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Great. Now people are claiming that Yoga also came from the West to India. Maybe the idea of eating food also came to India from abroad?

• ivanhoe 6y ago
  Reading what I wrote instead of projecting your own political narratives would help a conversation, you know. Where did I claim any such thing? What came from the West was the idea (and a fashion) of fitness training as a popular pastime activity, and it was a new thing in Europe too. People just didn't do it or think of it that way before. They played sports, or practiced the skills, but the idea of doing regular exercises for health reasons only was something new. Same was in India, traditional Indian practices were about spiritual development, not training your body the way hatha yoga did it. No king or maharajah has ever before cared if his people exercise or not. Hatha yoga was Indian original system, and Krishnamacharya (on a request of Maharajah) took it and mixed different other technics (breeding practices, etc) and created a new system which was a combination of a response on modernization of India accepting good ideas from the West (that nation's fitness is something important), as well as the rise of Indian national identity and efforts of Maharajah to save the original Indian traditions from being forgotten. It was their original take on that new way of thinking about human health and life, the same way Sokol movements were Slavic take on it, not just something that "came from the West" as you try to frame it.