Breathing in India, c.

1890
Author(s): Nile Green
Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 42, No. 2/3, Islam in South Asia (Mar. - May, 2008), pp.
283-315
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Modern Asian Studies 42, 2/3 (2008) pp. 283-3 15. ( 2007 Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S0026749X07003125 First published online 25 October 2007

Breathing in India, c. I890

NILE GREEN*

Dept. of History, UCLA, CACoo95- 1473, USA

And so to the physical exercises. When the Englishman comes to this stage in Yoga he
is completely and entirely disarmed. 1

Abstract
This essay examines a series of 'Hindustani' meditation manuals from the high
colonial period against a sample of etiquette and medicinal works from the same
era. In doing so, the essay has two principal aims, one specific to the Indian past
and one pertaining to more general historical enquiry. The first aim is to subvert a
longstanding trend in the 'history' of religions which has understood meditational
practices through a paradigm of the mystical and transcendent. In its place, the
essay examines such practices-and in particular their written, and printed,
formulation-within the ideological and technological contexts in which they
were written. In short, meditation is historicised, and its 'Hindu' and 'Muslim'
expressions, compared in the process. The second aim is more ambitious: to test
the limits of historical knowledge by asking whether it is possible to recount a
history of breathing. In reassembling a political economy of respiration from a
range of colonial writings, the essay thus hopes to form a listening device for the
intimate rhythms of corporeal history. In doing so, it may suggest ways to recount
a connected and necessarily political history of the body, the spirit and the world.

From Breathing to Writing: Meditation in the Colonial

Public Sphere

As one of the last bastions of the universal, breathing appears to have

withstood the assault of relativism over the past century.2 With the

*I am extremely grateful to Francis Robinson, David Arnold, Elizabeth de Michelis,

Anindita Ghosh, Joseph S. Alter, David Gilmartin, Ali Abbas and my anonymous
readers for their engagement with this essay.
1 Yogini Sumta.,Pranayama Yoga: The Art of Relaxation (Walsall: West Midlands Press,
1968), p. 22.
2 I have been heartened in undertaking this historiographical venture through the
studies in which Alain Corbin has attempted to map a 'history of the senses'. See in
particular his Les Cloches de la terre: paysage sonore et culture sensible dans les campagnes au
XIXe si?cle (Paris: A. Michel, 1994).
283

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 284 NILE GREEN
cultures of its variously modified forms re
and even irrelevant to, the universal essen
has been widely accepted as an ideolog
human activity. In the course of the twent
universality enabled distinctive Asian cultu
Chi) to be translated into European and Am
proved otherwise less hospitable to the mor
that had sustained these practices in their
renunciation, Chinese warfare). In shor
neither to require nor reflect a context. Y
activity, breathing always has a context an
forms (fast, shallow, hard, weak) perhaps t
of all human activities.3 This contingency
regard to the deliberate modifications of b
of meditation, for breath control and medi
history than any other form of physical cult
forms the traditional basis of historical analy
observations that we may begin to recover
intimacy of a past whose body politics have
breathing.
The contexts and cultures of breathing wit
in this essay are those of the forms of medit
South Asia, a period which witnessed th
discourse on breathing, meditation and th
is rarely recognised. Having their intellect
notions of the universal, studies of Indian
failed to recognise the political dimens
psychological acts of conditioning and cont
variety of Indian meditation systems.4 Disc
Asia have often failed to historicise thes
assuming a simple continuity over long per
example, Vedic references to Yoga and the

3 On the history of medical understandings of bre

A History of Breathing Physiology (New York: Dekker,
4 The most influential example is Mircea Eliade, Yoga
York: Pantheon Books, 1958). However, universalist
and ends of meditation have been most influentially
definitions of zen as universal a priori experience, stan
trappings of 'religion'. The political genealogy of th
Robert Sharf, "The Zen of Japanese Nationalism", H
pp. 1-43.

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 285

of the colonial period and beyond.5 In contr

essay attempts to contextualise Indian medi
place of its components of breath control a
in the wider Indian ecumene of late ninetee
century. Since Yoga has often been seen as
form of meditation, we also draw attention t
traditions of meditation from the same peri
communalised colonial public sphere, it is ar
articulated rival forms of physical culture
response to the wider crisis facing precoloni
promotion of these distinctly Hindu and Mus
to represent a shared movement towards the in
culture in the face of colonial British modes
from table manners to military service and
this sense not merely an intellectual proces
but a means of reconditioning the physical
new ways of being, both private and pub
appearance, the Yogi and Sufi symbolised an
the very moment that they absorbed elemen
on the essentially traditional character of th
we see the complexity of the oppositional st
hegemony that Francis Robinson identifies
Islamic reform in his article in this volume.
For all this, the Yogi and Sufi ideologues o
in no sense the silent and passive statuary
the House of Wonders. In contrast, we aim to s
participation in the new vernacular public sp
Yogis formed important agents of social cha
modernity were disguised through the wide
of the 'fakir' as the embodiment of tradition.
the politicising of breathing techniques and
of the body is evident from the large num
addressing such practices, vernacular print
role in our analysis. Yet as an exploratory

5 Recent exceptions are Joseph S. Alter, Yoga in Mo

Science and Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University
Michelis, A History of Modern Yoga: Pata?jali andWestern
2004).
6 Cf. Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere 1920-1940: Language and Literature
in the Age of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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 286 NILE GREEN
breathing, we also hope to demonstrate som
changing meanings of breath and their c
about identity, politics and the proper beh
Asia.7
Older scholarly paradigms interpreting meditation primarily in
terms of 'mysticism' have been largely incapable of recognising the
rhetoric of meditation. For Sufi and Yogi meditation form not only a
practice of the body but also a discourse on physical culture. Rather
than 'liberating' the practitioner into the solipsism of pure private
experience, in colonial India both Sufi and Yogi modes of meditation
formed attempts to connect the physical person to new ideologies
promoted by a series of 'reformist' groups. In stressing the association
between meditation and unmediated 'spiritual' experience, the
mystical paradigm fails to recognise that in Yogi or Sufi contexts
experience was in fact highly mediated, either through the authority of
the living shaykh orguru or else through the mediation of writing. From
meditation manuals through etiquette guides and other apparently
innocuous genres of instrumental writing, textual practices help us
not only map changes in physical culture but also reckon with the
agency of such constitutive texts in the new printed ecumene. For the
new ideologies of the body that emerged during the high colonial era
within which meditation must be located were so effective due to the
normalisation of writing through the mass medium of print.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, previously occult
spheres of Sufi and Yogi knowledge that had been based on traditions
of face-to-face initiation and instruction were gradually re-constituted
as traditionalist and indeed indigenist wings of the growing colonial
public sphere. Throughout the following pages this meditational
discourse on the body is placed among a wider series of printed
vernacular works on Muslim and Hindu physical culture. Given the
sense of timelessness in which scholarly discussions of meditation have
often taken place, it is important to recognise the transformations of
Indian physical culture initiated by the technology of printing through
shifting the primary context of meditation from the realm of personal

7 My formulation of this project has been helped by a number of works on the

'history of manners', in particular Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: The History of
Manners (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978). With regard to theoretical discussion of
the religious body, I have especially benefited from the essays in Sarah Coakley
(ed.), Religion and the Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) and
Catherine Bell, "The Ritual Body", in idem., Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 94-117.

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 287

mediation to the textual realm of the medi

both Sufi and Yogi domains, precolonial trad
based on oral forms of instruction that also
commentaries that mediated admission to wr
to the knowledge and power granted by man
(and subtle) body was based upon the relati
and disciple (guru/shishya, murshid/murid). In
what was once mediated by living teacher
empowering rhetoric of secrecy that had
association between meditation and magic
property. From the closely guarded meditati
here were forms of meditational practic
the vernacular-reading general public and i
groups. Although still described as such, Suf
'secrets' (asrar) in any socially meaningfu
the publication and translation projects of
Whether with regard to Sufi manuals, Yo
even works on magic, the arrival of print tr
this knowledge as social capital. The most fi
found in the new Indian genre of the printe
meditation, which in contrast to more tradit
or Yoga practice effectively replaced the livi
Print, then, stood at the centre of the tran
ecumene in which the symbolic capital of ce
had been guarded through the social barrier
of secrecy and controlled initiation. Here,
self-transformation and the individual will tha
Robinson's contribution to this volume.
While the nature of this knowledge was tr
into print, and while a case can be made for th
of print capitalism undermining social inst
knowledge was heedlessly disseminated, this
a new generation of Muslim and Hindu pub

8 In the words of one precolonial Tantric work, 'The foo

acts after having looked up [the matter] in a written
it from the guru's mouth, he also will be certainly d
(ed.), Indian Religions: A Historical Reader of Spiritual Exp
Hurst, 2002), p. 194.
9 For a discussion of the social ramifications of 's
colonial India, see Hugh Urban, Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Po
Religion (Berkeley, CA: University of California Pres

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288 NILE GREEN
mould to their advantage. For at the same
technology undermined the need for a livi
opened up the possibility of large-scale p
ideologues willing to embrace it. Given the
it is perhaps also worth considering the r
as a form of concealed politics operating i
sphere of 'religious affairs'. And as is well
Ghulam Ahmad, Swami Vivekananda and
organisations that surrounded them too
ambitious scale.
The following pages examine the roles of
lithographic men in the cultural politics o

Print Culture and the Meditational

With the final dissolution of Muslim po

North India had come a re-evaluatio
comportment that placed Islamicate ta
('propriety') into a new set of relations
British systems of physical comportment
spite of the intransigent and repetitive rh
manuals, this changing context would rad
as, correspondingly, did their relation as
to other books offering instruction in alt
the body. Although Muslim writers had
meditational practice for centuries, works
during the late colonial period had special
attempts to access a public sphere in whi
bodies was increasingly contested.'0 The
homogenising, proselytising, entering d

10 Several earlier Indian manuals have been stud

"The Yogic Exercises of the 17th Century Sufis", i
and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald Jam
W. Ernst, "Chisht? Meditation Practices of the La
Lewisohn and David Morgan (eds), The Heritage of Suf
Sufism (1501-1]50) (Oxford: Oneworld, 1999); Mar
Allah's Model of the Subtle Spiritual Centers (Lata'
and Self-Transformation", Journal of Near Eastern
study of an important colonial-era text, see Scott
the Body: the Ritual Manual of an Early-Modern Sufi
17, 1 (2003).

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 289
recognised by Sufi writers of the period who r
sources of public authority. Print was able to trans
these often obscure and provincial holy men int
for not only their direct initiates but also for a
of unseen readers. In the same way that colonial
meditation move from the more closed sphere of
instruction to the open access of the printed a
the doctrines of Yoga similarly shifted from a
of initiatic and caste membership to the printe
practices thus mirrored their Sufi counterpart
a much wider public than had previously bee
reflection of the missionary impetus of Hindu
movements. The emphasis placed on Yoga by a w
public preceptors-particularly Swami Vivek
and Aurobindo Ghose (1 872-1950)-brought Yog
it had never before enjoyed, a prominence that
to the colonial experience in its early export overs
Bengali epicentre. The neglected vernacular wor
essay further disseminated this new Yoga in the
small town North India.
Like their Muslim counterparts, colonial Yo
transcendent moral and ethereal goals for the
promoted. In this way they connected physical
purity to a wider vision of social progress and p
based on an indigenous physical culture sanction
to antique 'scriptural' precedents. As time pa
scientific knowledge increasingly encroached on th
the physical benefits of Yoga came increasingly to t
range of scientific and pseudo-scientific evaluati
marginalising most of what Yoga had meant to i
writing centuries earlier in Sanskrit." Whate
rhetoric of its proponents, the physicalist and
of modern times is a direct product of the
of late colonial India. But at the same time,
older discourse in which Yoga and other forms
articulated primarily in terms of practical (
physical) ends whose realisation stood in stark
limited modernist goals of the neo-Yogis. Seen

11 Alter (2004).

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 290 NILE GREEN

works asJagannath Prashad's Yo

1g9o), here the ultimate goal
the physical body capable of su
Many common features may
Sufi and Yogi printed works o
seems in many cases to have
as ideological reasons. The
Varman's Yog ke 'amali sabaq
in the Perso-Arabic rather t
of the continuity of 'Hindus
decades of the twentieth cen
of meditation techniques mo
older location within speciali
works on Yoga were publish
Jagannath Prashad's Urdu Yo
practical instruction in Yog
posture alongside instructi
carefully tabulated program
to hold the breath.14 In a l
its section of qualifications a
changing contexts of meditat
breath control while sufferi
unwell, and under no circum
carriages. 15
In their practical orientation, eschewing the old ways of face-to-face
initiation and learning, works such as the Yogriti ba taswir had numerous
Sufi counterparts. In the literary expression of the religiously plural
readership that made up the North Indian marketplace, some of these
Sufi works included sections on the techniques of Yoga. Among the
most interesting of the colonial Sufi works that discuss Yoga practices
is the Asrar-e-darwesh ('The Dervish's Secrets') of Sufi Sa'adat 'Ali."6
In addition to describing a number of familiar Sufi meditational

12 Jagann?th Prash?d, Yogrit? b? tasw?r (Meerut, 1910), p. 120: 'This is the final
level of meditation iy? akhir? daraja sam?dh? k? hai)\ Such ideas clearly drew on
older traditions associated with Nath and Siddha Yogis. See George Weston Briggs,
Gorakhn?th and the K?nphata Yogis (London: Oxford University Press, 1938).
13 Sh?v Brit L?l Varman, Y?g k? 'amal?sabaq (Lahore: Bharat Literature Company,
n.d. [1910?]).
14 Jagann?th Prash?d (1910), pp. 90-96, 111-120.
15 Idem., pp. 101-102.
16 S?f? Sa'?dat 'All, Asr?r-e-darw?sh m?s?ma ba bahr al-macrifat (Muradabad, 1898).

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 291

practices (zikr, riyazat), the author also inclu

respectful elucidation of the techniques of t
of their various postures.17 Like the more in
licit magic that made Muhammad Ghaws's si
e-khamsa so popular in print during this per
was a deeply pragmatic work whose position
analogous to that of the new practical Yoga
that promised to yield vast powers from cor
pocket-size format, the Asrar-e-darwesh seems
a guidebook for those wishing to set themse
their own right, but who wished to avoid the
gradual training at a pace dictated by a livin
the Asrar-e-darwesh consists of description
largely prayers, visualisation techniques
that could be employed for specific and fo
ends. This was not a Sufism of metaphysica
social expression as medicine, prognosticati
all of which could of course be adapted for pro
However, for present purposes what is mos
Asrar-e-darwesh is the section it contains o
a section underpinned (as in the Yoga wo
short theoretical excursus on the connectio
the wider universe. Much more minimal an
often complex and time-consuming exercis
Yogi practice, these were a series of simple b
could accompany very specific circumstanc
or otherwise risky activities should be m
different nostrils or towards different part
and varied situations in which the powe
employed included the purchase of a horse,
receipt of a gift gold jewellery or of new
avoid mal de ojo); and the search for lost pr
simple instructions to breathe in certain di
or the other nostril, the numerous other e
reader was advised to resort to the power
the quotidian (learning whether one was pre
ensuring a safe journey in given directions
extraordinary (meeting a king, anticipati

17 Ibid., pp. 44-66, 186-192.

18 Idem., pp. 18-27.

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292 NILE GREEN

Further undermining transcen

Yoga, such works were forthrigh
as much as spiritual ends.

Colonised Bodies and Ind

Far from creating a sense of u

facts of the human condition,
the pragmatic minutiae of daily
towards sectarianism in public d
This politics of meditation is m
practices are placed into the wi
from the later decades of the nin
control-and indeed define-Mu
Muslim polemic over the legiti
already well known, it is impor
within a wider contest for the co
played only a part. For Sufi and
expressly Islamic physical cultu
formulations of Hindu and Brit
this polemical triangle had a po
a British colonial elite and their
culture. For with its pomp, its
of power, the colonial etiquett
a crisis of confidence in the old
world. One set of responses-a
encounter of the politically une
forms of behaviour, from dr
occasional extremes of English
the responses explored in this
alternatives to this imperial cul
The impact of this imperial p
the (self-) suppression of aspect
of India; in the promotion of se
and in the minutiae of everyday
the unequal distribution of pow
social climate of the era, such
alternatives frequently articu
'Muslim' or 'Hindu' forms of be
therefore emerged out of a ser

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 293

into the pattern of a 'trialogue' of Christia

polemical geometry that came to lay out the
for the self as for others. Of course, betwe
voices in the trialogue more ambiguous f
culture remained possible. Attempts to fo
'national' alternative may be plotted betwee
the communicative triangle (as in Nehru'
the position of the Muslim modernists lyin
British points of reference. But despite the
the three main markers of identity nonethe
parameters of definition.
We suggest, therefore, that the promo
meditation in the public sphere represen
of the colonial debate over the ownership a
that sought to formulate the public display
The proponents of Sufi and Yogi disciplin
the imperial Anglo-Saxon mode of physical
sense. As numerous studies have emphasi
manifestations this vigorous imperial cultu
sporting prowess and military drill with a sens
so encompassing an originally Protestant dis
an imperial culture of socially hierarchic
with the rival systems of physical culture o
in the name of Muslim and Hindu tradition,
and physical endeavour for the British in I
by a strong ideological and moral code-'t
ascetic strands of Protestant Christianity a
adapted to the muscular contexts of empire
emulate imperial bodies, printed books in I
written initiation into the mysteries of Vic
In his Ma'dan-e-tahzib ('The Mine of Manne
Lucknow, the old capital of Islamicate etiquet
city's Hosainabad High School sought to instr
proper English behaviour through a series o
by admonitions no less forceful than those of

19 On 'the code', see J. R. de S. Honey, Tom Brown's U

the Victorian Public School (London: Millington, 1977
themes in colonial architectural projects, see WilliamJ
Exemplary Works: Educating Sentiment in Colonial Indi
3 (2005).
20 Mirz? Habib Husayn, Ma'dan-e-tahz?b (Lucknow, 1901).

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 294 NILE GREEN

In this guidebook to the new

Mirza Habib Husayn detailed an
young Indian should endeavou
correctly and playing appropri
properly at balls and even le
famous metropolitan dandy, Be
this way aimed to self-conscio
of bodily behaviour appropria
such works also bore an obvio
in the Ma'dan-e-tahzib through
rule.22
Neither this work nor its contemporary Sufi and Yogi manuals
can be understood in isolation from the much larger body of Urdu
books, pamphlets and journals devoted to manners and etiquette
published in colonial India. These ranged from Sir Sayyid Ahmad
Khan's hugely influential journal Tahzib al-akhlaq ('The Purifying of
Manners', founded c. 1870) to the well-known book of the same
name by the North Indian 'alim 'Abd al-Hayy al-Hasani (d. 1923)
and the similarly famous manual of female behaviour, the Bihishti
zewar ('The Heavenly Adornments') of Ashraf 'Ali Thanawi (d. 1943).
Besides these better-known works, scores of less successful etiquette
manuals filled the shelves of India's booksellers. Among these cheap
print works, many were still more practical and specialist in character,
such as the short guides to the rules of cricket-that most successful
component of the physical culture of empire-written by Muhammad
'Abd al-Rahman of Bareilly and Nanak Chand.23
Such colonial modifications of physical culture were echoed
elsewhere in Urdu print through the distribution of works delineating
'Islamic' alternatives to colonial comportment. The Adat al-tanabbuh
fi bayan ma'ni al-tashabbuh ('Tools of Awakening for Clarifying the
Meaning of Imitation') of Mawlwi 'Abd al-Hayy, published in Delhi
around 1910, sought to prove that copying the physical appearance of
Englishmen was contrary to the Sunna of the Prophet. The legitimately
'Muslim' style of moustache was of particular concern, as was the

21 Ibid., pp. 33-34, 47, 75"76> 93~95

22 Ibid., pp. 194-195.
23 See Muhammad 'Abd al-Rahm?n, Kriket g?'id (Lucknow, 1898) and Nanak
Ch?nd, G?'id tu kriketya'n? r?hnum?-e-kriket (Sialkot, 1891). As clerk to the Municipal
Committee in Sialkot, Ch?nd was close to the wider colonial re-conditioning of
Indian behaviour articulated through notions of public property and its accompanying
behaviour.

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 295

length of beards and hair, with male Mus

attend to the hair of their womenfolk.24
imperial mannequins was a system of etique
model of Prophetic 'custom' (sunnat).
Although widespread, such attitudes were
In an early twentieth century magazine
kulah-e-darweshi ('The Crown and the Der
Sufi publicist Khwaja Hasan Nizami (1
antagonistic attitude towards the sartorial
by relegating all such signs of power to an
rejection of worldliness (tark-e-dunya). Alt
crown makes people (by implication, the B
advised Khwaja Hasan, without the crown,
equal and share the same eyes, tongue, hea
Such sentiments notwithstanding, in other
no less insistent than many of his contemp
attributes (khasa'il aur awsaj) of the Proph
held up as the best behavioural example fo
repeated use of hadith to stress the impor
of Muhammad as their ideal model.26 Othe
the defence of 'Muslim' physical culture by
in the case of Babu Muhammad Husayn's Ri
on Meat-Eating'), a tract in praise of the b
regular consumption of meat.27 As in othe
the polemical triangle identified earlier, h
being shaped through debate with Hindu
praxis used to quite literally incorporate s
difference. Consequently, frequent refe
appear in the Risala-e-goshtkhori.28
Print culture played a central role i
formulations of the practice of daily life. It is
on meditation are also to be situated.

24 Mawlw? 'Abd al-Hayy, Ad?t al-tanabbuh fi bay an m

Hind, 1326/1909), pp. 4-25.
25 Khw?ja Hasan Niz?mi, T?j a?r kulah-e-darweshi in
Niz?mi (Delhi: Ghul?m Niz?m al-d?n, 1912), pp. 170
26 Khw?ja Hasan Niz?mi, S?hib-e-bazm-e-mil?d k? akh
27 B?b? Muhammad Husayn, Ris?la-e-g?shtkh?ri (
1910).
28 Husayn (1910), pp. 12-13, 37.

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 296 NILE GREEN
The Athletics of Sufi Rebellion

As we have noted, to emphasise the transc

practices is to miss their central concern w
its medium, with the wider social world. A
late antiquity have long recognised, the fo
monastic movement performed their feats
and direct competition with the athlete
prototypical Vita Antonii of Athanasius (d
Saint Antony's struggles was dramaticall
compare the saint with the representative
still at this point dominant) model of phys
by the athlete.29 Just as the new physic
the early Christian ascetics was understood
social assumptions about the body, so was
and historical references to be found in the
techniques that entered India's printed pub
their earlier models, Indian Sufi manuals
central emphasis to control of the body. Such
physical conditioning that, in accordance w
was described in terms of '[physical] tra
(shughl). Indeed, in the Ziya al-qulub ('The
of Hajji Imdad Allah (d. 1899), the autho
the breathing practices he was describing as
sport') in their own right.30 In its accoun
control (pas-e-anfas), the Ziya al-qulub even
enabled the initiate to mystically breathe
spiritual guide: to breathe as a Sufi was to be
one's master.3 1 Breath had now become a way
Attempts to respond to polemical attacks
seen in the writings of the Hyderabadi Suf
(d. 1906). There instructions on meditation
jali or zikr-e-kalima-e-tayiba-appeared only in
of Sufi legitimacy that stressed the prima

29 See Athanasius, The Life of Saint Antony, trans.

Newman Press, 1950). On these themes more generally
Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early
University Press, 1988).
30 Imd?d Allah Far?qi, Ziy? al-qul?b in idem., Kulliy
P- 137
31 Imd?d Allah Far?qi (Kanpur, 1898), p. 137.

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 297

Islamic bodily praxis of normative rituals and o

Meditation practices by no means hovered in
ideological affray that surrounded them, but i
inexorably in the controversies of the age-t
to their elucidation and correct performanc
Without positing any kind of facile causal
discipline nevertheless cannot be disentang
towards taming the violence of the holy
manuals also need to be situated in rel
the jihad movements of the nineteenth cen
encompassed not only the unsuccessful jihad
(d. 1831) but also the widespread sentime
Muslims that the revolt of 1857 had al
is important to stress that from declaring
modes of legal and cultural separatism from
most stringent rejections of colonial rule b
nineteenth century had come from Sufi circ
An illuminating example of the inverse rel
struggle and meditation is seen in the life
Allah (d. 1899), whose involvement in the
seek exile after the revolt's suppression in t
continued to write and teach. In addition to
his teaching through the network of Indian
his charismatic presence in Mecca, Imdad A
were also printed in Kanpur in 1898. Written
works included one of the most significant m
of the nineteenth century, the Ziya-al-qulu
also composed a lengthy Urdu masnawi poem
GreaterJihad'), on the moral struggle agains
ways the poetic companion to his prose g
What is interesting about the poem is its ad
of jihad for the disciplining of the self. Of
struggle against the self as the 'greater jih
hadith of the Prophet Muhammad and Imda
the first Sufi to expand the theme. But gi
the events of 1857, Imdad Allah's subsequ

32 Iftikh?r 'Ali Sh?h Watan, Irsh?d?t-e-Watan (Hy

PP. 2-3, 5> 72-74
33 See Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Sh?h 'Abd al-'AziZ- Pur
Jih?d (Canberra: Ma'rifat Publishing, 1982).

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298 NILE GREEN
the internalisation of this rejection of Brit
salience. The language and poe-tic imagery of
reference to contemporary physical warfare q
struggles with the various elements of the
skirmishes and sorties involving battalions
(tufang), swords (tigh) and daggers (khanjar
intimate relationship between meditation
alternatively externalised through armed
through the discipline and purification of
inward or outward aggression, the body bec
struggle against external influence in whic
constructed between Indian Muslims and th

A Yoga of Silent Resistance

Having seen the connection of Sufi works t

on the body, it is now necessary to plac
within the same colonial transformation of
As we have already hinted, we sugges
previously initiatory traditions of Yogi no les
training into the public sphere of print rep
indigenous alternative to the physical cult
be most vividly demonstrated in connection
of the new Yoga of the late nineteenth and
for several of these figures were also conne
proto-nationalist movements.35 The most o
with his notions of the connections between
However, a more interesting figure is Aur
the practice of Yoga formed part of a wid
knowledge concomitant with the rejection

34 H?jji Imd?d Allah, Ris?la-e-jih?d-e-akbar, in idem,

1898), pp. 182-203. Drawing on well-established trad
means unknown to Yoga works of the period; the Yog
describing Yoga ascesis in terms of a battle (pp. 50
Allah's closest Hindu counterpart was the Maratha w
who fought alongside the Rani ofjhansi in 1857 befor
three decades engaged in meditation. Returning to
orthodox Hindu girls' school in Calcutta in 1893 (Tay
35 See Indira Chowdhury-Sengupta, "Reconstruct
Evolution of the Swadeshi Sannyasi in Bengal",
Mythmaking (Richmond: Curzon, 1996).

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 299

he had acquired at public school in Lond

Cambridge.36 Ghose's shift from nationalis
asceticism occurred during his imprison
the Alipore Bomb Case of 1go8-og. It was
that Aurobindo passed through the final st
from political agitator to Yogi, rejecting th
education in favour of a dress act of indige
again print played a central part in this
with Aurobindo furiously publishing his id
and 1921 in the journal Arya that was is
French Pondicherry as the counterpart to
Bande Mataram.37 The position we have arg
indigenising politics of the period is made q
of Ghose's writings in Bande Mataram. For a
entitled 'Religion and Politics' published in
more mischievous delusion than to suppose
soul by committing our bodies to the care of o
In many ways, the politics of Aurobindo's c
as the authentic Indian was an echo of the c
the previous century. The East India Comp
in Bengal had earlier been met with fierce r
armies of the Sadhu orders (akharas), while
of 1857 continued to be enriched with ta
communications network run by fakirs and
circle also contained other figures who r
between revolutionary politics and Yoga
supporter of Indian independence Margar
as Sister Nivedita (1867-191 1). A followe
Nivedita had also been strongly influenced b

36 On Ghose and nationalist politics, see Haridas Mu

Sri Aurobindo and the New Thought in Indian Politic
On Ghose's Yoga, see especially Sri Aurobindo, The
Sri Aurobindo Library, 1948).
37 The title of Aurobindo's newspaper was borrowe
nationalist song of the same name, which first
Chatterji's nineteenth century novel, Anandamath ('Ab
dealt with a group of politicised nationalist sannyasis.
38 'Religion and Polities', published in Bande Matara
reprinted in Mukherjee and Mukherjee (1997).
39 See Atis K. Dasgupta, The Fakir and Sannyasi Upr
1992) and Dirk Kolff, "Sanyasi Trader-Soldiers", Indi
Review 8, 2 (1971), pp. 213-218.

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 300 NILE GREEN

such figures of the great Ru

192 1) .40 Other nationalist gro
('self-culture clubs'), while in
posing as centres of Yogic in
British authorities.
Although few other Yogis
Aurobindo, the place of Yog
nonetheless clearly linked
nineteenth century.4' For de
so 'purely' Indian tradition,
predecessors had not remai
and had already begun to blen
culture.
It is important to stress here the hybrid genealogy of the neo-Yoga
of the nineteenth century and its connections to the occult subculture
of the Victorian empire, a situation also reflected in the colonial
rehabilitation of a bowdlerised Tantrism.42 As early as the 1 86os, the
practice of breath control was beginning to be promoted in Britain,
with the earliest notable example being George Catlin. A blend of
ethnology and quackery led Catlin to promote the 'natural' method of
nostril breathing, as summed up in his motto shutyour mouth. Although
he had no links with India, Catlin's ideas were nonetheless founded
on the exoticism of foreign climes: he claimed to base his theories on
the observation of the Indians of Brazil, Peru and the United States.43
By the 187os and i88os, breath was beginning to feature in several
of the New Religious Movements emerging from the suppressed
cosmopolitanism of Victorian Britain. Of these, the Sympneumata
movement of Laurence Oliphant (1829-88), that 'mystic in lavender
kid gloves', is perhaps the most interesting through its attempts to
link breathing to individualist self-discovery and the sexual liberation
of the country women of Palestine.44 A few decades later, by now in the
context of 'meditation' per se, breath control further infiltrated British

40 See Peter Heehs, "Foreign Influences on Bengali Revolutionary Terrorism 1902

1908", Modern Asian Studies 28, 3 (1994), pp. 533-556.
41 See G. N. Sarma, Sri Aurobindo and the Indian Renaissance (Bangalore: Ultra
Publications, 1997).
42 See De Michelis (2004) and Kathleen Taylor, Sir John Woodrojfe, Tantra and Bengal
(Richmond: Curzon, 2001).
43 See George Catlin, The Breath of Life; or Mal-respiration and its Effects upon the
Enjoyments & Life of Man (London: Tr?bner, 1862).
44 See Laurence and Alice Oliphant, Sympneumata: or, Evolutionary Forces Now Active
in Man (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1885). On Oliphant himself, see Philip

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 301

reading circles via the Theosophical move

works further extended the adaptation of Y
of physiology and health, as in Health and R
in London in 1912 as part of Cassell's 'H
This book anonymously quoted Vivekananda
in its physiological exposition of breath con
Cassell handbook espoused the same appeal
Yoga works did in India, with precedent sou
Testaments to support the link between rig
rectitude.47
With the growing interest in Yoga in the imperial centre in Britain,
and beyond it in America, Yoga would subsequently be further
reconstituted through still greater appeals to modern medicine and
science.48 Here, however, we are principally concerned with an
earlier stage in this colonial transformation of the means and ends
of meditation. For despite Aurobindo's exemplification of a Yoga
of colonial resistance, his own turn from violent to meditational
resistance had been influenced by Vivekananda, whom Aurobindo
considered as his absent mentor, having only met him through the
vicarious medium of a vision he experienced in gaol in Calcutta.
It was ultimately Vivekananda who was the most influential player
in this transformation of Yoga from minoritarian ascesis into the
global physical culture it would become over the course of the next
century. Despite its repeated appeals to Vedic authenticity, it is in
Vivekananda's Raja-Yoga ('Royal Yoga', 1896) that we must locate
the single most important colonial hybrid of Indian and European
notions of physical culture as pertains to meditation. In reflection of
the bourgeois parapsychologists of late Victorian Britain, Vivekananda
was the first of a long line of neo-Yogis to elicit comparison between
Yoga and European systems of knowledge, so making the first steps
towards the detachment of Yoga from the subtle bodies of classical
Sanskritic physiology to the mechanical human body of modern

Henderson, The Life of Laurence Oliphant: Traveller, Diplomat, and Mystic (London:
R.Hale, 1956).
45 See C. R. Srinivasa Ayangar and Narrainasawmy Iyer, Occult Physiology: Notes on
Hata Yoga (London: Theosophical Publication Society, 1893).
46 See Anon., Health and Right Breathing (London: Cassell, 1912), pp. 28-29 on
Catlin and pp. 48-49, 58 on Vivekananda.
47 Anon (1912), pp. 66-68.
48 Alter (2004).

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302 NILE GREEN

science.49 Vivekananda was by no m

colonial transformation of pre-mo
culture through missionary work
'Inayat Khan (1882-1927) offers a
new centrality that the body and
in articulating the new purposes
his departure from India in 1910
practice in Britain and subsequent
towards modernist notions of the b
physical culture of the Victorian p
an important frame of reference
also played an important part in '
an earlier holistic Islamic paradig
adapted or discarded to fit modern
Vivekananda was not only
mechanisation of Yoga, for he
discourse on Yoga breathing that
served as the ideological underpin
orders as warriors, merchants and b
on breathing re-enters our analysis,
exercises of Yoga were primarily
(literally 'breath'), the elan vital
omnipresent manifesting power of
only be mastered through the pract

49 See Swami Vivekananda, Raja-Yoga, or

Advaita Ashrama, 1930), pp. 38-39 with
of Sir Humphrey Davy (1778-1829). The
1896 in London and New York, with an I
afterwards. Several translations of Vive
were made during the first years of the t
and an Urdu translation (Sw?mi Vivek?n
50 See in particular the chapters on 'P
Inayat Khan, Sufi Teachings, Vol. 8, The S
pp. 49-56. On his life and teachings, see
Biography (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharla
51 Cf. Peter van der Veer, "Taming
Monastic Order", Man 22, 4 (1987), p. 69
was a most rewarding and promisin
and eighteenth century, when ascetic
and soldiery... With the Pax Britann
disappeared_" See also Dasgupta (1992
52 Vivekananda (1930), pp. 33-34. In
Vivek?nand, 1916, pp. 36-65), the sectio
through the vocabulary of qudrat and t?qa

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 303

In his promised transformation of the coloni

Yogi, Vivekananda unveiled the centrality
by describing the vast cosmic forces acces
indigenous practice of breath control tha
almost unlimited power'.53 Indeed, Vivekan
went as far as to offer an explicit political

The gigantic will-powers of the world, the w

Prana into a high state of vibration, and it is
it catches others in a moment, and thousand
and half the world think as they do. Great
the most wonderful control of the Prana, wh
will-power... and this is what gave them po
manifestations of power arise from this contro

Here Vivekananda finally turned India's

head to provide an indigenous key to poli
of undermining a colonial discourse explainin
supremacy, technological advancement and
The relationship that Vivekananda fra
power was also evident in vernacular w
the period. An example is found in Sh
ke 'amali sabaq ('Practical Lessons in Yog
autodidactic meditation manuals fostered
of print capitalism. Having discussed the
Yoga, like Vivekananda (whom his ideas
several chapters to discussing the import
breath control (pranayam).55 Varman b
discussion of the etymology of the word
linguistic origins was possibly a reflection of
of the term vis-a-vis more common spok
breath (sans, dam), it also demonstra
to words' 'original' meanings and antiq
proponents of neo-Hinduism and colonial
all its ideological subtext, like other contem
culture, Varman's work bore a forthright pr

53 Vivekananda (1930), pp. 33-34.

54 Ibid, p. 43.
55 Sh?vBrit L?l Varman (n.d. [1910?]), pp. 67-95.
56 In reflection of this neo-classical swing in co
included a rendering of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra as a
own Raja-Yoga.

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304 NILE GREEN

the supernatural empowerme

etymological conclusions wer
layered meanings,pran signified
and more simply power itself
entire universe-from planeta
fusion ofpran and akash ('ether
might of this 'breath power'. S
noted, so also are its works, such
merely a manifestation (zahur)
through to the imaginings of th
Capable of being mastered by
practices of breath-control des
pran was here explicitly portraye
In a printed ecumene in which
space with accounts of the new
cheap print was an indigenist
parapsychologists of the imper
thus made comparisons between
findings of European science
'What moves the steam engin
What are all these phenomena
What is physical science? The sc
external means'.59 If breathing
rather the relationship between
discursive power of the scientific
British Empire. In this vision of
we see meditation as a form of
As we have noted in connec
eighteenth century, this doe
of meditation had borne any
power. This may be seen in th
breath control (habs-e-dam, pr
and meditation more generally
powers. We are fortunate in
accounts from the nineteent
insight into the means and e

57 Varman (n.d.), p. 67. A few page

describingpran as 'in essence a kind of
58 Idem., pp. 71-72.
59 Vivekananda (1930), pp. 48-49.

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 305

perhaps the most significant precolonial r

Kanphata Yogis.60 The importance of the f
not simply commensurate with their limit
rather in terms of their place in the pop
legends of Gorakhnath himself, the 'split
him were widely celebrated in the folklore
India, and it is their central place, lingerin
discourse on meditation, that renders the K
In the 1830s, the Kanphatas of Kuchh in
the British soldier Lieutenant Postans a
by the local educational inspector, Dalp
was able to visit several Kanphata maths a
accounts record the oral traditions associa
and their illustrious forbears. What is mos
is the place of supernatural power as their
like similar tales of meditational power f
the legends collected by Khakhar and P
embedded in the local landscape than i
formulations of their colonial equivalents.6
narratives described the formation of the
of Kuchh as taking shape when the Yog
eyes after twelve years of meditation a
towards the sea, whose waves were imme
the desolation of the Rann.62 Khakhar also
its adaptation to refer to all the ruined t
Dharamnath, upset when someone spille
emerged from meditation, cursed the t
ddttan!'-which then immediately sank be
folktales connected the Yogis to more exp

60 See Dalpatr?m Pr?njivan Khakhar, "History of

Indian Antiquary 7 (1878), pp. 47-53; G. S. Leonard,
The Indian Antiquary 7 (1878) and T. Postans, "An
Danodh?r, in Cutch, with the Legend of Dharamn
the Royal Asiatic Society 5 (1839), pp. 268-271. For
century Hindi versions of the Gorakhnath cycle, see Sim
Asia (Jersey: Orient Monographs, 2000), pp. 140-2
61 On similar legends from the nineteenth century
the King of the Castle? Brahmins, Sufis and the Nar
Contemporary South Asia 13, 3 (2004), pp. 21-37.
62 Khakhar (1878), pp. 48-49; Postans (1839), pp.
63 Khakhar (1878), p. 49.

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306 NILE GREEN

of supernatural power.64 Ghar

miraculously intervened in the
series of figures at the Jade
expelled the Jats from Kachh
his meditational repose.65
Such folktales, making explic
power and political supremac
with Sufis, whose own decade-
e-dam, pas-e-anfas) often pa
political application.66 The pre
of Vivekananda and his vernac
and of meditation as the rou
means a discourse limited to
Bengal, but rather the adaptati
supernatural politics for the n
shaped by their imperial clim
politics of colonial India's mas
in the soil of Indian tradition.

Categorising Meditation:
to Hindu and Muslim

We have already noted the

underwriting the value of me
century. Yet the connections w
between physical culture, heal
were shared by other Hindu
connected to the Arya Samaj.
figures, the physical conditio

64 See also V?ronique Bouillier, "De

royale", in V. Bouillier and G. Tofffin
(Purusartha 12, 1989) and Daniel Gold
and the Yogis' Power in the Politics
(ed.),Bhakti Religion in North India (Al
65 Khakhar (1878), pp. 49-50.
66 See V?ronique Bouillier, "The
Bhagavantanath and the Unification
(ed.), Gender, Caste and Power in Sout
Society (Delhi: Manohar, 1992) and N
membering History at the Sufi Shrin
(2004), pp. 419-446.

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 307

moral state of society at large.67 These th

numerous publications, such as the early tw
entitled Akhlaqi wa Ruhani Si/hat ('Mora
written by Mahashah Kashi Ram.68 The central
that physical well-being (tandorosti, si/hat) wa
and moral purification. Here, in reflection
orientation of Yoga, the achievement of men
(shant) was directed not primarily towards s
the physical health of the body.69 As in
period, through the connection made betw
a continuum was posited not only between
between the private and the social body. Ethica
world was seen to reflect the level of purit
minds and bodies. This was not least the
practical ends to which such purification an
that derived from it were to be directed in
strong encouragement towards social utility
was said to lead to disquietude (biqarari), illn
(ranj). 70
Other Hindu texts notwithstanding, close parallels may also be
found in works on Sufi meditation printed in North India during
the same period. Once again, chapbooks formed the most important
means by which this discourse entered the public realm. Ayina-e-khod
shinasi ('The Mirror of Self-Knowledge'), a short Urdu work on the
doctrine and practice of Sufi meditation printed in Lucknow in 1890,
is a case in point.7' Its author, Muhammad Najm al-din, similarly
placed the body and its travails at the centre of his presentation of
meditational practice. Once again, the body was regarded as impure,
with the author reminding his readers that all of our bodies come from

67 Cf. Peter Gaeffke's remarks on the main writers of Hindi essayist prose in the
early twentieth century: "All of them believed in the glories of the Hindu past, and all
were convinced that only the reform of Hindu society on the basis of ty?g (asceticism)
and patriotism could bring about self-government." See Peter Gaeffke, Hindi Literature
in the Twentieth Century (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1978), p. 21.
68 Mah?sh?h K?sh? R?m, Akhl?q? wa r?h?nlsihhat (Lahore: Ary? Prit? Nidh? Sabh?,
1904).
69 Ibid., pp. 2-5.
70 Ibid., p. 6. Cf. the words of Aurobindo: "Subjection makes a people wholly
tamasik, a sort of physical, intellectual and moral palsy seizes them...". 'Politics and
Spirituality', published in Bande Mataram Daily (9 November 1907) and reprinted in
Mukherjee and Mukherjee (1997), pp. 189-192.
71 Muhammad Najm al-d?n, Ayina-e-kh?d-shin?si (Lucknow, 1890).

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308 NILE GREEN

the unclean stomachs of our

Najm al-din with the fram
the means and ends of medi
cold, requires perpetual nour
throughout life that can only
spiritual 'passing away' (fana)
Sihhat, physical illness also p
meditation, with a rhetoric o
instructions on the restorat
pious formulae (zikr).74 Here
a subtle reconfiguration of S
on the physical body, how to
The colonial transformation
missionary career of 'Inay
vernacular sphere of the book
This heightened Sufi emphas
other Urdu publications of t
Salih's Silsila-e-Islam ('The Tra
of a series of questions and a
his master (ustad), in addition
prayer (namaz) like many Sufi
was largely devoted to the qu
avoidance. The purity of the bo
text, with an entire section d
discussed ways to purify the
hair if it had been dyed.75 E
such works, the same concer
and ethos of the works on Mu
context too we witness the imp
sought to Islamise even the m
the descriptions of technique
Hajji Imdad Allah described
brush for the heart' (jarub-e-
dust and dirt.76 For the infl

72 Ibid., p. 7.
73 Ibid., pp. 6-16.
74 Ibid., pp. 12-17.
75 Mawlw? Muhammad S?lih, Silsila-e-Isl?m (Lahore: Munshi Din Muhammad,
1328/1910), pp. 103-109.
76 Imd?d Allah Far?qi, Ziy? al-qulub in idem., Kulliyat-e-Imd?diyya (Kanpur, 1898),
P- !37

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 309

discipline of Sufi etiquette (adab) was a h

a physical culture complete and self-suff
the east of Habib 'Ali's centre in Bombay
the twentieth century, Sufi meditation st
purification movement aimed at islamisin
Deccan countryside in the hands of the H
Mu'in Allah Shah (d. 1926). Like many
other parts of India, Mu'in Allah aimed t
promotion of an unambiguously Islamic life
to the shari'a and the regular performance o
We have argued that the meditation p
Hindu and Muslim ideologues of ninete
century India were indigenising forms of pr
colonial rule that sited the body as the locus
in their intellectual orientation many of the
were also communalist in character, lookin
authorities (the Veda, Patanjali; the Pro
sideways at the contemporay social facts o
traditions of meditational endeavour. For
groups comprising tens of thousands of M
India at this time, Yoga was instead being de
and intellectual categories suggested in 'c
writings which perforce excluded Islam a
While colonial Yogis discussed breath i
vocabulary of prana, for Sufi writers br
described through the Perso-Arabic termi
this way, breath itself came to acquire
that shirked the everyday vernacular of t
A consequence of the colonial anxiety over
textual precedent in 'scriptural' languages
of the middle ground of history that had co
of encounters between Sufis and Yogis.79
categorical purity therefore also extende

77 See Nile Green, "Mystical Missionaries in Hyd

and his Sufi Reform Movement"', Indian Economic and
pp. 187-212.
78 The 1891 Census recorded the existence of 38
alone. By the time of the 1921 Census, only 31,15
the whole of India (figures cited in Briggs (1938), p
79 Of course, these appeals to antique scriptu
classical ethos that evolved through the interaction

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310 NILE GREEN

the result that the largely unwr

marginalised in favour of more
of meditation.
Breath control was by no me
religious ideologues, but as we h
the nineteenth century in folk tr
powers attainable by mastery of
and Sufi texts that placed their
closely defined systems of relig
was often less sectarian in nat
different set of categories than
sphere of print. If popular legend
longevity of their breaths and th
us that there was no precolonial
not exist, what did nonetheless
understanding that Sufis and Yogi
In contrast to the abstract technic
theory, this world of narrative w
bricolage of Sufi Yoga. Numero
in Hindwi romance literature,
well-known Mirgavati (1503) an
Citravali (1613) of 'Usman of
were by no means the sole exc
Sufis. Nath Yogis referred to th
Persianate terminology as the Su
cloaks, carried the same coco-de-
and buried their dead in maus
indistinguishable from those of
guidebooks on meditation did o
definition and transgressive m
often lost in the clamour of call
of Muslim Yoga certainly contin

Orientalists, a movement whose inv

denigration of a marginalised 'middle'
80 See Nile Green, "Oral Competition
the Deccan", Asian Folklore Studies 63,
81 On these Sufi Yoga romances, see R
Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (W
107, 148, 151, 188.
82 See Briggs (1938), plates v and viii

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 311

century.83 But such formulations appeared

as modernist paradigms of religious defi
the bricolage of religious practices born thr
negotiations on local ground rather than th
unambiguous written world of doctrine.
Belonging to textual genealogies drawing ul
Arabic models, both Yogi and Sufi writings
entrenched in cycles of inter-textuality th
of the societies that produced them. As Carl
in a series of recent studies of the Arabo-Pe
textual precedent played a far more impor
meditation manuals than the observation of
written sphere of Indo-Arabic and Indo-Persi
were generally ignored in favour of more c
practice.85 Yet the sudden appearance of lith
was able to transform such handwritten m
between relatively small numbers of learned an
a far more pervasive literature of socio-relig
was able to relegate custom to the defensiv
(whatever the logocentric orientations of hi
ecumene had never previously managed to d
This turning away from ambiguous social
uncompromising clarity of written doctrin
Hindu writings from the nineteenth cen
sobriety of Indo-Islamic reform, temperance f
of the neo-Hindu movements of the colonia
for 'classical' authenticity, figures like Viv
ignored the living practice of large numbe
to create a sober and restrained Yoga base
presented as scriptural precedents, ignoring

83 See Thomas Dahnhardt, Change and Continuity in

Mujaddidl Branch in the Hindu Environment (Delhi: D.
and Sufi synthesis beyond India, see Richard Winsted
Shaman, Saiva and Sufi (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford Univer
84 See Carl W. Ernst, "The Islamization of Yoga in th
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 13, 2 (2
Sufism and Y oga", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,
85 Cf. the Persian and Arabic texts studied in Ernst
works of Sufi Yoga studied in David Cashin, The Ocea
Literature and the Fakirs of Bengal (Stockholm: Association
University, 1995), pp. 116-157.

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312 NILE GREEN

cannabis and opium among

suppression of the intoxica
other precolonial traditions o
with the suppression of the
Muslim Yogis, for these log
their disregarding of living
The pure pranayama breathin
coterminous with a wider pr
The inward focus on the person
represented by so many of In
involved a rejection of the cr
centuries emerged from Ind
As a discipline based on the
the ascetic physical culture e
we have discussed was the a
purification. Just as the fem
control of its social and sexual
community, so the disciplines o
an ascetic self-discipline that
and women.87 From the regu
to the careful control of all th
body, the purity instilled in th
mirror of the wider ideologic
and Hinduism as criteria for
for purity prevented the trans
entering the new public sph
use of cannabis and opium in
Indian reformulation of Vict
Yet while print offered br
new formulations of collectiv
for more individualistic form
'Hindustani' book market e

86 Both Khakhar (1878) and Posta

opium at the Yoga maths they visite
87 See Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscen
Public in Colonial India (London: Pa
and Pleasure: Writings of a Woman
Studies in History 21, 1 (2005), pp
political control over the self, see S
Desire and Theory" in ibid. (ed.), Sexu
and Culture in South Asia (London:

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 313

between works on Yogi or Sufi practice an

a degree of choice between the different
the distinct benefits such books offered. A
public disputation and polemic that the pri
possibilities for individual self-conditionin
print. For it is important to distinguish writ
kind from those of a more individualist or
manuals on cricket, table manners and oth
culture of empire, such works offered
indigenous alternatives to imperial medici
culture, not least in their appeal to the wo
control. Meditation manuals held open to th
self-transformation and the possibility of sel
mediated appeal to a new individualism tha
if wholly neglected, way-markers of South A

Conclusions

According to the memoirs of the Iranian Su

dictated in Tehran during the last years of
India for Mecca around 1866 he spent a few d
port of Surat. Although his travel arrangem
wrong, Safi claimed that he encountered a
him that he would make his haj after all. S
Safi ran into a wealthy friend who inform
for Mecca and saw to it that the expens
taken care of. Looking back on this episod
the generosity of his friend but to praise
supernatural power he described as his naf
the emergence of the large-scale attempts
social body in colonial India that were brok
of vernacular print, this sense of breathin
cosmic principle had for centuries allowed
concerning breath control to be shared bet
While encounters between the worlds of Y

88 See Mas'?d Hom?y?ni, T?rikh-e-silsilah?-ye-tariq

(London: Bony?d-e-'Irf?n-e-Mawl?n?, 1371/1992),
more generally, see Nile Green, "A Persian Sufi in Bri
Hasan Sail 'Ali Sh?h", Iran 42 (2004).

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314 NILE GREEN

throughout the colonial perio

of the Hyderabadi aristocrat S
provincial North Indian Hindu
the colonial purification of In
spectrum of legitimate physic
of a series of writings on th
was a collective attempt to pr
Hindu, Muslim and Christian
meditation, hygiene, sexuality
and practices of breathing wer
But from the promotion of Ve
discourse of miraculous habs-e
body breath remained the foc
body as the microcosm of socie
Yet for all the allure of unm
of colonial meditation wrote t
that conversely detached them f
around them. As we have see
category of the Muslim Yogi
Muslim public masters of me
the similarly composite medit
their pirs and dervish robes; n
describing the breath-control
of living practice were rejec
realm of written traditions, d
learning which had by its na
perpetuating. In this sense, th
about the written discourse of
twentieth centuries, for this w
than the disguised pathway to
So the ambiguity of the world
writing. Much of this change
in the mediation of writing th
cheap print in the last decades
Colonial Yoga cannot be under
of the Arya Samaj any more t
of Sufi meditation manuals ca
printed manuals on conformit

89 See Sir Ahmad Husayn Am?n Jan

sark?r-e-'?li, n.d. [c. 1932]) and Dahn

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 BREATHING IN INDIA 315
same public sphere, both the Yoga and Sufi
in writing during this period turned their
from members of what were increasingly seen
communities. Instead, practitioners were to
the physical embodiments of textually-mediated
would ultimately narrow the choice of physica
virile post-colonial masculinity of the Prophet
Ram. When the expression of the politics of the bo
from the self to others, from inner to outer v
would be the ideological armies of Ram and Mu
the new urban and mountain battlegrounds of
Yet it is perhaps not too fanciful to suggest a c
metaphorical, between the Sufism and Yoga of
the psychological oppression of empire. For con
an assertion of proprietorial control over a body
no longer contingent on the clamour of the ou
here-between the shallow and frightened breat
and the deep and liberating breaths of the medi
intimate sounds of the history of colonialism.
Looking further afield, we can now trace t
contours of the relations of politics and th
revolutionary alpine breaths of Rousseau's prom
the Yoga of white collar angst that so characte
capitalism.

90 We refer of course to the likes of the Ram Sena and Lak

Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.

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