In looking at ‘gender’ there is a risk of equating gender with women’s studies. Here women are the category marked by gender whereas the male is the neutral, a priori body. Women tend to be characterised by social roles, particularly motherhood, and are associated with maternal expectations. In her above mentioned article on women ascetics, Daniela notes ‘Generalized labels to define what is “typical female” and what is “typical male” risk of flattening the idea of female asceticism’ (Bevilacqua, 2017b: 72). In our discussion of motherhood and gender where women are marked by maternal duties or sentiment, it emerged that men, even when engaged in paternal duties, are not marked by paternity. In contrast, Monika’s research found that men were positively characterised by maternal qualities as a mark of being closer to Devī.

The enduring image of Daniela’s session was a photo of the sādhvī Rām Priya Dās censored by biro: in an inversion her clothing slips down, and her exposed thigh has been scribbled over. As the Hatha Yoga Project enters its final year and the team turn to writing up their findings I look forward to reading further outputs.

Amelia Wood is at the forefront of bringing a critical perspective to abuses of power in yoga, a topic which has recently received sustained attention particularly since the exposures prompted by the #metoo movement. Amelia is researching for a doctoral thesis at SOAS on ‘Yoga, power and gender: an investigation into the abuse of power by modern gurus’. Amongst the case studies that she is exploring are Bikram Choudhry (inventor of Bikram Yoga), Kausthub Desikachar (lineage holder to his grandfather’s legacy, TKV Krishnamacharya) and the head of Satyananda Yoga in Australia in the 1970s and 80s, Swami Akhandananda. The intersectional questioning she is bringing to bear on these cases include asking about the extent to which the transnational dislocation of cultural categories such as yoga, gender and spiritual authority has contributed to the abuse of power within the global modern yoga context. She brings a normative thrust to her project by asking ‘How can discussions of abuse support victims rather than those already in positions of power?’ Amelia has an unrelenting commitment to refocusing the critical gaze from the actions of gurus to the predicament of victims / survivors. We prepared for the session by reading Amanda Lucia’s theorising of abuse (Lucia, 2018) where the emphasis is placed on the structural, systemic dynamic of charisma opening up space for abuse to occur. Lucia defines ‘haptic logics’ as the ‘disciplinary logics of physicality’ and follows a social constructivist theory of charisma. Lucia argues for haptic logics as a systemic approach rather than the psychological analysis usually served to ‘headline stealing hyper gurus’.

Lucia mingled emic and etic approaches by placing affect theory alongside a more Āyurvedic and energetic understanding of the porousness of bodies and ritual purity: ‘Through gaining proximity, devotees aim to consume the affective power of the guru—to absorb it into their bodies. The possibility of this transmission depends on the premise that bodies are comprised of porous boundaries that interact with and absorb from others and their environments. As Teresa Brennan has argued, affect, or “the physiological shift accompanying a judgment” is also transmitted between bodies and their environments.’ Lucia explains that ‘Affect can also be explained as transmittable “force,” “energy,” and “physiological shift,” which makes it particularly applicable here because its transmission closely resembles the language used to interpret the guru’s transmission of śakti’ (Lucia, 2018: 967 ff). In her reading of work to date on abuse of power in yoga Amelia is careful to unpick the attribution of responsibility and agency, highlighting where it has been and often continues to be attributed to the victim / survivor.

Our second reading for this session was Josna Pankhania’s whistleblowing work on the Bihar School and the findings of the Australian Royal Commission of Inquiry (Pankhania, 2017). Of particular note for me was the essentialist East-West dichotomy which at times appear in the analysis. For example, one concern around trans-cultural dislocation of the guru–śiṣya (teacher-student) relationship is that Western communities import the teachings but not the controls, such that guru models are imported into spheres where the traditional role of a guru is not understood. Pankhania does note that this rhetoric is problematic. The Australian broadcaster ABC suggested that yoga taught according to Western standards would result in a decrease in abuse by asking, ‘Is the claiming of yoga now by the West as a western practice going to save it from abuse?’ Pankhania noted that ‘This concept is not only problematic, but also symptomatic of the West’s continued angst about ‘the white man’s burden’, the supposed duty of the white race to engage in civilising missions to liberate the ‘savages’’ (Pankhania, 2017: 115). Pankhania links this issue with the much broader debates around identity politics and the postcolonial critique, by noting that, ‘As ‘the white man’s burden’ is unable to convincingly justify European colonialism, so too a crisis of ethics in any yoga organisation can surely not be adequately resolved through the process of cultural appropriation by the West. Concern with abusive gurus is certainly very much present in Indian society, too.’

Women-oriented Iyengar Yoga