Snapshots from Indian-American history
this month, that year
In the early decades of the 20th century, with very few South Asian immigrants
in the United States, it was easy for the American public to conjure up fantastic
ideas about yoga’s power and the itinerant men from India who taught it.
(Left) Yogi Wassan.
To learn about the part played by traveling yogis in toppling the Oklahoma
state government, read Deslippe’s entire article (“The
American Yoga Scare of 1927”) at https://www.saada.org/tides/article/20150910-4457 … elections … impeachment!
… While newspapers of the time liked
to portray the average yoga student
as a gullible, middle-class housewife,
a close look at who was attending
their classes and lectures reveal a
disproportionate number of men
and women who were doctors,
lawyers, and professionals. It was
also common for yoga teachers
from India to have familiarity with
some of the most famous
and powerful people
in the country. As just
one example, Deva Ram
Sukul was the respective
healer, correspondent,
and teacher to the actress
Mae West, Conrad Hilton
(the founder of the Hilton
Hotels chain), and the wife of Igor Sikorsky (designer
of the modern helicopter).
The exotic rendering of India that justified
immigration restrictions and Christian missionary
endeavors also allowed Americans to imagine an
India that was filled with mystical masters that held
secret wisdom and supernatural powers. A recurring
(and often comedic) motif in the memoirs of early
South Asian immigrants in the United States was
the presumption that being from India automatically
meant that they were one such master. In a time
with only a few thousand South Asians in the
United States, it did not take much for an Indian
immigrant of reasonable savvy and intelligence to
convince eager audiences that he was an adept yogi
or divinely-ordained swami, and make a living out
of this perception. With anti-Hindu sentiment and a
series of exclusionary laws often blocking the path to
many career opportunities or land ownership, this is
just what many immigrants from India did, in both
short trial runs of a few months and lengthy careers
that spanned decades.
(Left) A class led by Yogi Wassan.
A close look at the lost history of early American
yoga shows it to be an important subject in its own
right, and one that intersects with many of the
known figures and historical sites of South Asian
American history. After his case for citizenship was
heard by the Supreme Court, Bhagat Singh Thind
taught meditation, pranayama, and basic asanas
for over forty years. Bhagwan Singh Gyanee briefly
dubbed himself “Yogi Bhagvan” and taught what he
called “Humanology” for decades after his arrest and
imprisonment for his involvement with the Ghadar
Party as one of its leaders. Yogi Wassan and Deva
Ram Sukul respectively left the lumber mills of
the Pacific Northwest and nascent prospects as
a journalist and businessman to start careers as
traveling yoga teachers that took them both through
Oklahoma City and one of the most tumultuous
sagas in Oklahoma state history.
Theodore Fieldbrave, an Indian-born Baptist
missionary who immigrated to the United States,
told readers in a 1934 article that the East Indian
population in the United States could be divided
into four main categories. The first three categories
are familiar: farmers, students, and skilled workers
or merchants. The fourth category is startling:
“The Hindu Swamis and Yogis” that Fieldbrave
underestimated at “about 25 or 30.”
…
Philip Deslippe is a doctoral student in the Department
of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa
Barbara.