{"id":22173,"date":"2025-06-24T02:30:26","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T02:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/?p=22173"},"modified":"2025-06-24T02:30:26","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T02:30:26","slug":"yogas-hindu-roots-being-erased","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2025\/06\/24\/yogas-hindu-roots-being-erased\/","title":{"rendered":"Yoga\u2019s Hindu Roots Being Erased"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>INDIA, June 21, 2025 (OpIndia): The assault on Hindu civilization takes many forms, some violent, some insidious. None is more treacherous than the whitewashing of yoga, our most profound spiritual practice, into a sterile fitness routine baptized with Christian prayers. Yoga is not a modular fitness regimen to be dismembered and repackaged; it is the beating heart of Sanatana Dharma. As Patanjali\u2019s Yoga Sutras (circa 200 BCE) codified, yoga is an eight-limbed path (ashtanga) integrating ethics, meditation, and devotion toward moksha (liberation). This holistic system emerged from Vedic fire rituals and Upanishadic contemplation (1500\u2013500 BCE), later refined by Hindu rishis who viewed the body as a vehicle for transcendent union (yuj = to unite). Yet Western appropriators surgically try to remove its spiritual core, reducing dhyana (meditation) to \u201cmindfulness\u201d and pranayama to \u201cbreathwork\u201d as if dissecting a living being to display its organs.  <br><br>Christian yoga brands like \u201cHoly Yoga,\u201d \u201cPraiseMoves,\u201d \u201cYahweh Yoga\u201d are not benign adaptations but theological land grabs. They replace Om with crosses, chant Biblical verses during surya namaskar, and market \u201cChristian psalms.\u201d This mirrors colonial missionary tactics: first demonize Hinduism as Mark Driscoll decries yoga as \u201chypersexualized\u201d and \u201cdemonic\u201d, then rebrand its practices as \u201credeemed\u201d Christian tools. As scholar-priest Aseem Shukla of the Hindu American Foundation\u2019s Take Back Yoga campaign argues, this erasure perpetuates the myth that Hinduism contributed \u201cnothing but superstition\u201d to civilization. As the Indian government\u2019s 2015 International Yoga Day manifesto asserts: \u201cYoga is India\u2019s gift to the world, rooted in Vedanta and Tantra.\u201d We cannot tolerate pastors like Rev. Anthony Randazzo, who slathers Christian dogma onto asanas while denying their prana-activating purpose. Nor can we abide by \u201cChristianized yoga manuals\u201d that replace Yamas (ethical vows) with Beatitudes. Yoga\u2019s ontology atman-Brahman unity, karma-samsara cycle is irreducibly Dharmic. To amputate this is to murder yoga itself.  <br><br>More at source.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.opindia.com\/2025\/06\/yogas-hindu-roots-being-erased-christian-appropriation-and-spiritual-theft-rampant-it-is-about-time-sanatan-dharma-reclaims-its-spiritual-core\/\n\">https:\/\/www.opindia.com\/2025\/06\/yogas-hindu-roots-being-erased-christian-appropriation-and-spiritual-theft-rampant-it-is-about-time-sanatan-dharma-reclaims-its-spiritual-core\/<br><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>INDIA, June 21, 2025 (OpIndia): The assault on Hindu civilization takes many forms, some violent, some insidious. None is more,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22183,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22173\/revisions\/22183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}