Fascist Yoga: How the West twisted yoga's spirit of peace and wellbeing

How yoga has been appropriated, packaged and sold in the West by people whose political views are divorced from its spirit of peace and wellbeing

Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists and the New Order in Wellness

By Stewart Home

Published by Navayana

499 pages  ₹224

 

London-based poet, novelist, pamphleteer, and activist Stewart Home, who makes “headstand paintings with the canvas placed above him and brushes held in his toes”, wants to “discourage those thinking of taking up modern postural practice for health reasons from doing so”. 

This mission, articulated in the concluding chapter of his book Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists and the New Order in Wellness, is an unusual entry point into yoga because it is not geared towards boosting productivity, losing weight, or finding a work-life balance. 

Instead of trying to sell yoga as an ancient one-stop solution to modern woes, he urges the reader to be sceptical of what is on offer. He writes, “I can’t and wouldn’t want to prohibit modern yoga. Nevertheless, if someone wishes to pursue a back-bending yoga practice — or become a contortionist — they should know in advance that it may result in long-term physical injuries.” 

Mr Home examines the nexus between yoga, fascism, White supremacy and the occult in North America and Europe from the twentieth century right up to its heyday in the 1970s. His statements must be understood in that political and cultural context rather than extrapolating them hastily to make sense of how yoga evolved elsewhere in the world, especially in India. 

He believes that “most of the claims made about modern postural practice are at best hype, and for the most part mythological”. It is evident that the author is not a fan of subtle jibes and passive-aggressive humour. He prefers to mount a frontal attack on what he views as “fakery”. 

This assessment of yoga might sound outlandish, especially to Indian readers diligently doing their surya namaskars every morning to make their bodies strong and supple. However, the author’s work is worth engaging with if one wants to grasp how yoga has been appropriated, packaged and sold in the West by people whose political views seem disconnected from the image of peace, equanimity and wellbeing that is often associated with the practice of yoga. 

Among the exponents of “fascist yoga”, one finds American poet Ezra Pound who believed that yoga and breathing techniques taught by his teacher, Yogi Ramacharaka (American occultist William Walker Atkinson) “might not only save the world from drug addiction, but from what he perceived to be Communism”. Pound, who created anti-Semitic radio broadcasts supporting the Axis powers between 1941 and 1945, also encouraged his American mentee John Kasper — a suspect in many synagogue bombings — to set up a bookshop that hosted yoga classes. 

Mr Home goes on to write about Major J F C Fuller and Major Francis Yeats-Brown, who “learned the bulk of their yoga at the feet of elitist occidental occultists” but “attempted to deceive the public into believing they’d learned their smarts in India”. 

These men published books on yoga during the inter-war years. Fuller, who was known as “Boney” because of his admiration for French military general Napoleon Bonaparte, was a member of the British Union of Fascists and “implicated in plots to overthrow the UK government and replace it with a puppet Nazi regime”. 

Speaking of the time that one has spent in India at the feet of Indian masters is a way of claiming authenticity and credibility as yoga practitioners. To this day, one can find Americans and Europeans travelling to places such as Varanasi, Rishikesh and Dharamsala in large numbers to train as yoga teachers so that they can set up yoga studios when they return home. It would be unfair, however, to label all of them phoney. One does not need to be Indian to be a yogi, a fact that is reiterated by the United Nations’ annual observance of June 21 as the International Day of Yoga. 

What’s more intriguing about Fuller is his view that “the authoritarian nature of the relationship between gurus and their students…mirrors the fascist ideal of the relationship between the Führer and the masses”. The guru-shishya model of mentorship is certainly open to abuse by power-hungry teachers. However, portraying this model as essentially exploitative is a stretch. 

One meets charlatans, televangelists, and sex offenders in Mr Home’s book. Among them is the half-Russian, half-Swedish Eugenie Peterson aka Indra Devi from Latvia, who was a personal trainer to Hollywood icon Greta Garbo. Mr Home calls out Devi for “spurious medical claims and fake testimonials” about yoga, and her view that “Hitler was an avatar of the god Vishnu.” 

While reading this book, one cannot help feeling sorry for those who fall prey to such con artists. That said, it would be foolish to paint yoga itself as an inherently fascist discipline or practice. 

The reviewer is a journalist, educator and literary critic. Instagram/X: @chintanwriting