Our first module is based on the Preface and Introduction to our book, The Yoga of Power (2025). In this module we explain our approach to studying yoga as a concept and how this differs from previous work on yoga as psychophysical practice or philosophy. The lecture examines the meaning of the word yoga in relation to power. We offer understandings of yoga as transitive, intramural, and dialectical.

This lecture explores ancient and classical texts of India to create a historical genealogy of the idea of yoga as a theory of politics and power. We start with India’s oldest text, the Ṛg Veda (c. 1400 BCE), then move to the world’s longest work of literature, the Mahābhārata (c. 500 BCE). Within that work, we will focus on India’s most famous text, the Bhagavad Gītā (Book Six of the Mahābhārata) as well as the epic’s Śāntī Parvan, the Book of Peace, the twelfth book of the Mahābhārata. This exploration will form a basis for a deep dive into classical India’s premier text of political theory and practice, the Arthaśāstra (c. 250 CE).

This lecture examines how the political register of yoga comes to inspire anti-colonial nationalism in British India and the princely states. The first half of the lecture examines how political thinkers and activists like Tilak, Gandhi, Aurobindo, and Ambedkar understood yoga and its meaning in the Gita. In the second half, we examine the popularity of the Surya Namaskar in the princely state of Aundh, and how this connected to a series of other social, political, and economic transformations that sought sovereignty under the constraints of colonial rule.

This lecture turns to look at yoga in the postcolonial period. Here, rather than looking at how yoga itself expresses a theory of politics, we look at how yoga as mind-body practice intersects with the worlds of bureaucratic, legal, and cultural politics. Specific topics covered include how meditative and postural yoga practices have become embedded in the postcolonial Indian state’s public health and education bureaucracies from the 1950s onwards, recent debates around yoga instruction in public schools in both the US and India, and debates about whether yoga as it is practiced and taught outside of India is a form of cultural appropriation.