If you are a fan of
yoga but can’t lay claim to Indian heritage, you should roll up your mat and
slink away in shame, never to do downward dog again.
That, at least, is
the takeaway from the latest assault by the cultural-appropriation movement,
for which, to quote the United Kingdom’s insufferably earnest Guardian
newspaper, “Yoga’s appropriation by the white wellness industry is a 21st
century form of colonialism.”
The Cambridge
Dictionary defines cultural appropriation as “the act of
taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without
showing that you understand or respect this culture.”
By way of example,
the dictionary entry goes on to use the example of Paul Simon: “Some see his
use of African music as cultural appropriation,” which of course is bad news for
the musician and fans of his 1986 album Graceland.
Who wins?
But outraged cries of
“cultural appropriation” tend to obscure a narrow, isolationist agenda, which
is exposed the moment one looks for balanced application of the principle.
While the anti-appropriators argue that India should “claim back” yoga, there is no reciprocal suggestion that India should give up its beloved cricket.
While the
anti-appropriators argue that India should “claim back” yoga, there is no
reciprocal suggestion that India should give up its beloved cricket, the
quintessentially English game, or, for that matter, that the rest of the world
should abandon soccer (and appropriately call it football), or even rugby – all
games that kicked off in the UK.
As for polo, well, if
we are to follow the yoga position to its logical extreme, all mallets and
ponies should be returned forthwith to Iran, where the game supposedly emerged
as a training aid for Persian cavalry more than 2,000
years ago.
Cultural appropriation
can be portrayed as a bad thing by those with an axe to grind over colonialism,
but condemning it is not a zero-sum game.
If, by some curious
application of a mysterious force, India was able to oblige the rest of the
world to give up yoga, who would win?
Not Western devotees,
who presumably would age less flexibly, and not India, which would lose yoga as
a soft-power ambassador, connecting the world to the roots of its ancient
spirituality.
The interweaving of
culture
Ideas travel, cultures
merge, nations trade, people migrate, civilizations evolve. As Paul Simon
put it while reflecting on the Graceland controversy in a 2011 interview,
“everybody’s lifting all the time. That’s the way music grows and is shaped.”
Ideas travel, cultures merge, nations trade, people migrate, civilizations evolve.
Seeking to throw a
protective, monopolistic arm around any facet of any culture is an exercise as
pointless as defying the ebb and flow of ocean tides. All cultures are
interwoven inextricably — pull one thread and everything unravels.
Go back far enough
and everything in the world is the product of cultural appropriation, from
pizza, curry, fondue, and fish and chips, to architecture, agriculture, music,
and art. Skirts, music, dance steps, makeup, computers, tattoos, electricity,
hot dogs, democracy, the internal combustion engine, religion, surfing —
writing, even. It all began somewhere, and all of it is now everywhere.
This melting pot of
human thought, creativity, and ingenuity benefits us all, and to attempt to
retain any element for one group’s exclusive use – or, on the flip side, to ban
anything that has not originated from within one’s own community – is as
self-defeating as it is impossible.
A name change,
bronze, and a bisht
As an example of how
complex this subject is, Ngozi Fulani, the Black British woman who recently accused a member of
Britain’s royal household of racism for asking her where she was “really from”,
was subsequently accused herself — by other Black Britons — of having
appropriated African culture.
Despite being born in
the UK of Caribbean heritage, Fulani had opted to change her name from Marlene
Headley and adopt African dress.
But why not? If one
is of direct West African heritage (and her critics appear to have forgotten
that Black communities in the Caribbean originated in Africa) one has a choice:
To take offense at Fulani's “appropriation”, or to welcome it as a positive
example of cultural exchange.
Such positivity was
on display at the recent Qatar World Cup. Western football fans who adopted the
ghutra, the traditional headdress favored in Qatar, were accused in some
quarters of cultural appropriation — but not, interestingly, by the Qataris
themselves, who seemed rather to like the idea.
In our globalized modern world, it is far more appropriate to embrace appropriation for what it really is: cultural exchange
And there was Lionel
Messi, draped by the emir of Qatar in the bisht, the traditional
Arab cloak, as a gesture of respect after Argentina's World Cup victory.
Setting aside the knee-jerk outbursts of racism across several Western media
outlets, this was a dramatic example of cultural exchange in action.
No one is suggesting
that Argentinians are going to start wearing the bisht en masse. But the
garment’s appearance on the world stage, and the conversations triggered by the
gesture, will have offered millions a glimpse of a culture that until that
moment would have been a mystery to them, at best, or misrepresented.
In our globalized
modern world, it is far more appropriate to embrace appropriation for what it
really is: cultural exchange, the driving force behind civilization, and human
progress ever since the Sumerians first developed and began exporting bronze from
Mesopotamia to the rest of the then-known world.
As the very lifeblood
of civilization, cultural appropriation should be encouraged and celebrated,
not censored. Without it, everyone outside of Mesopotamia would still be living
in the Stone Age.
Jonathan Gornall is a
British journalist, formerly with The Times, who has lived and worked in the
Middle East and is now based in the UK. Copyright:
Syndication Bureau.
Read more Opinion and Analysis
Jordan Newsاضافة اعلان
.jpg)
.jpg)
