ABSTRACT
Hariharananda Aranya considered liberation from rebirth as the only legitimate goal of yoga, and only yoga that had this as its goal was real yoga. David White has argued that in India in the nineteenth century, there was a big difference between the philosophical yoga tradition of the Yogasutra and the practices associated with yogins. Yogins seem also to have had a low reputation, especially among the dominant bhadralok, the modern educated upper-class groups of the Bengali society. The bhadralok yoga project seems to represent a continuation of ideas, values and attitudes promoted by Brahmo Samaj, although not necessarily its bias toward Advaita Vedanta. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s saw the emergence of a "bhadralok yogin," a new yogin who was associated with Yogasutra. The international elevation of the Yogasutra as the foundation text for yoga practice for an international and global culture of Yoga is one of the puzzling phenomena relating to Hinduism in the twentieth century.
