My feelings and shit

2: Rant about Yoga, Namaste, Religion, and Christians

This is going to basically be a rant about yoga, namaste, religion, and Christians (as the chapter title says lol) So this might be offensive to some Christians, just a warning.

Okay, so basically I saw an article today about how the Alabama House decided to remove the ban on yoga, but the Sanskrit names and namaste were still banned. I am an Indian and I know enough Hindi to half-follow conversations and have been pretty exposed to these topics all my life and thought them to be completely normal. When I saw this my first question was "Why was yoga banned in the first place, how yoga without its original names for the poses is not appropriation, and what namaste had to do with any of this?" (I know thats three questions but who cares).

Let's start with the namaste. Whenever elders visits us and when we went to India, we often said namaste in greeting of our elders. For me and pretty much all the Indians I know, namaste is just a respectful way of saying hello. I did a little googling and apparently people have associated it with a spiritual meaning. I looked into the reasoning behind this and it said that it came from two Sanskrit words that meant "bend" and "to you." When put together namaste essentially meant "bend to you," and it is sometimes accompanied by a small bow. It was meant be out a show of respect to elders who could be considered divine in Hinduism. However, over the years, the spiritual connotation of it have practically disappeared in India and it is just a simple hello. And even if someone doesn't care how its being used now, it is no different from goodbye. Goodbye was originally "God be with ye (you)," and was shortened and put together to be made into a common, well, goodbye. Lots of greeting and goodbyes have old religious roots that have nothing to do with the meaning of word now and namaste isn't any different.

I think its a good time to mention here the difference between Sanskrit, Hinduism, Hindi, and Indians. Step 1: Sanskrit was the language of the Vedas (basically the Bible for Hinduism) and slowly morphed into tons of different languages from Gujarati to Hindi to Tamil and onward. It has even been the origin of many English words. It is important to separate Sanskrit from the Vedas. Sanskrit was just the language they had at the time in order to write the Vedas down and write the different rituals and prayers out in. The Vedas are religious; Sanskrit is not. It is no different from how the Torah is written in Hebrew or how the Quran is written in Arabic. The languages are not religious, the books are. Step 2: Not all Indians believe in Hinduism. It is easy to think of India as a Hindu nation especially with Modi trying to suppress and get rid of other religious minorities, especially muslims, but Indians can be atheists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, and pretty much any religious ever. I'm an Indian, and I'm an atheist. Step 3: Hindi is the most widespread language in India and is has Sanskrit roots. It is commonly taught in schools along with English, the language of the state of the school, and, optionally, Sanskrit. Hindi and Hinduism are extremely different and are only related by their biggest demographic. Just like Sanskrit and even more so, Hindi is not religious what so ever and is as religious as English is. (I have now forgotten the point of this paragraph and will end it here)

Now onto yoga. Yes yoga can be a spiritual exercise, but only if you make it one. Yoga has been shown to reduce stress, improve flexibility, and just overall health. For example Christmas, my family and I have always celebrated Christmas because we enjoyed doing so. Did it make us Christians? No. Does my relationship with Christmas have anything to do with my religion? No. Yoga is the same way. Yes it can be religious and spiritual, but it can also just be for the sake of doing it because you like it and it is good for you. Yoga was originally banned because if was considered to be promoting Eastern religion specifically Hinduism, but yoga alone does not do that. If your yoga is lead by a religious teacher in Hinduism and you are specifically told how different poses represent different teaching and you decide to follow those teachings, then it becomes religious. People have also said that it would violate the separation of church and state  because of its roots. But even if this is the case, isn't teaching creationism doing the same thing only on a higher level because it is direct teaching instead of indirectly learning somehow throw different poses. 

I don't get this country sometimes. They go crazy when some religious thing (that might not even be religious) supposedly infringes on their right, but support religious things when it agrees with what they believe in. Like there is literally a Senate Chaplain, that opens each session of the upper legislative body in prayer and is there to provide the senators, their staffs, and their families with spiritual guidance. He was a navy chaplain before, providing religious guidance to navy officers. Both of these are public, government jobs, but they have someone given Christian advice to public servants. This is there and its fine but kids saying hi in another language while stretching is unconstitutional. There are Christian chaplains and people are chill, but when one Hindu guest chaplain gets to address the House once, they protest in the streets. Would anyone like to please explain this to me?

Now onto using Sanskrit names for yoga poses. Now, I understand to some extent not using the traditional names as it might be hard for kids to remember and differentiate p, but I still do not get why this is a religious debate. Sanskrit is not a religious language and calling Padmasana the lotus pose or "crisscross applesauce" does not mean anything different, especially to kids who will probably forget their translations in English, which are nothing special anyways.

Wow this took me like 1.5 hours to write. Oh well, if someone knows why the heck this is a thing please comment me or message me or something because I'm confused as hell right now and I hate it.