still is shocking. But I was not surprised by the broad direction and the operational conclusion of most of the exit polls. An article by Philip Oldenburg three decades ago had prepared me for such shocks.
This is not how my friends see it. Most of my friends, fellow travellers and comrades have been expecting nothing short of a rout for the BJP. For the last two months they have shared stories about how the BJP was wiped out in Western UP, seat-by-seat analysis of the decimation of the BJP in Poorvanchal and videos of how Akhilesh Yadav is drawing big crowds all over the state. I understand their sense of shock over the exit polls now. If a mediocre government with a cardboard of a leader manages to win popular approval, and that too within a year of one of the worst public health disasters followed by a powerful anti-government farmers’ movement, it should surprise anyone.
I was cured of this surprise over the last six weeks, as I travelled through Uttar Pradesh. I had heard about popular discontent against the Yogi Adityanath government. I had expected anger against its poor record on development, welfare and law-and-order. I thought people would never forget the hardship faced by migrant workers during the lockdown or at least the callousness they suffered during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. We had documented how the BJP reneged on its entire manifesto promises to the farmers of UP. I had seen the power of the farmers’ movement in the Western UP.
Yet, on the ground, I did not find an anti-incumbency mood in the state. Not because everyone was happy. I encountered a vast range of deep disappointments, complaints against the officials and political leaders and intense anxieties about their life and livelihood. But this did not translate into popular anger against the BJP government. There was a “commonsense” shared by ordinary voters, everyone except Yadavs, Jatavs and Muslims.
Capturing the ‘commonsense’
This commonsense would come out in a typical conversation in rural UP. You ask the people about their conditions, and you hear a litany of complaints (which the unsuspecting journalist mistakes for intense anti-incumbency): ‘Things are really bad. Our family income has fallen over the last two years. There is no work for the educated youth. So many of us lost the jobs we had. Children could not study during the pandemic. Many old people in our village died without any medical support. We could not sell our crops for the official (MSP) price.’ Any mention of stray cattle invites a tirade: Naak me dam kar diya hai (bane of our existence). And mehngai (price rise)? Don’t even start talking about it.
Now you expect them to blame it all on the rulers. But a question about the performance of the Adityanath government gets a surprisingly positive response: “Achhi sarkar hai, theek kaam kiya hai (It’s a decent government, has done good work).” Before you can ask, they recount two benefits. Everyone got additional foodgrain, over and above the standard quota, plus cooking oil and chana. And almost everyone, including many Samajwadi Party (SP) voters, mentions improved law and order. “Hamari behen betiyan surakshit hain (our women are safe)” is a standard refrain.
But what about all the problems they just recounted? You ask this question and they get into rationalising on the BJP’s behalf. ‘What can the government do about these things? Coronavirus was global, so was inflation. Things would have been worse but for Modiji. Is he responsible for not feeding cows once they get old?’ While every small achievement of the BJP, real or imagined, was known to every voter, the SP could not make some of the biggest pain points into election issues. I hardly met any voter who would know some of the main poll planks of Akhilesh Yadav’s party.
It would be a mistake to place this commonsense in the standard register of pro- or anti-incumbency. This is not about a routine assessment of the work done by a government. The voters seem to have made up their mind before they start reasoning. They are not judges, but advocates. They know which side of the argument they stand, who stands with them. The BJP has set up an emotional bond with a vast segment of the voters. They are willing to suspend disbelief, condone misgovernance, undergo material suffering and still stay with their ‘own’ side. They do not mention Ayodhya or Kashi temple on their own, but the Hindu-Muslim divide is very much a subtext of this shared commonsense.
What about caste? Needless to say, this commonsense does not fully cut across all castes and communities. Yet the caste arithmetic does not work to the SP’s advantage. No doubt, the Yadavs were fully mobilised behind the SP, “110 per cent” as they say in Hindi. The Muslims had virtually no choice except the SP, notwithstanding the attractive rhetoric of Asaduddin Owaisi. The SP played smart by giving fewer tickets to Yadavs and Muslims. The Muslim voters in turn played wise by keeping a low profile, though Yadav support for SP was visible and aggressive. The Yadavs and Muslims refused to share the pro-incumbent commonsense. They would pick holes in every pro-government rationalisation. Their polarisation no doubt helped the SP, but that was never going to be enough.
Illusory SP wave?
I discovered that my friends had seriously over-estimated support for the SP among non-Yadav, non-Muslim voters. The famed disaffection of the Brahmins from the Thakur rule of CM Adityanath did not translate into anything on the ground. The so-called ‘upper’ castes continue to be the strongest caste vote bank for the BJP. There was some erosion among the farming communities like Jats, Kurmis and Mauryas, but much less than my friends imagined. With a few exceptions – Nishads at certain places, for example — the lower Other Backward Classes (OBCs) stayed solidly with the BJP. Every SP supporter counted on the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)’s disaffected voters going to the SP. I found little evidence of that, except among a few Pasis. If anything, the former BSP voters and the ex-Congress supporters turned more towards the BJP than the SP.
So, was this impression of a wave in favour of Akhilesh Yadav and his party completely illusory? Not quite. There was, undoubtedly, a surge for the SP everywhere. The massive crowds for Akhilesh’s public meetings were for real. Exit polls suggest that the SP will better its best ever performance of 29 per cent in terms of votes. It needed to improve its 2017 performance by around 15 percentage points and bring the BJP down by at least 5 points to win this election. That was always a Herculean ask. While everyone noted, rightly, that the SP was gaining, not many asked the real question: how much and wide were its gains?
In a bipolar election, the threshold of victory goes up. The SP’s best was not going to be good enough. Also, the SP’s gains were not automatically the BJP’s losses. Exit polls confirm that a shift from multi-cornered contests to a two-horse race meant that while the SP has gained, the BJP has managed to retain or better its vote share. While those who shifted away from the BJP were visible and voluble, those who stayed with or shifted towards the BJP remained silent. The India Today-Axis My India exit poll reports a massive advantage to the BJP among women voters. Most observers, including this writer, missed this major factor.
Talk to voters
While I continue to believe and hope that the race is closer than predicted by the exit polls, I have one piece of advice for my friends. If the BJP wins this election, please don’t jump to conclusions about poll rigging. Not that the BJP is above such manipulation or that the Election Commission is in any position to withstand it. But in this instance, it is not about EVM rigging; it is about rigging the screen of our TV and smartphones. It is not booth capturing, but mindscape capturing, an effective capture of the moral and political commonsense.
This brings me to Philip Oldenburg, or Philip da as I call him, one of the most insightful though less celebrated scholars of Indian politics. In 1988 he wrote an article why most ‘political pundits’ and political activists failed to anticipate the Congress wave in the 1984 Lok Sabha election. His argument is very simple: a triad of political leaders, journalists and local informants keep speaking to one another about election trends and manufacture a consensus about the likely electoral outcome. The problem is that none of them deigns to speak to ordinary voters. This is what pollsters do and that is why they tend to get it right.
As I travelled through Uttar Pradesh across the last few weeks, this lesson came back to me again and again. I wish my friends would stop speaking to one another, stop listening to media noise and simply go out to speak to ordinary citizens. Our political challenge is to connect to and intervene into the shared moral and political commonsense of the voters. It is not too late to learn this lesson. We are still two years from 2024.
Thursday, 17 February 2022
BJP Will Be Defeated in UP, Samajwadi & Allies Will Get Clear Majority: Former Delhi LG Najeeb Jung:
The BJP’s ‘2ab’ factor that’s missing from SP, BSP, Congress in UP elections
Dilip Mandal in The Print
The Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, and the Congress in Uttar Pradesh are mostly banking on the anti-incumbency factor to dislodge the Yogi Adityanath government. But is it enough? Discontent is only one part of the electoral matrix and who the voters choose also depends on what they are offering.
Here, I see a lack in the opposition parties. I call this deficit the extra ‘2ab’ factor. In his 2015 speech in Toronto, Canada, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that while India and Canada growing separately would be a² + b², when joined together they would be (a+b)², which is equal to a² +b²+2ab, with the ‘friendship’ giving an extra ‘2ab’.
I would like to extrapolate from this formula and say that if ‘a’ and ‘b’ are the general, run-of-the-mill-type poll promises, then all four political parties— BJP, SP, BSP and Congress—have made more or less similar announcements. If we check their manifestos/pledges/speeches and social media posts, we can easily observe identical poll promises like improving law and order, women empowerment, development, capacity enhancement in the education sector, creating employment and so on. As all the four political parties have ruled the state of UP and that too for a considerably long spell, everyone knows that no party is going to do miracles.
The ‘2ab’ factor is missing in the campaigning of opposition parties, if we use Modi’s maths.
Policing, development, increasing capacity in education and hospital beds are matters of governance and all parties deliver something in such areas. Take the example of expressways. Mayawati and the BSP can claim that the Yamuna Expressway was made during their tenure. The SP government led by Akhilesh Yadav can claim the Ganga Expressway, whereas the BJP made the Purvanchal Expressway. Similarly, all parties are claiming that their performance was better than others in the field of law and order. Most of these claims are contested by rival parties, and voters have to depend on the pitch and tone of the claims to reach some conclusion. This is the limitation of a² and b².
So what about the extra ‘2ab’?
Also read: Samajwadi Party promises social justice, but look who got tickets in 2022. Not enough Muslims
Extra ‘2ab’ that BJP offers
I call ‘2ab’ the emotive factor. If a politician ignores voters’ emotions then they are taking a big risk. Most people make decisions or form opinions on the basis of emotions. That is the reason that many despots, despite performing quite badly on all economic and human development fronts, win electoral battles.
Donald Trump won in the US in 2016 not because he was promising anything great for jobs and growth, but because he vowed to make (white) America great again. Narendra Modi wins not because people believe that he will make India a $5-trillion economy, create two crore jobs every year, ensure that by 2022 every Indian lives in a pucca house and bring back black money from Swiss banks. His voters never ask for accountability on these counts. He wins because he connects to the emotions of a majority of Indians — Modi came back in 2019 without having delivered on his economic and human development promises.
In the UP elections, the BJP made promises about the economy, job creation, agriculture growth, health, education and so on. This is its general a² and b². But it has something extra, the ‘2ab’ factor. That consists of things which Yogi Adityanath and Narendra Modi are talking about or hinting at. For example:
– We will not allow Yadav Raj to return.
– We are making a grand temple at Ayodhya. We have transformed Kashi. We will also deliver the promises on Mathura.
– Prominent Muslim leaders are in jail. In some cases, their properties have been confiscated. They will not be allowed to grow again.
– We will ensure that cows and other Hindu religious symbols are protected.
– We will not allow ‘Love Jihad’ to happen. Your girls are protected from Muslim boys.
– We will not allow Muslims to turn India into Ghazwa-e-Hind.
– We will work for Hindus. But more importantly, we will not work for Muslims.
This does not mean that BJP is not campaigning on the basis of development and welfare schemes. The short list above only demonstrates that it is promising something extra.
Also read: ‘Time to vote for Ram’: BJP plays Hindutva card in Ayodhya as it fights anti-incumbency
UP is not great again
The problem with the SP, BSP and Congress is that they do not have the ‘2ab’. In the battle of emotions, they do not have substantial offerings. They have failed to provide a counter-narrative to the communal emotive campaign of the BJP. The opposition parties are mostly talking about governance and trying to invoke memories of a time when they were ruling UP and trying to compare it to Yogi’s tenure. The SP, BSP and Congress are hoping that voters will go down memory lane to remember how things were 5, 10, or 30 years back, respectively.
SP has that extra bit in terms of assurance to the Muslims that they will be safe. But the Muslim vote is not enough to win many seats. The BSP used to have its own mojo — it would usher in Bahujan Rule. But now it is going soft on this plank due to electoral arithmetic. Despite that, the promise that a Dalit will rule UP again will certainly fetch it votes.
UP is still largely an underdeveloped, agrarian economy with hardly any big ticket foreign investment or big industrial projects. It lies at the bottom of state rankings in terms of health, education and women empowerment. Uttar Pradesh’s per capita GDP is comparable to the most underdeveloped countries such as Vanuatu and Benin. The only solace is that its numbers are still higher than Bihar. No party can claim that it has made UP great.
So, in the last five years, the BJP has delivered on emotional factors and promises instead. And in the end, the electoral outcome will probably depend on that emotive ‘2ab’.
Tuesday, 15 February 2022
Incredible story of how a faceless yogi ‘conned’ NSE CEO, got 9x salary, 3-day week, promotions
Shubham Batra in The Print
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New Delhi: The chief executive of a top stock exchange which handles 49 crore transactions per day — worth a daily average turnover of Rs 64,000 crore — seeks the “guidance” of a faceless yogi to better perform her job. All over email without having ever met him.
This ‘yogi’ also gets a little-known employee of a public sector company hired as the chief strategy officer (CSO) of the stock exchange, a position that didn’t exist earlier, at an annual salary package of Rs 1.38 crore, more than nine times his previous package of Rs 15 lakh.
The ‘yogi’ gets the CEO to promote the CSO year after year to make him the group operating officer (GOO), even exempt him from the five-day work-week, allow him to come in only for three days and work the rest of the time at will.
That’s not all.
The CEO shares sensitive business information related to the stock exchange’s financial projections for five years, dividend pay-out ratio, business plans, agenda of board meeting and consultations over the ratings/performance appraisals of employees.
Eventually, a probe by the stock exchange which consulted “practitioners of human psychology” strongly suspects the CSO was himself the faceless ‘yogi’ and had created that fake identity to con the CEO and benefit from it.
It’s a shockingly bizarre ‘con job’ and even funny at one level, if it was the plot of a movie or a TV series.
Except this is no fiction, and is alleged to have happened for real at the National Stock Exchange, India’s top share exchange whose stated aim is to “catalyse India’s growth story by creating investment opportunities, enabling access and empowering our stakeholders”.
The CEO in question is Chitra Ramakrishna and the CSO she hired and then promoted is Anand Subramanian — who is also alleged to have doubled up as the ‘yogi’. Between 2013 and 2016, when Ramakrishna was NSE chief, she took business decisions on the advice of this ‘yogi’ and shared sensitive and confidential information about business matters with him.
The revelations came as part of a six-year probe that markets regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) undertook on complaints over misgovernance and wrongdoings at the NSE. In an order Friday, the regulator fined Ramakrishna and Subramanian Rs 3 crore and Rs 2 crore, respectively.
While SEBI maintained that allegations of Subramanian being the ‘yogi’ himself aren’t sustainable, the regulator in its order said the ex-GOO is surely an accomplice in the wrongdoings at the exchange.
In her submissions to SEBI on whether sharing such information is against the principles of governance, Ramakrishna said: “As we know, senior leaders often seek informal counsel from coaches, mentors or other seniors in this industry which are all purely informal in nature. In a similar strain, I felt that this guidance would help me perform my role better.”
Also read: LIC IPO is a delicate business & raises troubling questions
What happened at NSE
According to the 190-page SEBI order issued Friday, NSE CEO and MD Chitra Ramakrishna hired Anand Subramanian as the bourse’s CSO in 2013 at a remuneration package of Rs 1.38 crore, over nine times his previous compensation of Rs 15 lakh at state-owned Balmer Lawrie.
The position of a CSO didn’t even exist before Subramanian’s appointment, but he didn’t have the required qualifications for such a position.
Over a period of three years, Ramakrishna kept on promoting him, eventually making him GOO. She even exempted him from working five days a week and instead asked to come only for three days and be allowed to work the rest of the time at will.
All of these decisions were made on the instructions of a faceless ‘yogi’, who goes by the name ‘Siddha Purusha’, according to Ramakrishna’s submissions.
She said the ‘yogi’ doesn’t possess a physical persona and can materialise at will, adding that he is a spiritual force that dwells in the Himalayas. She sent emails to an ID, rigyajursama@outlook.com, sharing sensitive and confidential information about NSE, the SEBI order showed.
While she was going about making such decisions, between 2013 and 2016, several complaints were made with SEBI to allege governance issues in the appointment of Subramanian, who was also advisor to Ramakrishna.
The SEBI then began a probe, seeking evidence and depositions from the key characters, including Ramakrishna.
Also read: 5 years, 28 banks, Rs 23,000 cr debt — how ABG Shipyard pulled off ‘India’s biggest bank fraud’
Subramanian was ‘yogi’, claims NSE
In a 2018 letter to SEBI, the NSE submitted that “its legal advisers had consulted practitioners of human psychology and according to the opinion of these practitioners, Ramakrishna has been exploited by Subramanian by creating another identity in the form of Rigyajursama to guide her to perform her duties according to his wish”.
“Ramakrishna was manipulated by the same man in the form of different identities; one as Subramanian who enjoyed her trust and other as Rigyajursama who had her devotion and dependence,” it had added.
The NSE claimed that the email ID named above, in fact, belonged to Subramanian. The claim was based on the fact that Subramanian also knew this ‘unknown person’ for 22 years. Moreover, he was party to all the email interactions between the CEO and the ‘yogi’.
The SEBI order attached several emails in its order, including one in which the ‘yogi’ instructed Ramakrishna to exempt Subramanian from five-day weeks.
Another email instructed Ramakrishna: “SOM, if I had the opportunity to be a person on Earth then Kanchan is the perfect fit. Ashirvadhams.”
Ramakrishna responded: “SIRONMANI, struggle is I have always seen THEE through G, and challenged myself to on my own realise the difference.”
‘SOM’ refers to Ramakrishna, and ‘Kanchan’ and ‘G’ to Subramanian, the regulator said in its order.
According to the order: “Ramakrishna in the emails sent to the unknown person shared information pertaining to NSE’s financial projections for five years, dividend pay-out ratio, business plans, agenda of NSE’s board meeting and consultations over the ratings/performance appraisals of NSE employees.”
Some of the other emails under investigation revealed that the unknown ‘yogi’ had been interacting with Ramakrishna regularly even on operational issues regarding senior NSE employees.
NSE’s other troubles
This isn’t the first time that NSE has been accused of lapses in corporate governance.
In 2017, when the exchange wanted to launch an initial public offering, allegations surfaced that its officials had provided some high-frequency traders unfair access through colocation servers, which could speed up algorithmic trading, giving unfair advantage to these traders over others.
Anand Narayan, who specialises in securities laws and works as an in-house counsel at a major private firm, told ThePrint that “SEBI’s order against NSE and its senior officials shows massive misgovernance issues in one of India’s leading stock exchanges”.
“NSE may like to challenge the order before Securities Appellate Tribunal. However, SEBI has yet again shown its firm intention to protect the interest of investors by acting against NSE,” Narayan said.
Wednesday, 29 September 2021
Sunday, 17 September 2017
The yoga industry is booming – but does it make you a better person?
Brigid Delaney in The Guardian
It was 2010 and the newspaper I worked for in Sydney commissioned me to interview yoga entrepreneur Bikram Choudhury.
He was in town to open the first of a chain of hot yoga studios. Choudhury’s brand of yoga – which he had trademarked and franchised – involved 26 poses in a humid, heated room with mirrors and carpets. When I visited the studio and caught the stench and the robotic instructions from a mic’d-up teacher, I thought: Yeah, this won’t take off.
I had been doing yoga for a decade by the time I met Choudhury. Once or twice a week, I’d go to nice, easy hatha classes, wearing whatever old tracksuit was to hand – just like everyone else in the room. Yet my progress was slow; I had never managed to get beyond beginners’ level. I was always at the back of the class, struggling to get my arm behind my calf to touch my other hand. I just assumed that this pace was my natural limit.
'He said he could do what he wanted': the scandal that rocked Bikram yoga
In his suite with harbour views, Choudhury told me about all the famous people who did his yoga – people such as Madonna and Jennifer Aniston. Then he looked me up and down.
“You,” he said. “You need to do some Bikram. You are overweight.”
“What? Huh?” I said, shocked at this breach in interview etiquette.
“Do my yoga,” he said, indicating a pair of lithe Bikram yoga instructors seated at his feet, “and you could look like them.”
For years after meeting him, I would walk past the fogged-up, vile-smelling Bikram yoga studios and think: screw you, Bikram.
But part of me also wondered if he had a point – could you completely change your body shape by doing his yoga? Should this even be an aspiration when you do yoga?
FacebookTwitterPinterest Yoga has morphed into a physical and spiritual ideal to which you aspire. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
Choudhury is now in the sin bin. In 2016, he lost a lawsuit in which a former employee had claimed sexual harassment and wrongful termination – and he was ordered to pay $7m in damages.
But yoga – hot, cold – and all sorts of novelty yoga (including nude yoga, beer yoga and goat yoga) is booming. In the past decade, it has morphed from being an exercise you might do once a week at your local gym to a lifestyle – and a physical and spiritual ideal to which you aspire.
According to a 2016 Yoga Journal report, 36.7 million people practise yoga in the US, up from 20.4 million in 2012. The yoga market is now worth $16bn (£12bn) in the US and $80bn (£74bn) globally. In the UK, “yoga” was one of Google’s most searched-for words in 2016, while the yoga and pilates business brings in £812m a year, and rising.
People are packed into classes, which cost north of £10 a pop, yoga teacher training costs thousands (fees start at around £1,500 and can go to £5,000) and yoga retreats are pricey.
It is not just the studios. Take a look at the market for yoga mats. According to market research company Technavio, the US yoga and exercise mat business is expected to climb from $11bn (£8bn) now to $14bn (£10bn) in 2020. Sales of athleisure clothing, generated $35bn (£25bn) in 2015 – an all-time high – making up 17% of the entire US clothing market, according to market research firm NPD Group. Yoga pants by Lorna Jane cost $110, while GQ magazine has described Lululemon’s yoga pants as a cult obsession among “a certain set of gym-minded women and busy moms across the country”. You can even buy Lululemon prayer beads for $108 (£80).
In my local area of Sydney, upmarket yogis have colonised the high street. Most people I see walking around the city’s Bondi suburb have stopped wearing proper clothes. Unless you are around the bus stops in time for the morning commute, people dress almost exclusively in exercise gear – yoga pants, vest top and hoodie, flip flops in the summer, trainers in winter. They loiter in the aisles of the organic fruit and vegetable shop, their yoga mats hitting me in the face when they turn around. They zip around the narrow streets by the beach on mopeds or bicycles and, after class, gather around the large communal tables of cafes, sipping $10 juice in mason jars or almond milk chai.
FacebookTwitterPinterest ‘After class they gather around sipping $10 juice.’ Photograph: Alamy
Secretly I wanted to be them. But it was more than just a look. Every yoga class I tried out in Bondi had a semi-spiritual element that I found enticing. At the start of class, the teacher might read some Sanskrit verse, or play sitar music while reading from a spiritual book – such as Eckhart Tolle. In increasingly non-religious countries such as the UK and Australia, this is where a lot of young people receive their moral or spiritual teachings.
In many respects, yoga is the perfect pastime for our age – the meditative elements give us the opportunity to find peace and stillness in a time of increasingly hectic and crowded information, the instructional bits give us moral lessons in the absence of traditional religion, while the stretchy, bendy, sweaty physical stuff is a great way of countering eight or more hours a day spent hunched over a computer. But is any of this yoga making us more enlightened or more compassionate? Or is it just another wellness industry trend that only the rich and idle can afford to properly indulge in?
One day last year, after my usual weekly class in a studio full of part-time models, I came across a flyer. It promised that in six weeks I could become a “modern yogi”. All I had to do was to attend classes six times a week, meditate daily, keep a journal and take part in weekly meetings that are part tutorial on mindfulness and part group therapy. The programme promised that “an exciting transformation will occur”. Could I become one of those people I saw walking around Bondi – yoga mat strapped to my back, my Instagram feed full of downward dogs on the cliffs, with a Pacific Ocean sunset in the background?
I started the $600 programme, stuck with it and found things started to shift. After doing yoga and meditation every day for six weeks, my body felt looser, more pliable. Getting up during cold winter mornings and bending down to pick a sock up off the floor became a lot easier. Physically it was tough, and it took a month to really get my fitness level moving, but gradually I was able to keep up with the more athletic Vinyasa classes. At the end of 90 minutes, I would be covered in sweat and felt a curious mix of exhausted and blank. The repetitive sequences became a routine that I did robotically, without thinking. I was bored in class, but I also turned off my mind and the classes themselves became like a moving meditation.
As for the spiritual aspect, occasionally the weird speeches the yoga instructors gave hit home. On Friday in my first week, in a move that shocked just about everyone, Britain voted to leave the European Union. The teacher, an Irishman, referenced Brexit in his sermon about 45 minutes into the class. “You might not like change. You may resist change,” he said, walking around the heated room. “You may not agree with it. You may think the change is a bad thing. A very bad thing. But change has happened. It has happened and you can’t do anything about it. To resist it is pointless.” His voice was heavy, sorrowful, and he sighed. “It is what it is.”
There was a feeling in the class that we needed to hear things like this – but afterwards, I thought: Is this going to be the extent of our resistance and our protest against political situations that we don’t like? We stretch and get a sermon, go and have a juice – and that’s it?
FacebookTwitterPinterest ‘Occasionally the weird spiritual speeches the yoga instructors gave hit home.’ Photograph: Getty Images/Topic Images
I started thinking a lot about yoga and so many activities that are part of the wellness industry, and how so many people pour energy into their bodies when perhaps they should be trying to pour energy into the people and politics around them. Self care is great – but what if there’s no energy left to care about anyone else?
In the New York Times, American writer Judith Warner noted a disturbing social trend. Just as the women of the mid-70s took flight into consciousness-raising groups, the workforce, divorce and casual sex, their daughters are also taking flight, but that flight is inwards. “They’re fleeing to yoga,” she writes in the Times, “imitating flight in the downward-gazing contortion called the crow position. They’re striving, through exquisite new adventures in internal fine-tuning, to feel more deeply, live more meaningfully, better inhabit each and every moment of each and every day.”
Warner glumly, but correctly, concluded: “There is no sense that personal liberation is to be found by taking a more active role in the public world.” In fact, “such interiority seems to be a way to manage an unbearable sort of existential anxiety: a way to narrow the scope of life’s challenges and demands … to the more manageable range of the in-and-out of your own breath.”
The more yoga I did, the more compliments I received. My hair was shiny – people commented – and my skin glowed, my clothes were looser, and, like so many others, I began wearing athleisure gear to work. After all, work was just a pit stop on the way to another yoga class. Maybe Choudhury was right after all – maybe I could look different if I did a lot of yoga.
I wrote in my journal, I went to the Monday-night tutorials, I meditated, I drank cold-press juices, I did all the right things to become a modern yogi. I was on the way to achieving the ideal of the glowy person in the organic shop. I was almost there before I started wondering – is this really what I wanted to be?
The answer was, of course, no. I was a yogi for about two months before the narcissism of the whole enterprise got to me. There were other things, it turned out, that I had to do.
It was 2010 and the newspaper I worked for in Sydney commissioned me to interview yoga entrepreneur Bikram Choudhury.
He was in town to open the first of a chain of hot yoga studios. Choudhury’s brand of yoga – which he had trademarked and franchised – involved 26 poses in a humid, heated room with mirrors and carpets. When I visited the studio and caught the stench and the robotic instructions from a mic’d-up teacher, I thought: Yeah, this won’t take off.
I had been doing yoga for a decade by the time I met Choudhury. Once or twice a week, I’d go to nice, easy hatha classes, wearing whatever old tracksuit was to hand – just like everyone else in the room. Yet my progress was slow; I had never managed to get beyond beginners’ level. I was always at the back of the class, struggling to get my arm behind my calf to touch my other hand. I just assumed that this pace was my natural limit.
'He said he could do what he wanted': the scandal that rocked Bikram yoga
In his suite with harbour views, Choudhury told me about all the famous people who did his yoga – people such as Madonna and Jennifer Aniston. Then he looked me up and down.
“You,” he said. “You need to do some Bikram. You are overweight.”
“What? Huh?” I said, shocked at this breach in interview etiquette.
“Do my yoga,” he said, indicating a pair of lithe Bikram yoga instructors seated at his feet, “and you could look like them.”
For years after meeting him, I would walk past the fogged-up, vile-smelling Bikram yoga studios and think: screw you, Bikram.
But part of me also wondered if he had a point – could you completely change your body shape by doing his yoga? Should this even be an aspiration when you do yoga?
FacebookTwitterPinterest Yoga has morphed into a physical and spiritual ideal to which you aspire. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo
Choudhury is now in the sin bin. In 2016, he lost a lawsuit in which a former employee had claimed sexual harassment and wrongful termination – and he was ordered to pay $7m in damages.
But yoga – hot, cold – and all sorts of novelty yoga (including nude yoga, beer yoga and goat yoga) is booming. In the past decade, it has morphed from being an exercise you might do once a week at your local gym to a lifestyle – and a physical and spiritual ideal to which you aspire.
According to a 2016 Yoga Journal report, 36.7 million people practise yoga in the US, up from 20.4 million in 2012. The yoga market is now worth $16bn (£12bn) in the US and $80bn (£74bn) globally. In the UK, “yoga” was one of Google’s most searched-for words in 2016, while the yoga and pilates business brings in £812m a year, and rising.
People are packed into classes, which cost north of £10 a pop, yoga teacher training costs thousands (fees start at around £1,500 and can go to £5,000) and yoga retreats are pricey.
It is not just the studios. Take a look at the market for yoga mats. According to market research company Technavio, the US yoga and exercise mat business is expected to climb from $11bn (£8bn) now to $14bn (£10bn) in 2020. Sales of athleisure clothing, generated $35bn (£25bn) in 2015 – an all-time high – making up 17% of the entire US clothing market, according to market research firm NPD Group. Yoga pants by Lorna Jane cost $110, while GQ magazine has described Lululemon’s yoga pants as a cult obsession among “a certain set of gym-minded women and busy moms across the country”. You can even buy Lululemon prayer beads for $108 (£80).
In my local area of Sydney, upmarket yogis have colonised the high street. Most people I see walking around the city’s Bondi suburb have stopped wearing proper clothes. Unless you are around the bus stops in time for the morning commute, people dress almost exclusively in exercise gear – yoga pants, vest top and hoodie, flip flops in the summer, trainers in winter. They loiter in the aisles of the organic fruit and vegetable shop, their yoga mats hitting me in the face when they turn around. They zip around the narrow streets by the beach on mopeds or bicycles and, after class, gather around the large communal tables of cafes, sipping $10 juice in mason jars or almond milk chai.
FacebookTwitterPinterest ‘After class they gather around sipping $10 juice.’ Photograph: Alamy
Secretly I wanted to be them. But it was more than just a look. Every yoga class I tried out in Bondi had a semi-spiritual element that I found enticing. At the start of class, the teacher might read some Sanskrit verse, or play sitar music while reading from a spiritual book – such as Eckhart Tolle. In increasingly non-religious countries such as the UK and Australia, this is where a lot of young people receive their moral or spiritual teachings.
In many respects, yoga is the perfect pastime for our age – the meditative elements give us the opportunity to find peace and stillness in a time of increasingly hectic and crowded information, the instructional bits give us moral lessons in the absence of traditional religion, while the stretchy, bendy, sweaty physical stuff is a great way of countering eight or more hours a day spent hunched over a computer. But is any of this yoga making us more enlightened or more compassionate? Or is it just another wellness industry trend that only the rich and idle can afford to properly indulge in?
One day last year, after my usual weekly class in a studio full of part-time models, I came across a flyer. It promised that in six weeks I could become a “modern yogi”. All I had to do was to attend classes six times a week, meditate daily, keep a journal and take part in weekly meetings that are part tutorial on mindfulness and part group therapy. The programme promised that “an exciting transformation will occur”. Could I become one of those people I saw walking around Bondi – yoga mat strapped to my back, my Instagram feed full of downward dogs on the cliffs, with a Pacific Ocean sunset in the background?
I started the $600 programme, stuck with it and found things started to shift. After doing yoga and meditation every day for six weeks, my body felt looser, more pliable. Getting up during cold winter mornings and bending down to pick a sock up off the floor became a lot easier. Physically it was tough, and it took a month to really get my fitness level moving, but gradually I was able to keep up with the more athletic Vinyasa classes. At the end of 90 minutes, I would be covered in sweat and felt a curious mix of exhausted and blank. The repetitive sequences became a routine that I did robotically, without thinking. I was bored in class, but I also turned off my mind and the classes themselves became like a moving meditation.
As for the spiritual aspect, occasionally the weird speeches the yoga instructors gave hit home. On Friday in my first week, in a move that shocked just about everyone, Britain voted to leave the European Union. The teacher, an Irishman, referenced Brexit in his sermon about 45 minutes into the class. “You might not like change. You may resist change,” he said, walking around the heated room. “You may not agree with it. You may think the change is a bad thing. A very bad thing. But change has happened. It has happened and you can’t do anything about it. To resist it is pointless.” His voice was heavy, sorrowful, and he sighed. “It is what it is.”
There was a feeling in the class that we needed to hear things like this – but afterwards, I thought: Is this going to be the extent of our resistance and our protest against political situations that we don’t like? We stretch and get a sermon, go and have a juice – and that’s it?
FacebookTwitterPinterest ‘Occasionally the weird spiritual speeches the yoga instructors gave hit home.’ Photograph: Getty Images/Topic Images
I started thinking a lot about yoga and so many activities that are part of the wellness industry, and how so many people pour energy into their bodies when perhaps they should be trying to pour energy into the people and politics around them. Self care is great – but what if there’s no energy left to care about anyone else?
In the New York Times, American writer Judith Warner noted a disturbing social trend. Just as the women of the mid-70s took flight into consciousness-raising groups, the workforce, divorce and casual sex, their daughters are also taking flight, but that flight is inwards. “They’re fleeing to yoga,” she writes in the Times, “imitating flight in the downward-gazing contortion called the crow position. They’re striving, through exquisite new adventures in internal fine-tuning, to feel more deeply, live more meaningfully, better inhabit each and every moment of each and every day.”
Warner glumly, but correctly, concluded: “There is no sense that personal liberation is to be found by taking a more active role in the public world.” In fact, “such interiority seems to be a way to manage an unbearable sort of existential anxiety: a way to narrow the scope of life’s challenges and demands … to the more manageable range of the in-and-out of your own breath.”
The more yoga I did, the more compliments I received. My hair was shiny – people commented – and my skin glowed, my clothes were looser, and, like so many others, I began wearing athleisure gear to work. After all, work was just a pit stop on the way to another yoga class. Maybe Choudhury was right after all – maybe I could look different if I did a lot of yoga.
I wrote in my journal, I went to the Monday-night tutorials, I meditated, I drank cold-press juices, I did all the right things to become a modern yogi. I was on the way to achieving the ideal of the glowy person in the organic shop. I was almost there before I started wondering – is this really what I wanted to be?
The answer was, of course, no. I was a yogi for about two months before the narcissism of the whole enterprise got to me. There were other things, it turned out, that I had to do.
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