Join us in welcoming scholars Sunila Kalé and Christian Novetzke to discuss their recent book, "The Yoga of Power: Yoga as Political Though and Practice in India".

Sunila S. Kalé and Christian Lee Novetzke chart a new genealogy of yoga, beginning with uses of the term in the Ṛg Veda, the Mahābhārata, the Bhagavad Gītā, and the Arthaśāstra. In the world of these texts, yoga names everything from war and battle strategy to good governance, espionage, taxation, and welfare. Kalé and Novetzke follow this trail into the modern period, examining the writings and speeches of thinkers such as Gandhi, Tilak, Aurobindo, and Ambedkar as well as the extraordinary story of the Princely State of Aundh, whose ruler saw the Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutation) as a tool for sovereignty. Offering a novel interpretation of yoga that embraces its long-standing political conceptualization, this book sheds light on South Asian political thought and history from its earliest texts to the present day.

Sunila S. Kalé is a professor in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her books include Electrifying India: Regional Political Economies of Development (2014).

Christian Lee Novetzke is a professor in the Jackson School of International Studies and the Comparative History of Ideas Department at the University of Washington, Seattle. His books include The Quotidian Revolution: Vernacularization, Religion, and the Premodern Public Sphere in India (Columbia, 2016).