Is yoga Hindu or not?

Transcript

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Is yoga Hindu or not? Answer, words have their origin in specific cultural contexts. And if we try to apply this, the applied words beyond their valid semantic scope, beyond what is their cultural context, we often create unnecessary controversies. So, for example, if we consider the point of the word yoga and the point of the word Hindu, to understand whether yoga is Hindu or not.
As far as the word Hindu is concerned, this word originated in relatively recently. None of the traditional or even the medieval texts, which are today called as Hindu texts, have that word Hindu in it. So, yes, there is a wisdom tradition, which has various processes in it, which gave birth to what we today call as the religion Hindu.
So, is yoga Hindu? Yoga has existed long before the nomenclature, the name Hindu came in. So, in that sense, yoga predates Hinduism, definitely. So, we can’t say that yoga is Hindu in that sense.
Now, going further, if we look at those texts, which modern Hinduism consider the sacred texts, certainly they are replete with usages of the word yoga. There are almost 60-70 usages of the word yoga in the Bhagavad Gita. And if we consider its variants such as yogi or yukta, there are more than 100 references to the word yoga and its variants in the Bhagavad Gita.
And then there is Patanjali Yoga Sutra. Now, all these are part of the broad tradition of wisdom that has come about in India. So, now the controversy is yoga Hindu or not comes up because many Hindus feel that the world benefits from their tradition, from their culture, from their religion, but then refuses to acknowledge its debt.
So, for example, Hinduism is portrayed as an idolatrous, casteist, discriminatory religion in the West and while the same West benefits from yoga and while benefiting from yoga, it does not acknowledge its Hindu roots. So, yoga is used, but Hinduism is still given a bad name and that way this controversy has come up in the West. So, now the point is the roots of yoga in the ancient wisdom texts from where Hinduism originated, those roots need to be acknowledged.
But while acknowledging those roots, it’s important to know that there should not be any sectarianism by which one misuses yoga as a means for political one-upsmanship or religious one-upsmanship. Thinking that our religion is so great that people all over the world are practicing our religious practices. It’s not our religion.
No religion is our religion. Actually, all religions are God’s religions. The various religions as pathways towards transcendence, towards higher spiritual realization, they are the legacy that we have got as a common human legacy.
So, this common human legacy of wisdom should not be used for doing one-upsmanship, should not be misappropriated as a tool in games of egoistic one-upsmanship. Now, in India, on the other hand, again, yoga is being minimized or trivialized or rejected as a sectarian Hindu practice. No, the benefits that yoga offers are universal and the practices that are there towards that universal benefit, practices that are there for benefiting us are also broad.
So, rather than getting caught in externals, if you focus on the point that yoga offers universal scientific benefits, that yoga can benefit everyone whichever background one is from, one can avoid such unnecessary controversies which come from a decontextualized question such as, Is yoga Hindu? Thank you.