1004 Musings and Reflections--Global, Indian, and Indian States

Context: International Yoga Day 21st June 2017. Yoga is not Gymnastics. Nor is it Acrobatics. Yoga has become a fad today. Encouragement from Governments of various countries also contributes to the growth of this craze for yoga. Yoga may be a good tool of physical exercise, and a means of maintaining mental discipline and poise (yogaha, citta vritti nirOdhaha. Engl.: Yoga is control of idiosyncrasies of mind), Those benefits will accrue when yoga is practised in its true spirit. Annual Ritualistic Publicity gimmicks may not really help.

Yoga is a bourgeoisie behavior

Question: Why do you call YOGA, a bourgeoisie behavior?

Who will have time to do yoga on a daily basis? Ans: Only bourgeoisie. Middle and the Upper Classes of Society.

---Those who have wads of currency notes, so that there will not be a daily need for them to work to fill their bellies with two square meals a day.

---Those who have teams of dependable Managers to Manage their Finances. Those who have dozens of servants to to maintain their surroundings tip-top and tidy.

Won't ordinary people need physical exercise?

For hoi polloi, their daily physical exercise is built in their jobs/occupations/toils to earn their livelihood. The time they spend in local trains, City Buses, wading through crowds of co-passengers, involves substantial physical exercise for them. Even white color workers, undergo this physical exercise of the rigors of public transportation.

Factory workers who travel in local trains, and commute to their work places in city buses, in addition to their physical exercise in the trains/buses, also perform physical work on the Factory Floors. Throughout their duty timings, they will be either standing, or do some other physical labor such lifting, turning, dragging, pushing.

Question: Bourgeoisie can do some other work. Why should they opt for yoga?

Ans: They might have got tired of everything else such as booze, exotic foods at Five Star Multi Cuisine Restaurants, Gambling bouts at Casinos, and enjoyment with Call Girls. After getting tired of everything which their money can buy, for a change they might have been searching for TIME-FILLERS, and they might have found Yoga as a good Personal Show Tool.

Question: India's Honorable Prime Minister loves Yoga very much. How do you explain this? Don't you respect his sentiments?

I greatly respect of Hon. Prime Minister. He himself, according to his biographers, helped his father in running a Railway Canteen, and assisting his uncle in running a Canteen in Ahmedabad Bus Station. The Hon. P.M. himself admitted that he takes pride in being a chaiwallah (tea-boy). So far so good.

I have a straight question: How many chaiwallahs in India can find time to practise yoga? They work from 12 hours to 18 hours everyday in the tea stalls. Their physical exercise is built into their daily routine. They do not get time to wash their rags and tatters which our 'Great Yoga Practitioners and Svachch Bharat proponents" look down upon with scorn and disdain.

Do our Yogawallahs, and Svachch Bharatwallahs wash their own clothes? Do they sweep their own rooms? Do they clean their own tea cups? Who polishes their shoes? Who ties their shoe laces?

Question: You can at least support Yoga, at least for the same of the mental discipline it imparts?

Yoga literally means 'yoking'. Yoking with what? Yoking with the non-existent God?
Yoga in the meaning of Chitta vritti nirodha (Control of vicissitudes and waggeries of the mischievous self-mind), is more appropriate. Citta vritti nirOdham is only a tool. But it is not a panacea. A 1000 pages can be written about this.

Question: Out of the seven elements of ashtAnga yOga (Eightfold Union), consisting of Yama. Niyama. Asana. Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, Samadhi, the seventh tool 'dhyAna (meditation), imparts concentration of mind (cittaikAgrata). Why do you object to yoga?

Ans: Meditating on non-existent and vague concepts and objects like God(dess)(es) does not really help the poor of India. For the super-rich, or the nouveau riche (newly rich-- in Telugu language called 'naDamantrapu siri gALLu'), yoga and meditations can be time-fillers, and objects of demonstration of new glamorous possessions to supplement their newly acquired wealth. But for the poor, the 8th fold yoga will not be of real tangible help.
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What in your view, will be of tangible help to not only to the Indian Poor, but also to the World's Poor?

Indian as well as the World's Poor need help to foresee and overcome dangerous trends in this Capitalist World, which are going to affect their subsistence occupations. With every change in this Capitalist-Driven World, poor lose their livelihoods, and till they acquire alternative skills and move over to the next skill paradigm, they and their families face undue stresses and strains for no fault of theirs. At this juncture, I recall a fable from a Children's Story book, in which a mother zebra does not embrace or kiss its new-born calf, but it kicks the calf so harshly and sternly that the calf immediately gets up and starts to run. In this kicking lesson, the mother zebra teaches the calf, the art of survival. May be the survival, through alertness and instantaneous responding to impending dangers from predators.

The latest example for that type of perils from changes from Business Environmental changes can be found in Indian I.T. (Information Technology) Sector. The Indian IT Companies, and consequently their employees are facing pink slips, and indirect push outs owing to technological changes such as 'AI' Artificial Intelligence and Automation, and the Political changes such as vicissitudes of Trump's moods and modes. The streams of B. Tech Graduates dreaming of entering into I.T. Sector are also going to face the music. Do all these people need Yoga?

Thunderbolt of G.S.T., on Indian Small Businesses

Hundreds of thousands of small businesses are going to be thrust with G.S.T. (Goods and Services Tax. Should all these people practice yoga?

What people badly need is not YOGA. But it is 'Skill-Development' to foresee environmental changes and meet them half-way through.

The Whole World, including the UN, the North America, Europe, ANZ, China, Japan, S-Korea are going GAGA about Yoga? You seem to be a cynical bastard who envies this unenviable grandeur of India's achievements?

Ans: You may be partly right. But still, pl. permit me to argue that India is a very big market for all those countries you said above. India has substantial foreign exchange reserves to import everything under the sky from these countries. India has a large weapons and aircraft purchase budget. Besides, India has opened its gates for 100% inward foreign portfolio investments which include camouflaged speculative operations, clandestine inward and outward money laundering activities through Shell Companies. All these cakes will be available to Multi Nationals and Shell Companies, if they win the confidence and trust of rulers that be. So, all the above Nations, their Heads of State, Heads of Governments, Heads of Corporates will gain more if they say 'Hail Yoga', 'Yoga ki Jai'.

Question: Then, how the entire Indian/World population is going to benefit from Yoga, which our beloved Prime Minister is very much fond of?

Ans: Both Physical exercise and Mental exercise are to be built seamlessly into the occupations and job profiles of people. If a person works for about 9 hours a day, 4 hours of it will have to involve physical movements and labor, 1 hour lunch and rest-siesta and the remaining 4 hours will have to involve mental labor. Physical labor in this context does not mean gymnatics or yoga. But, it will have to be hardcore physical work involving use of tools such as hammers, saws, screw-drivers, wrenches, some lifting, some dragging and pushing. Residences are to be as near to the places of work, as possible. In Capitalism, this will not be possible. In True Total Socialism, about which this blog is fantasizing about, these working conditions and service conditions can be created.

Vocabulary help for 'vicissitude'. Source:Internet.

vicissitude vɪˈsɪsɪtjuːd,vʌɪˈsɪsɪtjuːd/ noun plural noun: vicissitudes
1. a change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant. "her husband's sharp vicissitudes of fortune" . synonyms: change, alteration, alternation, transformation, metamorphosis, transmutation, mutation, modification, transition, development, shift, switch, turn;

reversal, reverse, downturn; inconstancy, instability, uncertainty, unpredictability, chanciness, fickleness, variability, changeability, fluctuation, vacillation;

ups and downs. "he maintains his sunny disposition despite life's vicissitudes"

2. literary
alternation between opposite or contrasting things. "the vicissitude of the seasons"
Origin: early 17th century (in the sense ‘alternation’): from French, or from Latin vicissitudo, from vicissim ‘by turns’, from vic- ‘turn, change’.

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