Between Mother India and Jim Crow with Philip Deslippe

Straight White American Jesus

Axis Mundi Media: Bradley Onishi + Daniel Miller

News, Politics

4.7 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brad speaks with journalist and scholar Philip Deslippe about the origins of yoga in the United States as a response to the precarity of South Asian lives in 20th century America. "A century ago, students of yoga in the United States, like many practitioners today, believed that they were engaging in something pure, ancient, and Indian. In reality, the yoga they were doing was a bricolage of the metaphysical and mundane presented to them in an exotic, Orientalized package by largely educated and worldly immigrants from India. These teachers were themselves responding and adapting to a nativist and racist climate. Yoga in the United States during the interwar decades is one of many examples of how Asian religions in the United States cannot be fully understood outside the context of Asian American history." This episode is part of a new series by Axis Mundi Media and APARRI called APA Religions 101. Subscribe here: https://feeds.redcircle.com/581b8afe-eda8-45df-997d-3b22e5b57c64 Learn more about APARRI. APARRI’s vision is to create a society in which Asian Pacific American religions are valued, recognized, and central to the understanding of American public life. Since 1999, The Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) has been a vibrant scholarly community advancing the interdisciplinary study of Asian Pacific Americans and their religions. Producer: Dr. Bradley Onishi: @bradleyonishi Audio Engineer and Musician: Scott Okamoto: @rsokamoto For more information about research-based media by Axis Mundi Media visit: www.axismundi.us Funding for this series has been generously provided by the Henry Luce Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Axis Mundi. I'm Brad O'Nishi, co-host of Straight White American Jesus and author of
0:18.3	preparing for war, the history of white Christian nationalism and what comes next.
0:22.3	On June 13th, I'm holding the history of white Christian nationalism and what comes next.
0:23.1	On June 13th, I'm holding a pop-up class
0:26.0	to talk about Christian nationalism and authoritarianism.
0:30.4	I've been studying this phenomenon for a long time, and what I've noticed is something that needs to be heard and understood before the 2024 elections
0:39.0	Many millions of Christian nationalists now see democracy not as the answer to restoring our public
0:43.9	square but as the problem getting in their way. They've been fascinated with Putin and
0:48.2	Orbonne and other autocrats for decades and now they want to see that type of
0:52.3	leadership instituted in the United States.
0:55.0	Join me on June 13th to discuss the anti-Democratic components and histories of Christian
1:01.2	nationalism in the United States.
1:03.0	Tickets are just $12, and if that's too much, you can join for less.
1:07.0	Go to my website Brad O'Nishi.com and look for June pop-up courses. Tins and millions of people practice yoga in the United States today. It is a billion dollar industry. Yoga is often sold as an ancient
1:25.5	practice full of wisdom from bygone millennia. Yoga instructors often
1:30.3	introduce Sanskrit words into their practice and provide explanations
1:36.6	to their students of the ways that various postures are related to spirituality, wellness, and the overall well-being of their souls.
1:48.1	But what if yoga as we know it is a modern 20th century invention and what if it came about not through
1:56.0	ancient practices but because of racism Jim Crow and the precarity of being a
2:02.1	South Asian human being in the United States in the 20th century. Today I speak with the journalist and scholar Philip Deslip, who explains how the origins of yoga in the United States, were a matter of survival, of adaptability, of good old American innovation.
2:21.0	Coming from South Asian human beings who saw a pathway to
2:27.8	thriving to living and to existing in the United States at a time when the country was telling them they weren't wanted.
	...

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